Robert Ensor (bob)
master brummie
Never noticed before but that kid was carrying enough bread for a village or at least Christmas....hovis and lettice.i liked
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Never noticed before but that kid was carrying enough bread for a village or at least Christmas....hovis and lettice.i liked
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i remember years ago some children went to my sister's house. trick or treat. one was a bit gobby.waving a bag. so my sister put some items in the bag.some items were catfood sashaysSmudger, we haven't had carol singers for quite a while. I'm not sure if today's children know carols as well as we did as some schools don't have assemblies any more. No penny for the guy either. However, I had quite a few trick or treaters this year, some small children with their parents and a couple of young men with a great sense of humour. They were Asian and on their way back from the gym. I told them they were too big for trick or treating so they promptly knelt on my step! Needless to say they didn't go away empty-handed. This year I didn't buy sweets and gave everyone clementines.
was that to go away?3 of us used to go out carol singing every night in the 40 s inVauxhall.We would pick a different street every night .Think we got about a shilling each a night.WOW what great times.It learned me how to save money.
Love that old adNever noticed before but that kid was carrying enough bread for a village or at least Christmas.
I guess you were unaware that you mistakenly called where Scrooge lived?I remember when three of us all under the age of ten went carol singing by houses some distance from where we lived and after we had sung three carols the door opened and we were curtly told to clear off. We went back to the pavement and a women standing there said she had stopped and enjoyed listening and gave us a shilling each ...
Maurice, you have brought back many similar memories! My grandmothers copper and mangle in the kitchen. Her WC was outside next to the coal shed and her sewing machine along side the coal/coke fired stove. I don’t remember a wireless though.They seemed antiquated in their day, but many is the time that I and my younger brother accompanied my mother on the No. 6 tram from the top of Martineau Street to the Bartons Arms, then a walk up Potters Hill, turn left into Bartons Bank, then a right turn and down a zig zag path to what was originally known as Bartons Place. But it had always been known to my mother as 2 back of 15 Bartons Bank. The house had a rather elegant front door, which was never used as we always entered via the back door into the kitchen, as did every other visitor. That front door would have opened into a hall, with stairs to the three upstairs bedrooms, and beneath the stairs, a door behind which were steps leading to the large cellar - our shelter from Hitler's bombs in the early part of WW2.
My grandmother's youngest son, Albert was still living with her at the time and in the early 1960s the place was torn down and they moved to Albert Road, Kings Heath. Forum member Eric Gibson would have made a similar journey as his grandmother lived in the same group of houses, yet we never knowingly met at that time. In the large living room was an upright walnut-veneered piano in excellent condition, though never played since my Uncle Stan moved out, first to Southampton to manufacture aircraft parts during the war, and some years later to Worcester. The piano later became mine, but many years later. In an alcove to the right of the fire grate was a sideboard and above that hung a large chiming pendulum clock. My grandmother's Singer sewing machine stood under the solitary window of that room, and next to that on a table was my uncle's radio. But she hated that radio as she was very deaf and to her it was just an annoyance!
I never knew my grandfather or my great grandfather as they passed away within a year of each other some 17 years before I was born. But his legacy was still there on my visits - both red and black currant bushes fruiting well, loganberries, and a large black Hamburg grape vine which, like the loganberries, was stil laden with fruit over 40 years later. But long gone was the goat and the angora rabbits that he apparently kept at one time. Of course the copper and the big old mangle were still in the large kitchen when we visited. Happy days.
Maurice
The garden shed a early "man cave" now I am rethinking the whole Allotments deal,Nico,
I had the piano for 11 years and spent many happy hours playing it and borrowing music from various Birmingham Libraries, but when I moved south in 1961, I couldn't take it with me. My mother tried to teach herself for a year or so, but arthritis was starting in her hands and she gave up too. She too moved to Dorset a few years later and sold it before she left Brum.
Richard,
I think my uncle acquired the radio shortly after he came out of the Army in 1946. At about the same time he bought a wooden shed and put it in the garden and ran an electric cable from the kitchen so that he had light, power and heat. He would listen to the radio until my grandmother started nagging him and then he would go out into the shed where all his "man things" were. He'd bought a Wolf electric drill with all the many attachments, including a very basic lathe. He'd do a bit of woodturning, or build little electric motors using the big old U-shaped magnets from old loudspeakers - anything that got him away from his boring job as an accounts clerk at Perry Pens.
Maurice