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Childhood Memories

Diane, I remember picking up the slack actually from anywhere we could find it. And the newspaper, it seemed when I was doing it, somehow I got the fire going but also managed to set the newspaper on fire! My father was not pleased because I always seemed to use the morning paper that he had not read!
Happy Days (I think)!
My Nan used to examine the coal that was delivered tipped from hessian sacks. The coal men were very strong. He tipped it on to a piece of corrugated iron on the garden to keep it dry near the house, but she never covered it. When it was wet it used to spit when lit and crack and bang. So she would put the fireguard up. She used to moan often saying he had given her a load of 'nutty slack'. Grandads mum, used to paint her coal. She said someone was stealing it. She also painted a line on the wall, to see if it went down. She kept it as did my dad's mum, under the stairs in the cubby hole. We called ours the bung 'ole. As everything got bunged in it. So, I always thought they were called bungoles.
 
Hi Pete,

I don't blame you, those drip feed fires were notorious for faults, We did have one
when they first came out, but soon got rid of it. The conventional paraffin fires never
seemed to give any bother though, you just had to keep the wicks trimmed.
I liked the smell of an oil stove actually, but my missus hated it.

Kind regards
Dave
We were watching a Miss Marple, I said to my partner, lots of people were 'killed' like this, in dramas,
and in films turning on the gas on the little bedrooms fires. We had ours taken out. All houses had them as I recall but I never saw one lit. Mum said they were dangerous. I remember Nan on about women who put their head in the gas oven. A friend of ours used to dry her long hair in the oven. She lay on the kitchen "flowa" as pronounced by my nan, put cushions under her head and put her hair in" th'oven." "Bluurgh!" shuddered nan "the filthy cat!"
 
My Nan used to examine the coal that was delivered tipped from hessian sacks. The coal men were very strong. He tipped it on to a piece of corrugated iron on the garden to keep it dry near the house, but she never covered it. When it was wet it used to spit when lit and crack and bang. So she would put the fireguard up. She used to moan often saying he had given her a load of 'nutty slack'. Grandads mum, used to paint her coal. She said someone was stealing it. She also painted a line on the wall, to see if it went down. She kept it as did my dad's mum, under the stairs in the cubby hole. We called ours the bung 'ole. As everything got bunged in it. So, I always thought they were called bungoles.
Nico, our coal shed (if you could call it that) was at the back of our house down a narrow entry. I had to go down every day with a coal scuttle fill it up and carry it into the house. When we needEd more coal my mother would leave it where I kept my bike which was my bedroom. No words just an empty scuttle silently speaking!
 
Richard more innocent days back then also. Regarding happy days I was a very nervous kind of child.
However, back to the coal fires. I was born 1947, and around about then my Mother had the coal fire place put in. Before that apparent it was the black fire range type. My nan apparently cooked on one.
You were supposed to get permission from the council to have one fitted In their houses.
Mum didn’t, and someone reported her, well some neighbour, and I think she had to pay some small fine.
I was a nervous child too. We only threw stones at each other. Never at people's property. Only bad kids did that.My school mate moved some little red lanterns they used to have round road works, and a car went in the hole in the dark. He was mortified. He daren't tell his dad as he would have been belted. With a belt. Some kids played truant, and got in to a neighbour's house whilst she was at work, and made tea ate biscuits and watcher her TV. I think they broke in. It was unheard of then, a huge scandal, they left their school blazers behind with their names sewn in.
 
Nico, our coal shed (if you could call it that) was at the back of our house down a narrow entry. I had to go down every day with a coal scuttle fill it up and carry it into the house. When we needEd more coal my mother would leave it where I kept my bike which was my bedroom. No words just an empty scuttle silently speaking!
Some houses built during the war, had little coal bunkers with a lid on top and a little door in the bottom. I can see one from here now. My friends kept their rabbit in it. We had a coal shed next to the outside loo. We used it for tools and things. The Coal 'ouse. Again I grew up thinking it was a colowse.
 
I was a nervous child too. We only threw stones at each other. Never at people's property. Only bad kids did that.My school mate moved some little red lanterns they used to have round road works, and a car went in the hole in the dark. He was mortified. He daren't tell his dad as he would have been belted. With a belt. Some kids played truant, and got in to a neighbour's house whilst she was at work, and made tea ate biscuits and watcher her TV. I think they broke in. It was unheard of then, a huge scandal, they left their school blazers behind with their names sewn in.
Now almost nothing would happen!
 
I believe many properties had a brick built outdoor 'coal house' as part of their property. A house I lived in did, in fact, in my younger days, I built a small rockery against the exterior rear wall.
I wonder what people use them for these days, where they only have central heating? A shed maybe? Rather like the front gardens which are now car parks
 
I was a nervous child too. We only threw stones at each other. Never at people's property. Only bad kids did that.My school mate moved some little red lanterns they used to have round road works, and a car went in the hole in the dark. He was mortified. He daren't tell his dad as he would have been belted. With a belt. Some kids played truant, and got in to a neighbour's house whilst she was at work, and made tea ate biscuits and watcher her TV. I think they broke in. It was unheard of then, a huge scandal, they left their school blazers behind with their names sewn in.

When I was around 6 or 7 I do recall being in the infant school, but not the first year. A boy in my class showed me a small green bottle about the size of smelling salts. It may have been much smaller, but way back then, and even now I kind of see it. He had brought from home, I said what’s in it or what’s that he said poison, and I’m going to poison you.
So me being me took it on board. My late sister said at times I was like a dustbin taking to much rubbish in.
The boy only lived down the road from me, had to pass his house on the way to, and from school. At home time I started to use another gate, and came home via a different road. In case he poisoned me lol.I could not wait for junior school to come around. Separate playgrounds for boys and girls.
I still remember the boys name crystal clear.
Writing about this I cannot remembered my Mum taking me or picking me up from school only I guess the first day.
 
I believe many properties had a brick built outdoor 'coal house' as part of their property. A house I lived in did, in fact, in my younger days, I built a small rockery against the exterior rear wall.
I wonder what people use them for these days, where they only have central heating? A shed maybe? Rather like the front gardens which are now car parks
That's what ours was built on to the pantry then the outside loo then the water butt then a wooden shed. All the houses I lived in had them. Like now except it houses the boiler now and has been made to be inside. We put tools and deckchairs in and flower pots, fishing rods, anything, zinc baths and buckets.
 
I recall the days when we had a modern grate and subsequent paraffin heater. Our dad used to pick up the paraffin at a filling station on Lozells Rd. It certainly was a lot easier than the open fire experience. However, it happened one day that the burner in the heater kept flaring up and our mom was freaking out. She took the paraffin can back to the filling station, which was quite a walk from Paddington St and found out it was petrol, not paraffin. could have been a major disaster...
Dave A
I had piano lessons taught by 2 old misers. Mrs Eberell was short and always wore an ancient longish dark silk looking dress with sparkling black beads and she taught on a baby grand in the front room. I was taught by her husband in the back on an upright. I can smell the room now. The fireplace void of any fire or ever having a fire lit in it. I was trudging there in the snow in the dark, they had a big dark tall paraffin heater in the hall which heated nothing, just melted the snow off my wellies in half the hour for when it was time to come back. When your play your fingers need to be warm. My excuse anyway! Pitted oilcloth floor. The other student in the other room playing far better than me. Mr Eberell taught the violin too and he had a pot of resin maybe that was the smell but it was musty and damp. When I told mum and dad about the heater they said I thought they chucked them out years ago. They are dangerous.
 
That's what ours was built on to the pantry then the outside loo then the water butt then a wooden shed. All the houses I lived in had them. Like now except it houses the boiler now and has been made to be inside. We put tools and deckchairs in and flower pots, fishing rods, anything, zinc baths and buckets.
When the houses in Court Lane, Erdington where built just before WWII, they all had a coal house just outside the kitchen with the back gate coming between the kitchen wall and the coal house, so that the coalman could come up the entry between the houses and tip straight into it. When I have passed on a 'look that is where daddy lived' trip, I have wondered what had happened to the coal house, probably a granny flat now.

Bob
 
Nico,

I could never play piano with cold hands and fortunately I rarely had to. I think I have told this story here before, but in the icy snowy cold winter of 1963 I was playing a club deep in the heart of the New Forest and within a few weeks they couldn't afford to heat the place. It got so bad that eventually we were playing in our overcoats, but that doesn't keep your hands warm. My sympathies and enough to put you off playing for life - at least I was getting paid for it!

John,

Yes, we dabbled with coke and once you got it going it was OK.

Maurice :cool:
 
Nico,

I could never play piano with cold hands and fortunately I rarely had to. I think I have told this story here before, but in the icy snowy cold winter of 1963 I was playing a club deep in the heart of the New Forest and within a few weeks they couldn't afford to heat the place. It got so bad that eventually we were playing in our overcoats, but that doesn't keep your hands warm. My sympathies and enough to put you off playing for life - at least I was getting paid for it!

John,

Yes, we dabbled with coke and once you got it going it was OK.

Maurice :cool:
Not as messy as coal, but you are right took more time to get going
 
Our coal bunker as very similar to this one. It was brick built and had planks part of the way up the doorway over which the coal was emptied into the bunker. It had a plank door with a latch on it.

To reach the bunker you had to go through the gate at the side of the house, past the kitchen door and it was built just at the start of the back garden. It was in a handy position so that you didn’t have to carry the coal too far. I think it was joined to next doors coal bunker. This was a 1930’s house, so I think the bunker was probably a fairly standard design. Expect most have now been demolished (or maybe turned into sheds ?). Viv.
 

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we had a celler.with a cast iron grate that the colman or burglars lifted to get access, so dad chained it shut. i white washed all the walls and used the celler for my model railwaylay out.
we used coke and coal. from bertha in park lane.which i fetched in a old pram lol
 
crikey pete you were posh if you electric lighting in your cellar...we had to use candles to see down ours and of course thats where the gas meter was...we had a cellar under the front room and one under the back room..coal was delivered into the back cellar...horrible dark and damp with lots of spiders..silver fish and slugs :rolleyes: if the coal was running low and mom and dad were short of money we used to have to go down and make up slack bricks we never stayed down there longer than we had to lol...none the less happy days

lyn
 
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