David Weaver
gone but not forgotten
It has been suggested I write a profile of myself for the site. This I find rather difficult because nothing much has happened to me, compared to many others with more interesting lives, but here goes and you can make of it what you will.
Mum and Dad married in Aston Church and we kids, seven of us, were Christened there.
I was born in Gladstone Street, Aston, in 1933, and my father had a coal yard. The back streets of Aston, in those days, were pretty tough places to live for example the first thing you learned to do after learning to walk was learn to fight. Thus armed I went to Vicarage Road School to practise my newly discovered skills but my sister’s still roughed me up quite a bit in the playground.
Directly behind the coal yard was Atkinson’s Brewery in Queens Road. Dad delivered coal on a horse and cart in the early days and I can still remember his big draught horse and the smell of horse muck and hops from the brewery. Lovely memories.
In the winter when dad was out carrying coal, around Aston and Nechalls, mum used to shovel coal for the customers lined up with small barrows hired out by dad on a deposit. While mum was slaving away we used to stand around whinging and moaning about being fed and asking ‘when would dinner be ready’, but us kids only thought of ourselves with our half empty bellies. There were many more worse off though and we never went really hungry and always had a pair of boots to wear and cloths on our backs even though some were hand-me-downs.
Dad finally bought a lorry but mum still shovelled coal in the yard.
On week ends we played in Aston Park mostly on the swings opposite the Villa Ground. but generally we played in the gutters and caused as much trouble as we could get away with.
When the war started dad put an Anderson shelter in the coal yard and we spent many hours contemplating our future, or lack of it, as the bombs dropped. One night I got my head stuck in the bars of the bed and couldn’t get it out so mum and dad spent quite a while trying to get it out by rubbing a weeks ration of margarine on it but it didn’t work. When the bombs started to fall I was trapped and terrified and my father used some very strange words I hadn’t heard before other than everything started with ‘Stupid’. Dad made mum go down the shelter but he wouldn’t leave me. When a huge land mine destroyed the bottom of Gladstone Street, and thereabouts killing many people for some reason my head came loose and dad and me scrambled across the yard. He threw me into the shelter, amid great cheering, and then took off to help dig out the injured. I was still shaking the next day, and the day after if it comes to that.
On the night of the big incendiary raid a burning bomb came into the shelter dropped onto my brothers back bounced over my sister and me, mum jumped up grabbed my brother’s jacket and cap picked up the burning bomb and threw it outside over the sand bags and then us too because we were overcome with fumes. She was the last to climb out and was very groggy. Saved our lives for sure and what was left of the burned rags she kept for years as a memento.
We spent many happy hours playing in the bomb craters looking for shrapnel and the big red signs saying ‘Unexploded bombs keep out,’ didn’t hold much store with us. Stupidity is universal see.
Towards the end of the war dad bought a house in Mere Green, the other side of Sutton, with an acre of land and we kept pigs chickens and rabbits. I went to Hill Boys School and received the cane on a regular basis because I wasn’t like other boys; I spoke with a Brummie accent plus being a bit of a pest, with attitude, methinks.
In my early twenties I bought a rucksack and took off around Europe to have a look around. This was long before hitch hiking was recognised as a legitimate means of travel. I travelled around Europe for a while and then down into Spain and finished up in Morocco in the Atlas Mountains. I lived with the Arabs for a while and then ran out of money so moved back to France and worked in the vineyards with what can only be described as slave labour I wouldn’t have missed it for quid’s though.
I arrived in Australia in 1959, for two years only, and hitch hiked around doing whatever work I could find. As soon as I had enough money to move on I did so. I washed dishes, dug ditches, lay railway tracks in 45 degree heat and was a professional shooter on a sheep station one thousand two hundred square miles in size.
I finished up in Darwin on the way back to England but somehow never got around to leaving again. I got a job with an airline and I took up underwater diving for a hobby and became a Northern Territory Underwater Diving Instructor that was until Cyclone Tracy blew my house down on Christnmas Eve 1974. I worked on the evacuation of the destroyed town and then my company transferred me down to Melbourne where I’ve been ever since. I lost all my family photos, on that night, plus forty years of stories and journals and swore I’d never write again but started again after twenty years or so.
In Melbourne I worked my way up the ladder, of futility, and finally got a decent job. To say I was surprised when I got it would be an understatement, but my surprised family in England were totally gob smacked, and still are, which pleased me no end.
At fifty eight years of age I left my job to become a house father of twin girls of one years of age. Forty thousand nappy changes later, and a million happy memories, the girls went to high school and made it quite clear I wasn’t very smart so at sixty eight years of age I took the exams for university and graduated three years ago as the oldest slow learner in the world. My twins meanwhile are both at university and reckon if I can graduate they’ll walk it in with their eyes closed, I just hope they’re right.
So there you have it, for what its worth, and as I said at the beginning there’s not much to tell. I’d best explain about my stories though and why I’m putting them on the site. I would hate to cark it, and at my age it could happen any time, and everything tucked away in my computer be deleted and lost. There’s also a one hundred and twenty five thousand word unpublished novel about Birmingham just waiting for a perceptive publisher to take it off my hands, hopefully. It’s a love story called ‘The Irish Girl’ and a damn good read even if I say so myself. To those who read this, thanks for taking the time. DKW
Mum and Dad married in Aston Church and we kids, seven of us, were Christened there.
I was born in Gladstone Street, Aston, in 1933, and my father had a coal yard. The back streets of Aston, in those days, were pretty tough places to live for example the first thing you learned to do after learning to walk was learn to fight. Thus armed I went to Vicarage Road School to practise my newly discovered skills but my sister’s still roughed me up quite a bit in the playground.
Directly behind the coal yard was Atkinson’s Brewery in Queens Road. Dad delivered coal on a horse and cart in the early days and I can still remember his big draught horse and the smell of horse muck and hops from the brewery. Lovely memories.
In the winter when dad was out carrying coal, around Aston and Nechalls, mum used to shovel coal for the customers lined up with small barrows hired out by dad on a deposit. While mum was slaving away we used to stand around whinging and moaning about being fed and asking ‘when would dinner be ready’, but us kids only thought of ourselves with our half empty bellies. There were many more worse off though and we never went really hungry and always had a pair of boots to wear and cloths on our backs even though some were hand-me-downs.
Dad finally bought a lorry but mum still shovelled coal in the yard.
On week ends we played in Aston Park mostly on the swings opposite the Villa Ground. but generally we played in the gutters and caused as much trouble as we could get away with.
When the war started dad put an Anderson shelter in the coal yard and we spent many hours contemplating our future, or lack of it, as the bombs dropped. One night I got my head stuck in the bars of the bed and couldn’t get it out so mum and dad spent quite a while trying to get it out by rubbing a weeks ration of margarine on it but it didn’t work. When the bombs started to fall I was trapped and terrified and my father used some very strange words I hadn’t heard before other than everything started with ‘Stupid’. Dad made mum go down the shelter but he wouldn’t leave me. When a huge land mine destroyed the bottom of Gladstone Street, and thereabouts killing many people for some reason my head came loose and dad and me scrambled across the yard. He threw me into the shelter, amid great cheering, and then took off to help dig out the injured. I was still shaking the next day, and the day after if it comes to that.
On the night of the big incendiary raid a burning bomb came into the shelter dropped onto my brothers back bounced over my sister and me, mum jumped up grabbed my brother’s jacket and cap picked up the burning bomb and threw it outside over the sand bags and then us too because we were overcome with fumes. She was the last to climb out and was very groggy. Saved our lives for sure and what was left of the burned rags she kept for years as a memento.
We spent many happy hours playing in the bomb craters looking for shrapnel and the big red signs saying ‘Unexploded bombs keep out,’ didn’t hold much store with us. Stupidity is universal see.
Towards the end of the war dad bought a house in Mere Green, the other side of Sutton, with an acre of land and we kept pigs chickens and rabbits. I went to Hill Boys School and received the cane on a regular basis because I wasn’t like other boys; I spoke with a Brummie accent plus being a bit of a pest, with attitude, methinks.
In my early twenties I bought a rucksack and took off around Europe to have a look around. This was long before hitch hiking was recognised as a legitimate means of travel. I travelled around Europe for a while and then down into Spain and finished up in Morocco in the Atlas Mountains. I lived with the Arabs for a while and then ran out of money so moved back to France and worked in the vineyards with what can only be described as slave labour I wouldn’t have missed it for quid’s though.
I arrived in Australia in 1959, for two years only, and hitch hiked around doing whatever work I could find. As soon as I had enough money to move on I did so. I washed dishes, dug ditches, lay railway tracks in 45 degree heat and was a professional shooter on a sheep station one thousand two hundred square miles in size.
I finished up in Darwin on the way back to England but somehow never got around to leaving again. I got a job with an airline and I took up underwater diving for a hobby and became a Northern Territory Underwater Diving Instructor that was until Cyclone Tracy blew my house down on Christnmas Eve 1974. I worked on the evacuation of the destroyed town and then my company transferred me down to Melbourne where I’ve been ever since. I lost all my family photos, on that night, plus forty years of stories and journals and swore I’d never write again but started again after twenty years or so.
In Melbourne I worked my way up the ladder, of futility, and finally got a decent job. To say I was surprised when I got it would be an understatement, but my surprised family in England were totally gob smacked, and still are, which pleased me no end.
At fifty eight years of age I left my job to become a house father of twin girls of one years of age. Forty thousand nappy changes later, and a million happy memories, the girls went to high school and made it quite clear I wasn’t very smart so at sixty eight years of age I took the exams for university and graduated three years ago as the oldest slow learner in the world. My twins meanwhile are both at university and reckon if I can graduate they’ll walk it in with their eyes closed, I just hope they’re right.
So there you have it, for what its worth, and as I said at the beginning there’s not much to tell. I’d best explain about my stories though and why I’m putting them on the site. I would hate to cark it, and at my age it could happen any time, and everything tucked away in my computer be deleted and lost. There’s also a one hundred and twenty five thousand word unpublished novel about Birmingham just waiting for a perceptive publisher to take it off my hands, hopefully. It’s a love story called ‘The Irish Girl’ and a damn good read even if I say so myself. To those who read this, thanks for taking the time. DKW
My life feels very boring by comparison!
