I well remember Scribers Lane ford, as I often went there with my two elder brothers (now both long deceased) when I was about six years old.
It was on the route to the "ackerdocks" as everone called it - a favourite place to go during the six weeks summer holidays which seemed to last forever in those days. Our dad was overseas fighting a painter and decorator who had aspirations to take over Europe, and our mom was just about coping to bring us three up on 42 bob (£2.10p) a week RAF pay, so we had little money to spare. I also well remember a bakers at the top of Scribers Lane where it joined Priory road, and we once bought a loaf there for tuppence happenny, and we took it in turns to have a bite each as we walked along toward the "ackerdocks" (the aqueduct which carried the canal over the River Cole where there was yet another ford).
Later when I was about fifteen I used to frequent Scribers Lane ford which would be the early 1950's, where we would all congregate in the evenings. I remember Joe Reynolds, Johnny Lowe, Johnny Eacock, Frances Treeby, Marina Griffiths and Barbara and Dorothy Bates and many others.
It was (and still is) next to Tritiford Mill Park, which was originally a mill pool in the eighteenth century. My dad often went fishing there on a summer's evening after retiring from a lifetime of working at Lucas's. There was also a tennis court or you could hire a rowing boat for sixpence (2.5p), and they had a big wooden refreshment hut. I did go back just a few years ago, but the place was all overgrown and neglected.
Back to 1953 however, and I once I met a girl there named Joan who said she had come from Oddingley near Droitwich to stay with her cousin for a weeek in Yardley Wood, and to go and see her if I wished. She was 14 and I was 16. A little later I had my first motorbike - a 1936 Velocette GTP - and one Sunday afternoon on a sudden whim I set off. When I got there she was playing with other girls in the lane, and we walked down to the canal bridge and chatted. It was all so innocent in those days!
I went to see her again and even wrote to her, but nothing came of our early friendship. I did go back some years later for old times sake, but apparently she had married young and moved away. I still have her photograph, and often wonder when I look at it now how our lives may have taken a different path together if things had blossomed all those years ago, or even if she is still alive, and I'm 88 now.
How stange it is that the thing we inwardly treasure most in old age are the memories? What now would I give to have just one more ride on a tram up to the Lickeys or have three pennyworth of hot spuds from an old fashioned bake potato cart when the Bull Ring was alive with characters and to hear the plaintiff cry of "'Andy Carrier" once more, or walk down the lane again with by brothers taking turns to eating that loaf - oblivious to the ineviablity of how such simple times were to change forever, and for which the trappings of our present society have done nothing to replace.
As my elder brother said shortly before he passed away "We've seen the best times".
Never have I heard such truer words. ..........................................
