toddling into the schoolyard. And I'd toddled up and gone to Parliament Street and of course the headmistress kept me in. Mother came in and I was sitting on the floor with my head down. I wouldn't look up because I didn't want to go.
Mr Patten
We always set off in a gang. Farms in those days had more people and so more children on them, and there were no school buses, children walked. You were either in a happy gang or you were in a fighting gang – you know what children are, one day so-and-so was pals with them, the next day, not. It was a common sight in the nineteen hundreds to see the schoolchildren coming to school in gangs, some from Kimmerston, some from Hay Farm. And there would always be the odd one or two who didn't gang up.
You carried your bait – your bait was bread and dripping, bread and butter and a tin bottle full of tea. You gathered in the playground and had great fun until nine o'clock, when the schoolmaster blew a whistle and you ran into your classes. You cheated when it came to some öf the difficult sums, if you could. You peered over the shoulders of the ones in front of you or something like that. You knew the good scholars and tried to get the answers from them. If it was a wet day, you went to school and you sat there damp the whole day. At noon, you broke up for dinner and you took your tin bottle. There were always stoves at the school and you popped your tin bottle on top of the stove to warm the tea up again. If you didn't slacken the cork, when it reached a certain temperature it blew the cork up into the air, which the teachers didn't like very much because tea was splashed over the stove and created fumes.
Mrs Wain
My maternal grandmother, Georgina Roberta Murray, born in 1850, was the thirteenth child, and was named after two older sons who had died in childhood. She often visited my parents, and urged us children to get up in the morning with ‘Rise Cornelius, and put on thy pompeycrackers, and go and see a rye cockalorum go along the road with a high cockalorum on his tail’. We never knew what she was talking about, but any child would get up to dress in ‘pompeycrackers’.
Albert Rowells
You had to go – if you had a brother in the school he had to come and make you go. If you didn't you'd be put in the Mickey book. You couldn't get off – old Corker was a stickler for discipline and attendance was his specialty. He held the best record in County Durham for attendance – if you were sick he would send for you to come and sit in front of the fire to keep you warm.
Tom Kirk
On my first birthday, I was presented by my uncles with a real steam engine of German make, with lots of lines. My earliest memory is of crawling after the engine, which was emitting a delicious smell of methylated spirit oil and steam. On succeeding birthdays Uncles Tom, Peter and Harold always presented me with additional lines, signals and points.
Henry Allingham
I lived with my grandparents until I was seven, and they rather spoiled me. My father's father was a jewel-case maker. He was merry fellow – he always wore a red Turkish fez with a black tassel. He used to tease me and play games. He'd pretend to pull my nose off and say, ‘Eh, look, you've got your nose in my cup.’
Tom Kirk
When we were children, the Pierrots were terribly important to us. They used to come every year and put up a small stage with a piano amongst the sand dunes at Seaton Carew where we lived. At the end of each performance they would collect a few coppers from the children, in a bucket. They all called themselves ‘uncle’ and I remember their songs:
If I were Uncle Percy,
I would, I would, I would appear
On the end of the pier.
We all went to the shop to shelter from the rain,
We all had a lick of the raspberry stick, And we all came out again.
Ethel Barlow
Every Easter there was a lovely big procession in the East End. I think they were collecting for the hospital. It was a mile and a half long. There was a cart with a barrel organ, and a cart with a big dancing bear, but the winner was always a yellow cart with yellow flowers from Colman's Mustard.
Sonia Keppel
Sometimes, King Edward, who I called Kingy, came to tea with Mamma, and was there when I appeared at six o'clock. On such occasions he and I devised a fascinating game. With a fine disregard for the good condition of his trouser, he would lend me his leg, on which I used to start two bits of bread and butter, butter-side down, side by side. Then, bets of a penny each were made, my bet provided by Mamma, and the winning piece of bread and butter depended, of course, on which was the more buttery. The excitement was intense while the contest was on. Sometimes he won, sometimes I did. Although the owner of a Derby winner, Kingy's enthusiasm seemed delightfully unaffected by the quality of his bets.
Edith Turner
As a child I used to play with my sister. We didn't have anything to play with so our enjoyment was plaiting our hair, rubbing our noses together, sitting on the table and trying to plait our fingers together. That kind of thing.
Thomas Henry Edmed
I used to collect nuts on the way to school in a park then throw these nuts to the children in the playground. I've been known as ‘Nutty’ ever since.
Bob Rogers
We did a lot of scrumping in those days. In Dalston there were a lot of fruit trees. There were orchards all round there.
Charles Watson
There were rows of small houses and we used to get a piece of string and tie it round two front-door handles next to each other. Then we'd knock on both doors and run across the road. One person would come out and pull the door, then the other person next door would pull their door. We were on the other side of the road laughing at them. They'd shout ‘We'll get you!’ But they never did.
Mary Keen
We used to make up our own games. The boys had iron hoops and the girls had wooden hoops. We had skipping ropes and we used to have games where we'd form a great big ring with one of us in the middle and we'd sing ‘Poor Julia's a-weeping on a bright summer's day’. About five o'clock on a Friday afternoon, a piano organ grinder used to come round, but mostly we made our own amusements.
Reece Elliott
We would make dolls from an ordinary clothes peg. When it came to the split in the clothes peg, that was the arms. For the feet it was all wires. There were two parts to the feet and a little bit and the clog, and you had a bit of string on the head. You sat on the edge of the cracket, and you hung the doll over a board and somebody would whistle a tune. It would be ‘Oh Sally does tha like pease pudding?’ and so on. That's what used to go on. Uncle Lance was the best of the lot, he could do owt with it. Get the feet go clack to the tune.
Albert ‘Smiler’ Marshall
Both girls and boys played marbles. There were large glossy ones called ‘alleys’, while the girls played with smaller ones known as ‘pimsells’. The girls enjoyed hopscotch, while the boys preferred ‘fox and hounds’. We'd choose three or four to be foxes and they would run off with a four-minute head start and hide or keep moving around in a wood or field with long grass. The foxes had a piece of wool round their arm. After the foxes had gone the hounds had to find them and rip the wool off. This was supposed to be the end of their life. The foxes could blow the whistle or howl to give the hounds a hint. Then when all