1965 was a pretty good year! well my mum and dad thought so,
as it was the year I was born.
My mum called Sue worked for Josephs of Stratford, spraying statues with gold lacquer (which is a smell that reminds me of my childhood) and my dad was a mechanic at the local Renault garage. We lived with my Grandpy in a lovely semi in a little town called Shottery.
The first memories i have are of my grampy playing bingo with me (he was the local town hall caller) and finding a puppy in the dog bed under the stairs with our beautiful "sheba" (long haired collie). Being only a small tot i did not know how it happened but there was "Duke" a little version of his mum. Also my Dad's favourite passtime.... Sunday bath and hairwash... I had very long alburn hair and we used to BEG mum to wash our hair on a sunday night before we had sardines or pilchards on toast and watched "doctor on the go" on the tv. But no, dad did it quite often, while mum would let us use a flannel to put on our face and put our heads back, dad just used to tip the jug of water straight on us... god i hated it..... Dad also taught me to tell the time whilst he had his baths, i would sit on the side of the bath and we would tell lots of times on a toy clock, i could read a watch at the age of 6.... by the way my mum cut my hair into a page boy so i would not scream at every hair wash and brush time... If only i knew then.....
We lived a stoned throw (literally) away from our primary school for which Mrs Fortesque was the headmistress, she had taught my dad as a child at the same school so i managed to get to school about a term before i should have... I remember there was a huge dolls house which i played with for hours, we used to have green custard and the cheese flan was to die for (bet you remember too). The pic is of the school now but i can tell you it has not changed at all...
We lived in Hathaway Lane and as you can probably guess that too was a stones throw from the world famous "Anne Hathaway Cottage", pictured
opposite. Many a summer was spent
opposite. Many a summer was spentthere showing tourists around and helping the attendant pick up litter, we used to get in for free too!!
We is referring to my brother "Roy"who was born a year later than me and in those early years we were the best of friends.
I remember our "Uncle Mick" who spoilt us rotten buying myself a whole "sindy" house, all the bedroom and sitting room and everything it was great and Roy got a whole load of "Action men" in his tent and combat stuff. I think the two dolls used to sit on top of each other quite a bit !!!!! good job we were only kids eh!
I had a friend "Nina" and she lived down at the "Avery" and she had a huge trampoline and her parents owned greenhouses full of tomatoes for sale, needless to say i love eating fresh tomatoes like sweets to this day..
Our days in the holidays were spent "up the butts" lots of woods, leading to an old firing range ,where we dug for old shell cases etc, i can recall woods full of violets which we would pick (it was allowed then) and take then to mum. There was a brook in which we caught "sticklebacks" and "Minnow" put them in jam jars and try to keep them as pets..
Bonfire night with the Story's was a brilliant event, we used to burn tyres (also allowed) down the Fields and put jacket potatoes into the fire and see who could fish them out first... Eric , Jackie, Uncle Roy, (my godfather) Judy, Peter, Jean and Chris were all there sadly Peter is no longer with us but they were good nights..
Christmas was also a brilliant time too with parties and fancy dress, mum and dad sure did host a good party.. Roy and me would stay downstairs till mum got fed up of us and put us to bed.... we did not go to bed of course and by the time midnight came round we had persuaded about 6 or 7 of mums friends to read us a story...... and have a few sips of the drinks they had too...
