I was born in 1933 in the NW English town of Southport My earliest memories of home are of a small house in the suburb of Blowick, an area of low socio-economic standing. This was really only half a house, the back half, for which we paid 2/6d a week rent, the front was occupied by another family. The house, or at least our part of it, consisted of one bedroom, one living room, a scullery and an external washhouse. There was no electricity, lighting being one gas light in the living room. If I wanted a light in the bedroom then I used a candle. Cooking was done on one gas ring and the fire. There was no running water. All our water was obtained by means of a hand pump in the scullery or from a rain-water barrel just inside the back gate. The toilet was what was known as the "long-drop", everything that went down it seemed to disappear into the bowels of the earth. It was, of course, outside, down the back yard, so if you needed to go at night, a chamber pot under the bed was used and that had to be emptied every morning. There was no bathroom in the house. Baths were taken weekly in a small tin bath placed in the living room in front of the fire, the water being heated up in a galvanised bucket on the fire. One filling had to suffice for both my mother and I. As I got bigger, and in the summer, we would heat up the water in the copper on the wash-house and bathe there. It gave a little more privacy. I don't remember thinking that there was any thing strange about all this. It was just the way things were.

Southport was a great place to grow up. My mother had contacts with the fairground before the war and she used to take me with her when she went to work there. Pleasureland, as it was called, was situated right on the beach front and it was full of exciting things for a young boy. I remember, there was a photo studio opposite the stall on which mother used to work. When it was quiet the owner didn't mind if us kids played in there. It was full of papier-mache animals which people would sit on to have their photos taken. These animals became wild animals to be tamed, bucking broncos to be broken. Where ever our imagination took us, we were able to go in that studio. It was being imaginative that caused me to break my nose! Out at the back of the stalls was open ground where all sorts of things were stored. Among the assortment was an old handcart which the stall holders used to cart stuff around. I can’t remember the name of the boy I used to play with then, but one of our bright ideas was to jump onto the up-ended part of the cart to make it act like a see-saw. On one occasion when I was standing on the down end, my mate jumped on the up end with such a force that I was flung in the air and landed fair on my face, breaking my nose in the process. The year must have been 1939 because the doctors refused to do anything about it except stop the bleeding. I could not be allowed to take up a hospital bed, they might be needed for the soldiers. My nose was never set and has been a problem to me ever since.

There are so many memories about the town. The was the swimming pools at Southport that played a great part in my life. We had two, The Salt Water Pool, which was a huge outdoor pool complete with diving platforms at both ends, a water slide and a moored pontoon. There was seating accommodation for spectators, concrete and grassed areas for sun-bathing, a tuck shop and a restaurant. I remember one summer when we made friends with the man who ran the tuck shop. He used to tell us when he was going to shut the shop early, then after he had shut we would go around and collect all the empty soft drink bottles to take back to him and he would refund the deposit to us. Sometimes we could fill three or four crates with bottles that people had been forced to discard, and at twopence each and two dozen to a crate, it meant three of four shillings each which was three or four times our weekly pocket money at that time! There was also the indoor pool, open all the year round. This was a great complex that actually had three pools, slipper baths and Turkish baths. We were only interested in the three pools however. They had this strange system of operating. The three pools were different sizes, there was the Premium Plunge, The 1st Class Plunge, and what we called the Bird Bath. They would never be all open at once and not always for "mixed bathing". They still liked to keep the men and women, boys and girls apart in those days, or at least still give people the opportunity for single sex bathing. Of course we always timed our visits so that we were in the largest pool with the girls. I grew up in the water all year round, and as a result I have never had a fear of the water, been a competent swimmer and diver, and in one of my schools took out the champion swimmer trophy for the year I was there.

Lord Street was the hall mark of Southport. The town was famous all over the North of England for two things, the fact that the sea was so far away, and Lord Street. The street ran through Southport for about a mile, there were shops on one side only. On the other side were parks and gardens, civic buildings and cinemas. Both sides of the street were lined with trees and the council had fairy light in them which were always lit during the summer season. All the elegant shops were to be found on Lord Street, and every shop had an awning reaching out over the very wide paved pedestrian walk way. You could walk the whole length of Lord Street in the rain, and only get wet when you had to cross the road at the intersections. One of my favourite shops was one called Matti-Tissot's. I guess strictly speaking it wasn't a shop, it was coffee house. Just inside the door however they had a counter area where they displayed their home made cakes and chocolates. Somehow, even during the war, they still managed to keep up that display. I liked the place because they made a chocolate ball called a Lacarno Ball. It was hard chocolate on the outside, soft smooth chocolate on the inside and the whole thing was covered in chocolate bits. On very special occasions I would be treated to a Lacarno Ball, and that would make my day.

Rotten Row. This was a street fronting a park not far from the sea-front at the southern end of town. This became the focus of life in the late summer when the Southport Flower Show was held. It was not quite on a par with the Chelsea Flower Show, but it was, and I believe still is, well placed on the flower lovers calendar. For us children it was another magical place to roam around. Through the big tents full of exotic blooms, in and out of the tea tents, looking with wonder at all the exhibitions, making a nuisance of ourselves, but having a ball. We would make a point of always being there on the last day of the show. When the displays of flowers and fruit were being dismantled the stall holders would give the flowers and fruit to anybody who would take them rather than throw them away. We boys always went home with as many bedraggled flowers for Mum as we could carry, as well as bags full of fruit for instant eating or quick preserving.

I can remember the reopening of Pleasureland after the war. My friend Derek, and I were taken on as casual assistants in the refreshment room. This was a large shelter with tables and benches where people could sit down and eat their own sandwiches. Food was still rationed of course so there was no way they could buy meals out. Our job was selling soft drinks. These we made up in the big glass jars which before the war had contained fruit juices and which swirled about looking cool and inviting. Now they made good receptacles for mixing up our powdered soft drink. There were two flavours, orange and lemon. The orange wasn't too bad provided you used less water than recommended, the lemon was always rather sharp and really needed some sugar to make it palatable. Sugar however was rationed and there was no way we could get any, there was only a limited supply of the powder and so our instructions were to use more water to make it go round. As this was the reopening of Pleasureland and travel restrictions had been lifted (although petrol was still rationed, not that many people had cars in those days,) many more people turned out than was expected and it was also warm day. People swarmed into the refreshment room and the demand for cool drinks far outstripped the supply. Derek & I were rushed off our feet serving and making up new batches. We were yelled at because we were slow, because the drinks were weak and because the lemon drink was sour. There was nothing we could do about it, so we just soldiered on until we ran out of powder in the middle of the afternoon, then to everyone's disgust, we just shut up shop.

What did I learn from growing up? That you don’t need pots of money to live a full life, for there is a lot of enjoyment to be gained from the simple things and accepting the circumstances at the time.