I grew up in an industrial town in the West Riding of Yorkshire, a dirty sooty valley with the smoke from 28 woollen mills covering the valley allthe year round except for the one week when all the mills shut down for the annual holiday. I started school at the age of three, and until we were five years old we had to have a nap after midday each day, camp beds were opened out in the hall for us to rest on, but if the westher was hot enough the beds were set out in the playground. It was a very poor area and many of the children who came to school did not have proper shoes to wear, so the Headmaster kept a big wicker basket full of shoes in the main corridor. He also provided a huge vat of Horlicks each morning and all the children were given a mug of this at break. Many children had rickets and used to go to the local hospital for sun treatment. This was in the 1920s when unemployment was rife, the only employment was in the mills or down the mines.

On Bonfire night a big fire was lit in the middle of the street and everyone joined in. We children collected baskets and bobbins from the mills which were soaked in lanolin from the wool and so gave a good flame. We also collected sawdust from the saw mills to stuff the guy. We would put potatoes in the fire and eat them piping hot from the fire. If we were lucky someone would buy packets of sparklers and hand them round to us.

At Christmas the choir from the local church set off at midnight and sang carols at houses in the areas, lying in bed we could hear them in the distance and it seemed like a magic time. Christmas morning we went to church and then to my grandparent's house, where we had to sing 2 verses of 'Christians Awake' before my grandfather would let us in.

Looking back brings backmemories of many happy times in spite of the poverty, we made our own fun.