1930s: When we patched up our bikes

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Stan Tacey’s piece on Twenty Questions for Derby senior citizens (March 20) came as a great reminder of times past and those of the generation to which I belong would have had little difficulty in recalling most of the items listed.

With the construction of the ring road in the early 30s, the stretch, later to be called Queensway, crossed Markeaton brook and a wooded area of the Mundy estate.

This meant the felling of many trees and, as I remember it, for some time after the preliminary work had begun there was firewood in abundance for West Enders, who carted it away by the barrowload.

Ice-cream men with their handcarts would have been plentiful in those times. Then, sometime at the beginning of the 30s, there first appeared those blue-painted tricycles carrying the invitation to “Stop Me and Buy One”. These I associate with Walls Ice Cream more so than with Elderado.

With varying degrees of talent and with caps hopefully held out as they trod the middle of the road through the streets of my childhood, singers, as recalled by Mr Tacey, were another common sight. Many on crutches were disabled ex-servicemen from the First World War.

Then there were the knife-sharpeners; rag-and-bone men; street traders of every description – fruiterers, salt-sellers and grocery men, bakers, fishmongers, milkmen, coalmen and firewood sellers, each with their individual calls and all contributing to the life of streets that were seldom quiet.

Every corner seemed to have its shop and, competition being what it was, a system of “strapping” (tab) until Friday night was a way of life. There were shops that would sell you a gramophone or a record; at others, you could get a secondhand suit or take your best one in to pawn. You could get a patched-up bike or have your old one mended.

You could get your boots mended, buy batteries for your bike lamp or get your wireless accumulator recharged. And for those in the know, there were places where you could leave your 3d each-way bet on the afternoon racing.

For we urchins (excluded from the strapping system), the attraction was the shop windows with their amazing displays of good things such as rows of jars filled with caramels, aniseed balls, dolly mixtures and gob-stoppers that changed colour as you sucked.

There would be tempting displays of lucky bags, sherbet dips, liquorice pipes, toffee cigarettes, tiger nuts, locust beans, bubble gum and sticky apples – all to be carefully considered before parting with hard-to-come-by ha’pennies.

Decisions also had to be made between the Saturday tu’penny rush at the pictures or the momentary delights of a succulent Nelson cake.

Those were the times when you could get Woodbine cigarettes at 10 for 4d (about 2p) and Red Robes or Blue Johns at 4 for 1d. People who couldn’t even afford that could be seen, after a spell of dry weather, scouring the gutters, taking their pick from an abundant supply of cigarette ends, which would then stripped and re-rolled with the aid of a penny packet of cigarette papers.

Cigarette cards were highly valued even then and collecting a full set of whatever series was not only an achievement but meant you could do a swap for highly-prized comic annuals.

I well remember the night-watchman and his glowing brazier and how we would share its warmth and his company on a winter’s night. In those more respectful and authoritarian days, there were park caretakers; and, on our rec, a “keeper” who kept firm control and who would have us scatter at the mere raising of his stick.

The open-air swimming bath off Mackworth Road, as recalled by Mr Tacey, was part of a gift to the town from Mrs Mundy of Markeaton Hall and, as I later discovered, was created in 1903 where the brook emerged from under the road bridge.

Cast iron cubicles were put up – one side for men, the other, without doors, for boys. Females never entered the scheme of things. Everything was washed away in the floods of 1932 and never restored.

It makes me wonder if summers were really hotter then, or could it be we were of a hardier race? Like many youngsters of the West End, I learned the rudiments of swimming strokes in that flowing and frigid water.

Among other memories from around that time, is the anticipation of the arrival of “Tiddlecock Fair” at Little Eaton on Good Friday and, on those fairly traffic-free roads, the girls skipping all the way to the fair.

The street games and all the seasonal fads of whips and tops, snobs, marbles, street football and cricket, conkers, yo-yos and hopscotch chalked on pavements.

Finally, I do remember seeing from the window of a passing train the advertisements for Hall's Distemper standing in fields of browsing cows. The two men were carrying a plank between them. I suppose these unique figures disappeared sometime during the last war. The strange thing is, I can't recall ever having come across a tin of Hall's Distemper.

Anyhow, my thanks to Mr Tacey for this little trip down memory lane.

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