It’s not their fault they were born too late

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MY 12-year-old great-granddaughter recently demonstrated how her telephone, about the size of a matchbox, could also take colour photographs. When I told her we could never have dreamt of such things, she looked at me kindly.

“Oh, grandad,” she said, “how awful it must have been for you in the old days. You never did have much did you?”

And as much as I wanted to explain, I could find no way of telling her of the joys of Tittlecock Fair on Good Fridays or what a day out in the countryside with Pearson’s Fresh Air Fund had meant to me and my generation.

I was saddened to realise that she and her generation would never go to the schools’ camp at Abergele, the TocH at Eggington or Sykes’s Home at Skegness; never have the chance to read The Wizard, The Hotspur, Adventure, The Rover, Magnet and Gem; never learn to swim in the open-air baths on Mackworth Road or Bass’s rec, or go skating at Ashbourne Road rink.

They will never learn the skill in a game of snobs, cigarette cards or marbles, how to whip a top and have no idea what a window-breaker looked like. They will never have played a game of Ludo or Snakes and Ladders or a tune on a comb-buzzer; never have swung from a rope around a lamp post, and will go through life without ever knowing what “ t’penny rush” was.

Quite impossible for them now to keep an eye on the coalman’s horse, to follow it on its rounds, willing it to leave behind a steaming reward to be scooped into a homemade barrow and sold on the allotments at 3d a load.

They will never skip all the way to Little Eaton or chant to a street game; will never come across a hop-scotch chalked on the pavement or a message of love on a brick wall.

They will never know the excitement of getting home with a 6d gramophone record from Woolworth’s; never join in the delights of dancing to the barrel organ man, learning to play a mouth organ or spending a night in a homemade tent.

They won’t have heard of Tizer; wouldn’t recognise a spotted dick or a sherbet dip; will never tackle a sticky apple, buy 10 aniseed balls or a bag of Dolly Mixtures for a penny nor experience the thrill of trembling fingers opening a lucky bag.

They will never be in danger of breaking a tooth on tiger nuts, feeling sick after too many locust beans, and will certainly never pop out a gob-stopper to see what colour it has changed to.

They will never hear a street singer or the Salvation Army band outside pubs or the tuneful whistling of a butcher’s boy. And will never be able to buy a penny tin whistle, a bubble pipe, or go fishing with a penny net for sticklebacks on the rec, taking their first drag from a Woodbine in the shelter there.

The daredevil adventures of scrumping; games of rosy apple and street warfare will remain unknown to them.

They will never wave a Union Jack on Empire Day, be part of the parading and singing around the streets on voting days, or run home from school at dinner time with watering mouths on pancake day.

They will never have sipped hot cabbage water, had a bottle of school milk, or queued for free soup at the Church Army on the corner of Agard Street. They’ll never savour a hap’orth of scratchings from the fish and chip shop, the crust from a newly-baked loaf layered with dripping, or remember the first fruity bite into a Nelson cake.

They won’t ever take a basin to the corner shop for three penn’orth of treacle, frequent Webb’s tripe shop or go to the Market Place at 10pm on a Saturday night when they were practically giving the stuff away.

For the life of them, they would never be able to place Nausea Bagwash, Flotsam and Jetsam, Gert and Daisy, the Ovaltineys, Salty Sam, Mr Grouser, Larry the Lamb and Uncle Mac. It’s most unlikely that they will have heard of the Grove family, Bill and Ben, Pip, Squeak and Wilfred, Tom Mix or Pearl White.

There it is and so much more, but then, it’s not their fault they were born too late. And even more’s the pity, too late to have cuddled on the double seats of the back row of the dear old Popular cinema that once stood in Mill Street.

But never mind, as the years pass they will, of course, start looking back and even imagine their memories are as interesting as ours – and good enough to bore the young people around them.

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