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These days a Sunday is almost like a week day. The shops open, the pubs open, people work and the streets buzz with life. But back in the 30s, it truly was a day of rest, different from any other. Housewives put their mops away, men put their feet up and children went to Sunday school. Harold Richardson, of Trowels Lane, Derby, recalls the simple Sundays of old.

How different Sundays used to be when most workplaces closed and working people saw it as a day of rest, a day when life slowed down

As I see it now, it was also a day of respect when we children of the 1920s and 1930s were continually reminded it was Sunday and told not to do this or that and street games were not even to be to be thought of.

Normally the day began with a longer stay in bed followed by a ritual Sunday breakfast of a whole fried egg on your plate, a helping of bacon bits and tinned tomatoes - a rare treat indeed, compared to the austere workaday breakfasts of porridge and bread and jam.

It was a day for wearing our best clothes and, transformed from grubby urchins into clean-faced children, we would be warned to be on our best behaviour on our way to see aunties and grandma for a weekly penny.

Harold Richardson in his schooldays

It was noticeable how differently the grown-ups behaved as well. There would be less shouting and rowing and they would watch their language more.

Men on street corners puffing out cigarette smoke while awaiting opening time of the pubs would mostly be wearing suits and ties on that day, and there was not a swear word to be heard. Meanwhile, other men pushing squeaky barrows towards the allotments would have left off their everyday overalls and swapped their flat caps for bowlers.

Even the scraggy mongrels roaming the streets and mangy cats sunning themselves on window sills appeared to enter into the spirit of Sundays by putting aside vendettas and, while still watchful of strangers, seemed less inclined to snappiness.

There were lots of things you couldn't do on Sundays. Housewives wouldn't dream of sweeping the fronts or cleaning doorsteps and windows - and to have washing hanging out was the mark of a slut.

Cinemas were not allowed to open, pubs were restricted in their opening hours, nor could their pianos be played.

From the BBC "appropriate" music only was broadcast so that wirelesses were not worth switching on, anyway, and the only hope of finding something cheerful was to search for Radio Luxembourg.

Although the recreation ground was open on Sundays, the swings would be chained so they could not be used. Football or any other sport was out and there would be a "keeper" on the rec in those days to make sure the law was obeyed.

Restrictions on what corner shops could sell on Sundays meant that only perishable goods such as food and greengroceries could pass over the counter, and perhaps tobacco and other items that I might now have forgotten.

Whatever, it would have seemed hardly worth their while opening at all had they abided by the letter of the law, which they never did.

It was the allotments doing most of the business on Sunday mornings, anyway, especially on the warmer days. We called these "the gardens" where you could get all you needed for Sunday dinners in the way of vegetables and, for a few pennies, a bunch of flowers to take up to the cemetery.

Sunday was the day that even the town centre itself slumbered with not a store or a shop open and only the sound of church bells to fill practically deserted streets. No fear of churches being made redundant back then.

In those times, churches involved themselves in the lives of their parishioners and, although I don't suppose many in our street would have been regular churchgoers, our church, St Anne's, seemed able to fill its pews every week.

And no saints' day was ever allowed to go by without the church putting on a street procession complete with swinging censors under gold-tasselled banners and accompanied by a band from the Salvation Army.

With all its restraints, we should have hated Sundays but we didn't, even though Sunday afternoons meant going to Sunday school. It was the Baptist Chapel in St Mary's Gate we went to, not that our parents were Baptists or even religious but for reasons undisclosed, they wanted us out of the house on Sunday afternoons.

Actually, we rather liked Sunday school; for one thing there was no danger of getting the cane there.

The women teachers spoke in what we thought were posh voices but they were young and they were pretty, they would smile and call us by our first names.

Sometimes they would pat our heads and say how clever we were to be able to read out aloud from the Bible.

The girls in the class would be wearing their best frocks and, likely for the first time, you'd notice how some of them could also look pretty.

And all those bigger lads you feared on Mondays at school looked almost meek in their short-trouser best suits and best behaviour.

They would join in the hymns with the rest of us and for one short afternoon, we would all of us give our hearts up to Jesus.

Such afternoons were always special, changing only as we grew older and girls became more interesting.

It was then that strolling through Darley Park took over and would become far more exciting and certainly more rewarding than Sunday school.

We all have our own experiences of Sundays to look back upon, although I'm not so sure what is distinctive about Sundays now or what sort of memories young people are laying down for their futures.

At the same time, I wouldn't say mine are completely filled with enchantment. The drabness belonging to those times could not be dispersed by hymns, however lustily we sang. And I now remember so little of the boredom that must surely have been part of it too.

Compared to today, there was a naivety about a lifestyle that gave children more time to enjoy childhood and to retain its innocence well into adolescence.

Nor is the irony lost on me that one of those spiritually-enhancing Sundays was chosen as the day on which to start the most devastating war in history.

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County:  Derbyshire