Grandad bottled it on booze theft
Vickers tank being roadtested on Gloucester Street snow covered the rooftops.
From this, icicles up to a couple of feet long spiked down. I was aware of those big buggers staring down at me as I knocked on a friend’s door.
“Are yi comin’ oot ter play?” “Nah, me Mam says the snow’s too bad.” (Other parents seemed to show more concern for the effects of adverse weather conditions than mine. I was generally the last one playing out while others GRANDAD Rome was both a fireman and a boxer.
Although a tall strong bloke, he made a hasty retreat one evening on his return from the Donnie, a local pub.
He witnessed two men stealing spirits from a shop, one was passing the bottles to the other through a broken pane of glass. Grandad noticed
were long since by the fire.) Sometimes, the slam of the door was enough to send the whole lot thundering down.
But it wasn’t so bad then as I had a free ice lolly.
Back home, a bucket was kept next to the back door so that ash could be sprinkled to guide the way to the outside toilet – “the netty”. The seat would be covered in ice, so unless you wanted to slide about mid-pee, the surface needed to be scraped off.
In summer, the danger was sitting on a policeman on the corner so he approached him.
“Hey, there are two blokes stealing booze up there.”
“Get lost, mate, before I nick you for it!” he was told.
The policeman was their lookout and doubtless received a bottle or two for his trouble.
the woodworm holes: the preparation to kill them was smelly and would be transferred to the backs of your legs. If I banged on the seat, little worms would pop their heads out and I was waiting with a pin to try and stick one.
Many of the flats and houses in the West End had long since been deemed unfit for human habitation but landlords were still able to rent out to folks who couldn’t afford a better place.
A five-year-old lad called Larry had a younger brother of three, who was playing in the lane. The lad bumped into a backyard wall, the whole lot came tumbling down and killed him. When police arrived, they knocked down 15 walls in the lane using a wooden clothes prop. ■ Cobbled Streets & Penny Sweets by Yvonne Young is out now at £7.99 from John
Blake Publishing.