Christmas 1957 and Wash Days.

Soon after the twins were born Nana Cheetham became very ill and died from kidney failure. I don’t remember it but my Mum say’s I spent the day she died on her bed with her. The first time I remember not having her around is Christmas when Grand dad turned up without her. He gave me a present which I opened and was very disappointed to find a bar of chocolate inside the Christmas paper. I thought “is that all he got me?” until I tore the wrapper off to get to the tinfoil and found a brand new crisp one pound note. I thought I was so rich, as a point my Dad earned less than £5.00 a week then. Mum took it and said “I will put away safe for you.” When I came to want to spend it in the new year she said it had already gone on part of the new coat I was wearing.

One of my favourite Christmas presents was a Mamod Steam engine. Grand dad Hart, my dad’s dad, bought it for me and Dad made a clown on a unicycle for it. The engine boiled water to make a piston drive a wheel round. The wheel was used to drive the unicycle wheel and the clown looked like it was cycling. Dad was very good with his hand when he wanted to do something, he cut the shapes out of plywood with a fret saw and painted it with Humbrol model paints. He also did marketry with thin veneers of wood, they looked like pictures of country scenes. I wish we had kept them now but they got lost in all the moves we made with Dad changing his job. When the twins came along Dad made a trolley with seats at both ends and a tray in the middle so that both of them could be fed at the same time. 

 One of my favourite toys was a wooden steam engine that Dad made for me. It was so big I could sit in it and scoot it along with my feet, it was painted burgundy and black with gold edged panels. Emblazoned on the side were the numbers “SJH1953” my initials and the year I was born.  I imagined I was the driver of the train that took us to Ormskirk on a Saturday to see my grandma and granddad Hart. I think it got left in the loft when we moved away from Burscough.

The house on the corner of Furnival drive was decorated by Dad, the bathroom wallpaper is one that sticks in my mind it was tropical fish with a black background and weeds streaming up the lengths. I remember great big angel fish and brightly coloured little fish swimming back and forth. Downstairs on the walls were the marquetry pictures that Dad made and a photo of Nana Cheetham in a round brass frame with butterflies cut into the brass around the edge. I still have that frame and photo up on the wall in my house today. I seem to remember a pair of round brass plates with a stags head on each on the wall. Dad told me a hart was a stag that was over six years old and that is where the name came from. On the wall above the fireplace was a big mirror and this reflected the light from the front window opposite and made the room very bright. This room faced south and got very warm in the summer especially when the fire had to be kept lit to warm the water in the back boiler. The council came round one day and fitted an electric immersion heater in the hot water tank to heat the water. This meant we did not have to have the fire on in the summer and could save the coal until the winter. I loved the open hearth, I would sit and toast bread or crumpets on the fire in the winter evenings. It was also useful to burn rubbish and waste from the kitchen. During the winter the ash was used to grit the paths around the house. There was never any need to salt them and everyone did their own fronts also. 

With only the fire to heat the whole house it had to be lit as early as possible and kept in as long as possible. Mum would pack the fire up with slack or damp coal dust before she went to bed so that the fire would burn slower and last through the night. When  we came down in the morning it just needed raking through and some fresh coal putting on to bring it back to life. The shovel and poker would be leant over the front of the fire and a piece of newspaper covered the lot. This seemed to make the draught come through the fire much stronger and it would soon burn up. Sometimes the paper would catch and there would be such a panic in case it dropped out on to the carpet. The rug in front of the fire always had some singe marks where hot coals had jumped out of the fire. The rug was a rag rug that had been hand made for us by Grandma Hart. I  would sit and watch her cutting up strips of cloth from old worn out clothes and sewing them into a canvas back with a hook. It took hours and hours to do but they were colourful and warm under foot when you could not afford carpets.

When it came to washing Mum rented a washing machine by the day, it was delivered in the morning and was collected in the evening. It was a single tub with an agitator wheel on the side of the tub and a roller wringer was on the top. Mum would spend all day doing the weeks wash and hanging it out on the line which ran from the back door down to the bottom of the garden. On a  wet wash day the washing was put on wooden maidens and dried in front of the fire. It was all ironed on the ironing board and put away in the airing cupboard where the hot water tank was. This was right at the top of the stairs. Dads shirts had to be starched and ironed so that they were really smart for work. I still see the packs of dolly blue and the ACDO that Mum had specially for doing the white shirts. They would be put on wire coat hangers and hung in his wardrobe to keep them neat and clean. Later on Mum was bough a twin tub with a spin dryer on the side. It had a big agitator in the middle of the tub which went back and forth And the water was pumped up over a circular tray over the agitator where the washing powder was put. This acted as filter and collected all the fluff from the washing too, it also meant mum could do the washing whenever she wanted. That was a bonus with three small children to look after and all the terry nappies to wash.