One of the thing that all the lads did was to collect conkers in the autumn. There were loads of good conker trees (horse chestnut) in Lathom and we would get on our bike and go out with satchels to collect the crop of conkers. Plenty would be blown down to the ground for us little kids to pick up but the big lads would either climb the trees and shake the branches to make them drop or throw sticks up and knock them down. Everyone had a nail to make holes in them or a bradawl borrowed from their dads tools they would then be threaded on to a boot lace. The school playground would be covered in broken conkers for the next couple of weeks, the janitor hated the conker season, it meant he had to sweep the yard more often. We would have tournaments to see who had the best conker.
Some of the lads would try and cheat by soaking the conker in vinegar or baking them to make them harder. This never seemed to work for me, the best I ever got was a sixer before it smashed. You could make your higher by smashing the other high score conkers so if your sixer beat a tenner it became a seventeener. One lad said he had a thirty fiver like this but no one believed him. Other lads would sell conkers to the kids who were not allowed to go out and collect them so that they could join in but you never sold your best ones.
Girls were not allowed to play conkers they couldn’t swing them right and would hit your knuckles if you let them play. They did tossies. They would tuck their skirts in their knicker legs and do hand stands against the wall. They would also do skipping with a long rope, boys didn’t join in, that was too sissy. We had friends who were girls but you didn’t play with girls that was not done. You didn’t play with the girls toys either no dolls or prams, you had guns or bows and arrows.
One game we played regularly was hide and seek, girls were allowed to play that with us boys. There were lots of good hiding places on the back field behind our house. You could hide in the disused emergency water tank or behind the sheds or under the old pram that someone had thrown out. Some of the others cheated by counting in tens so that you had less time to hide. You had to get back to the barley post and touch it with out being ticked (touched) to win. If you got ticked it was your turn to count while the others hid from you.
One Sunday morning when the twins were about four, we were playing hide and seek in the bedroom at the back of the house and it was my turn to hide my eyes while Colin and David hid. I found Colin quite quickly as he had got under the bed clothes and I saw the lump he made. David had got on to the window ledge behind the curtains, I grabbed at him through the curtains and shouted “ Got You” next thing is he went through the open window and out in to the yard falling about 10 feet on to the flag stones.
I screamed to Mum and Dad that "David has fallen out of the window" and they had a panic and ran down to open the back door where he was stood in his pyjamas crying “ can I come in?”. He looked like nothing had happened to him except he was a bit upset.
Later that night it was noticed that when he was lying on the floor one legs was longer than the other. It was decided that he should go to hospital in the morning to check that nothing was too wrong. He walked with us all to the bus stop and stood waiting for the bus when it arrived we all got on and as David stepped up he let out a scream and started crying. When we got to the hospital the Doctor said he could not find anything wrong and probably what had happened was that the legs was partially dislocated and when he stepped up on the bus it had popped back in. We did not play hide and seek in the bedroom again after that.
I discovered pop music from a little transistor radio someone bought, it had brown leather case with holes punched in the front over the little speaker. There were two little wheels on the side , one to switch it on and make it louder, the other to tune it in. I would get under the covers at night and listen to Radio Luxembourg which was the only station that played music in the evening.
One evening I was being looked after by a baby sitter, it was one of the Draper’s daughters while Mum and Dad were working in the Royal Hotel. When they came home, Dad walked the young lady home down the road and Mum came up to see if the twins and I were all right. She came into the room and found spots of blood all over the pillow case and sheet on my bed. I was woken up and dragged out of bed , She striped off my pyjamas and sleep suit to look to see where I was bleeding from. There was no signs of a wound anywhere on me, so she striped the bed. First the eider down was thrown on the floor quickly followed by the pillow and the blankets. They were heavy green ex army blankets, when she got to the sheets there was spots of blood everywhere, she peeled back the top sheet and underneath it at the bottom of the bed she found the cause. I had jumped in to bed and must have landed on a field mouse and it had been crawling all over the bed bleeding from the ears until it died. I was put in the bath and given a proper scrubbing and the bed was made with fresh sheets before I was put back to sleep. Living in the country in winter you could not stop mice coming in for the warmth.
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