In the outbuilding behind the Morris Dancers hotel, above the garage and coal house, was the pigeon loft, pigeons were never kept in it as I first thought. It was where the local pigeon racing club met on a Friday night, all the local “flyers” arrived with their birds and they were ringed with elastic rings and put into basket which were then loaded on a wagon. The wagons then took them off to a remote part of the country and let them go the next morning so that they could fly back home. All the men had a clock which was wound up and set at the same time by the committee so that there could be no cheating. Then at home the next day when the first birds came home the elastic ring would be put into the clock. On Sunday morning all the clocks would be brought to the loft and opened, the one with the earliest time on it was the winner. Dad let them use the loft because it meant they would come into the pub on a Friday night and a Sunday morning every week. They would also have the end of year prize giving in the function room and Mum provided the catering.
I did a lot of exploring around to see what I could find and there were lots of wooden boxes in the pigeon loft, they were not locked so one day when I was short of something to do I went and opened the boxes. They were full of books and magazines, some were quite old, there were scrap books full of brightly coloured cuttings, I have seen similar scrap books since in tv antique programmes and they look now as if they were quite valuable. As a young boy they were just old junk and of no use to me. In another box were papers and magazines with pictures and stories about the war and before, again no use to me. In another box were lots and lots of the magazines that I recognized, they were the ones that I was not allowed to touch in the book shop in Liverpool where I bought my Superman comics. I was very curious as to what I was not allowed to see and picked one up, as I leafed through the pages I was very surprised to see pictures of ladies with no clothes on. They seemed to be ordinary ladies doing normal things like playing tennis or sunbathing on holiday but there were no men on these holidays. I wondered why they were photographed with no clothes after all no one walked about like that. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I found what these magazine really were .
In the loft space above the pigeon room was another special place, this was where a pair of barn owls nested every year. I found this out at first with the owl pellets. These are the remains of the owls food that they regurgitate, I took some to school and Mr Weald took them apart to show everyone the skeletons inside . They came back every year while we were there and I saw many chicks raised until they flew off. We never saw many mice around the pub either.
Another visitor to the pub every year were the sand martins, they nested under the eaves of the pub and it was so exciting to see them repair the old mud nests or build new ones each year. We could see the chicks from the morning room windows poking their heads out while the parents hung onto the edge of the nest and gave them all the flies they caught. My Dad told us the parents caught all the insects on the wing and I thought that they must have sticky feathers to catch them, just like sticky fly paper that hung from the lights to catch flies in the house. The chicks would fly off and fly all the way to Africa following their parents who had left a couple of days before. They all came back every year in the spring, how they knew their way I never knew.
Our two dogs loved the space that was available to them at the pub and would roam around the bowling green and the paddock. Jaque the poodle was always in the lead with Nessa following close behind. They ran everywhere, never still except when they came back in for a meal or a nap. On day there was a screech of brakes on the road outside and they were both knocked down, Jaque had run out to another dog on the other side of the road and Nessa had followed. They both were hit by the same car one under each of the front wheels, Dad phoned the vet who came out straight away but they had both died by the time he arrived ten minutes later. They were buried in the paddock.
Dad went out and bought an german shepherd pup who we called “Brutus”. He arrived and we fell in love with him straight away. As he grew he came to rule the stair case from the pub to living quarters. He would sit on the landing half way up and would not let any customers past, If we had a party on upstairs Brutus would be put away in the morning room until everyone had arrived and was seated, he would then be let out, he would go into the fuction room, have sniff at all the people and he would let anyone that was up stairs past him down to the bar, if a stranger came to go up stairs he would stop them by growling and not let them past, all the party guests could pass him all night long and he never moved.
There was a break in at the post office one night and the post master phoned Dad to bring the dog over. Dad took Brutus over and he managed to corner one of the burglars, this man was taken over to the pub until the police arrived. He was laid face down on the floor with Brutus stood over him growling if he moved when the police arrived. One of the police men tried to go over and hand cuff the burglar but Brutus would not let him near until Dad told him it was alright and he moved off. He was so soft with all of us we could do anything with him and he would never even think of barking or growling. I remember once a customer put his arm around Mum at the bar and Brutus started growling. Brutus knew this man and the man said “it’s alright he won’t go for me” so he tried to put both arms round Mum. Brutus was up and started to come down the stairs growling before he could move away. Mum told Brutus to stop and he did, just as the man moved away from the stairs and from Mum. He never tried to touch her again after that.
We had lots and lots of wedding at the pub I really enjoyed watching all the people come and go up the stairs when there was a party. All the catering was done in the kitchen which was not that big. It was about fifteen feet long and eight feet wide with two ordinary cookers The big fridge we had got in Liverpool and two deep freezers were also there. The cupboards were fitted and went from above the freezers to the ceiling, they were filled with hundreds of plates and dishes of all shapes and sizes. I loved going into the kitchen and practising making all sorts of strange dishes for myself. I made things like picked cauliflower omelette or sausage rolls with bacon wrapped around the sausage before the pastry was put round. This led to Dad letting me help on a Saturday night. Mum would bake Cornish pasties and I would take them down to the pub to sell. I was dressed in a chef’s uniform with the tall hat and the check trousers, I would come down the stairs with a tray of the pasties wrapped in a paper napkin. They sold for 1/- each, that today is 5p. Many times I did not get any further than the bottom of the stairs before they had all gone. I would have 30 pasties at a time and it was about a tray every 30 minutes because that was all that could baked in the cookers. Up to 200 pasties would be sold every Saturday so I took about £10.00 each week, when Dad was earning about £12.00 a week.
Next door to the pub was a factory where sand from Southport beach was dried to be used in the building trade. It was never locked up and we as kids could play in the sand which was in a great big hopper at the top of a concrete ramp.
In the yard of the pub was a great big pile of coke which was used to power the boilers for the heating, it had to be barrowed across the yard and dropped down a hole in the floor to the cellar. Every Saturday one of my jobs was to do this with about a ton of coke I had to do this from about 12 years of age. Another job was to fill the shelves in the bars with bottles, I would make a list of what had been used and then truck all the crates into the pub and fill the shelves, all three bars had to be done before eleven o’clock when the doors were opened. It was a busy pub and many times the shelves had to be filled again during the afternoon closed time. Most of my early teenage years seem to spent working in the pub.
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