On the weekend of my eleventh birthday, this was September 1964, mum and dad said I could have a party, my first ever party and I was to invite any school friends I wanted. I had no trouble inviting my whole class. They asked friends from the pub to bring their children as well, it ended up with about fifty children on the list incuding my cousins from Ormskirk, Maureen and Michael. They were the children of my auntie Mavis she was divorced and lived in a council house down the road from grand dad and grandma Hart. Maureen was a year younger than me and Michael was the same age as the twins. We all got on as if we were brothers and sister.
The party was to be in the function room of the Morris Dancers and it was to be special with food and pop all day long in a buffet. Mum did sandwiches, sausage rolls and mini pork pies. I asked for cheese and pickle on stick like a hedge hog that she did for the grown up buffets too. This meant covering a cabbage in tin foil and then sticking all the wooden cocktail sticks into the cabbage. She did two of these, one with cheese and pickled onions, the little silver skin onions and one with ham and pineapple cubes. I thought it was very sophisticated. There were individual jellies for everyone and the secret was it had fruit cocktail in the fruit jelly. Mum made red , yellow and green jelly like this with whipped cream piped over the top. Then sprinkles of hundreds and thousands were scattered on the cream with a big marachino cherry in the middle of the cream. These were the cherries that were put in the ladies drinks in the pub and they had a lovely almond flavour. The pop was either bottles of lemonade, orangeade or yor cola with straws in the bottles. Yor cola was the brand of cola from Moorhouses in Southport.
All my friends had been told to arrive at half past three after the pub had shut. As they arrived I was given loads and loads of presents and I said thank you to them all as I had been told to by my mum. The presents were all put away for later. Dad said we could all play outside on the grass by the bowling green before we went into the function room. He gave all the parents a drink in the pub while we played out on the lawns. After four o’clock we were all called into the pub and led up stairs where a surprise was waiting for me, my parents had booked a clown and a puppet show for me. The clown looked familiar but I did not let on. It was a friend that ran the dolls hospital in Southport. He was great and kept us all amused with games and balloons. He played games like pass the parcel, blindman’s buff and musical chairs. One of the girls got very upset when she did not win a prize in the pass the parcel but her sister did.
The puppet show was very special, it was done by a man called Roger Stevenson, He went on to star on television and even did the royal variety show in 1978. I seem to have a memory of lots of string puppets dancing to the latest pop tunes. One was a great big bird with lots of bright yellow feathers flowing out everywhere. He even had puppet band just like the Beatles , how he managed to control all four puppets at once was amazing. Mum let us carry on into the evening with all the kids running riot around the clown, he really was sweating and his makeup stated to run onto the collar of his suit. I was told to sit down after a while and all the guests had to as well. Dad switched off the lights and the door was opened to reveal mum with a great big cake with eleven big candle in it she carried and placed it on the centre of the buffet table as everyone sang happy birthday to Stephen for me. I had to blow out the candles in one puff or my special birthday wish would not come true. I blew as hard as I could and got all the candles out before I was out of breath, everyone cheered and I had the biggest grin ever on my face. It was magical.
After every one had gone home I was allowed to open my cards and presents there were lots of different things, some had put gift tokens in the cards, others had put money but I think my favourite present came from my cousins. It was a pair of revolver cap guns and holsters. I played with them for weeks and every week I had to go across to the post office and buy two rolls of caps for my guns. They were tuppence (2d) a roll and came in little cardboard boxes about the size of a two pence piece. I really did annoy every one with those two guns practising being the fastest draw. All the cards were put up on the side board and stayed up until it was the twins birthday five days later.
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