I lived in Cloverdale Road, no78, up to 1960 when my mother Margaret Sales (Turner) died.
My brothers, Peter, Jonathon and Gordon (Tony) and I went to Joseph Williams school and as I recall, Jonny and I were always up to mischief. I have fond memories of the bread van, we’d be out walking and see the van stop and there’s nothing more gorgeous than the smell of newly baked bread. His doors would be wide open and that scrumptious fragrance would be coming out. The Bread-man would be walking down someone’s footpath and so, after a quick look round, we would grab a loaf, and hi ho silver we would be off with it.
Another time we crossed the ditch / brook and we had a little suitcase with us to the farmers field, and we filled it with peas. We took it home and my horrified mother told us to take them back where we got them from! Were we supposed to glue them back on the pea stalks?
We used the same suitcase and filled it full of crab apples and it took the pair of us to carry it home but we weren’t told to take them back, in fact I do recall there was a lot of pinky coloured jam shortly after.
The prefabs had big gardens as I remember and my mother always grew carnations down the side of the footpath and dahlias. I hated the dahlias because of earwigs and to this day I’m still no fan of creepy crawlies. My step father, John Turner, told me once to go under the prefab to pull the television aerial wire through a hole he’d drilled in the floor. I wouldn’t go because a spider had bit me not long before and I was terrified it might be still lurking underneath the prefab so my brother Tony ended up crawling under with the cable.
I remember my brother Tony was fascinated by the bathroom light socket, he pulled the cord, stuck his finger in and pulled the cord again and boy did he get a shock.
We’d play games, one of us would be in the back garden and one in the front garden and try and throw the ball over the prefab, I couldn’t quite get the hang if it so when it was my turn the ball would go through the kitchen window.
I remember between our house and Frances Phoenix, the neighbour at no 80, was a corrugated iron coal shelter, probably an ex bomb shelter? too dirty to play in, alas.
I remember greatcoats being put on the bed in winter as the prefab was so cold, I don’t know who slept in the sleeve but it wasn’t me! The winters were truly awful, we could write our names in the frost on the window glass from October onwards.
At a recent meeting of the prefab society someone remembered my mother used to call us all in for our meals with a little whistle, I imagine that came from her days in the ATS in the war.
There must have been an army cadets nearby as my fondest memory of Jonny is his coming home in uniform and singing me to sleep with ‘Around the world in eighty days’.
After my mother died we were all split up and put into ‘Cottage’ homes and I would never see him again. We tried for years to find each other, Jonny even had an appeal put on TV for his missing brothers but never quite caught each other up, he passed away in 2006. Tony and I are now in contact. We one day hope to find Peter ….
Kevin Alan Sales