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I lived in Balfour Street, Balsall Heath, Birmingham for the first 16 years of my life with my mum, dad and younger sister, and loved living there, writes Patricia Evans (nee Whitehouse), who was born in 1948.
We lived in a three-storey back-to-back, (the type so often called 'slums' now, that we thought of as, and maintained like, 'little palaces') with a cellar, the tiniest of back gardens and a yard and toilets that we shared with three other houses.
Life was so very different then: we didn't have very much but I never felt that I missed out on anything, a loving family and good friends were the centre of my world.
I said I never felt that I missed out on anything, but I often wonder how we all really managed then and would I really want to live like that again?
..... with gas lights (indoors and out,) the shared outside toilets with neatly cut up newspaper instead of plush, soft toilet tissue, the terrible choking smogs that we must have contributed to with our raging coal fire, because my mum always made sure that we got up in the morning to a lovely warm room, a hot drink and breakfast -- and no bathroom....
I remember bath times had to be 'arranged' so that dad would go out for a couple of hours so that we three ladies could enjoy, in turn, our quick soak in a long tin bath -- a truly luxurious event when compared with our normal daily ablutions of a head to toe wash at the kitchen sink.
Did I say kitchen? Perhaps I meant 'Added on after-thought extension' for even when I was small I could stand near the centre of the kitchen and touch all four sides, yet the banquets that came from that kitchen could have come from a five star hotel.
How my mum did it I'll never know, there was only room in it for one person, a gas cooker and a Belfast-type sink and cold water tap with a wooden drainer, and if you were lucky a clothes boiler fitted under the drainer which was a boon if you needed to do some washing before it was your turn to use the brewhouse.
I was of course too young to know what hard work in the brewhouse was!
I only have happy memories of it. It was sacred ground most of the year, not a place we were supposed to play in, but we did when we thought we could get away with it.
It was the perfect 'Wendy House' as they were called then, always kept as clean and neat as our houses, it even had posh sparkling white net curtains.
It came into it's own on Bonfire Nights when cocoa was brewed in the copper. (I don't remember it ever doing us any harm after all that soap!) And potatoes were cooked in the copper burner.
Bonfire Nights then were pretty 'tame' compared with now but it was quite a social event with lots of households sharing their fireworks and food. Talking of food, I once provided the family with two cockerels, or rather the rag and bone man did.
I remember asking if I could give him some old clothes, and in return he used to give you a balloon or similar treat by way of thanks. Imagine my parents' horror when they found out I'd returned with two adorable day-old chicks!
We kept, loved and looked after 'Bill and Ben' for quite some time ... then, one day, they flew home -- to visit their mum and dad. It was years before I found out why I was the only one tucking into my dinner that day, or why, after the chicks, I was always chaperoned on my trips to see the rag and bone man!
Yes, so many fond memories that often make me feel that I'd like to turn the clock back -- but only for a moment! I really don't want to live in the past, being younger then, life was so sweet and uncomplicated, slow even, with nothing more to worry about than the gas going out, for the want of a penny in the meter, in the middle of a good read of the Beano or Dandy or who could get there first to feed the milkman's horse.
Whatever would I do without all the 'mod cons' that I'm now so spoilt with? I've enjoyed 'turning the clock back.' Thank you!
Patricia Evans, Birmingham, 2002
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