'I'm glad that I was young all those years ago,' wrote Mrs Olive May Sharman (nee Hewitt) who was born in 1908.

' As children we helped at home, played our games, each in their special seasons. Marbles, Tops, Skipping Hoops, the thrill of bowling an iron hoop with a Skeeler, along a lonely road, no cars, was a real joy, games of 'Sheep come Home', Hide and Seek, Rounders, Joy of the Hayfields, Lemonade Bottles with a glass marble in the top, always a worry whether to break the bottle and have the marble or get a penny on the empty.

    One penny bought 126 Aniseed Balls, that changed colours as you sucked them, or four straps of treacle toffee, very sticky, or Sweethearts, heart-shaped sweets. with loving verses on them, large penny Humbugs, brown and white, penny Lemon Dabs with a tube to suck the lemon powder through or Acid Drops.

    None of these sweets had wrappings, except the Dabs which had a kind of envelope and when shop-keepers came near the bottom of jars, they would prise the odds and ends of sweets from the bottom and put all the scraps in cornets of paper and sell them at one farthing each. Even then we had often to do a job to get this tiny coin: fetch wood, shopping, pick beans or dig potatoes up, get water from an outdoor tap or clean shoes.

Every coin had to be earned, except the Saturday Penny and half of this, a half penny, had to be saved for the collection at Sunday service. A hard life? We had blackberries, wild strawberries to pick, sorrel and hawthorn leaves to eat (the last we called Bread and Cheese). Hips and haws, chestnuts, mushrooms to gather, green weeds for rabbit food, acorns for pigs, dried grass for animal bedding - lots of these brought children in a few extra pennies for birthday and Christmas gifts to give parents and family.

    Though I have often wished I was younger and then I might see my grandchildren grow up to be young men and women. But now I am glad I was born when I was.

    We all had our various jobs to do when we were young: washing up, setting the table for a meal, cleaning the table, collecting fire wood from the woods and helping Dad with the allotments where he grew most of the vegetables to last us the year, as we rarely had tins of food, and frozen food was unheard of.

    Mum made jams, pickles and wine all to store for the winter or hard times when Dad could not work because of rain or snow. Builders could not work then and they did not get paid, so we were very glad Mum and Dad had saved food for bad days, when money was very scarce.

    We never went hungry, pots of home-made good soup made from bones and vegetables and suet puddings with jam from our store. We gathered blackberries in autumn, and crab apples and often we were given baskets of fallen apples, if we gathered them gooseberries could be picked, hazelnuts and chestnuts were stored for Christmas.

Often people would ask us to help them pick fruits and give us a basketful for helping. Milk was fetched from a private dairy and was skimmed but very welcome and cheap. We had many good rice puddings and cups of cocoa from it.