Bushbaby

 “Weerz that teapot thing?”

“Mam! Weerz that teapot thing?”

“What teapot thing? “

Puzzled doesn’t quite do it. Perplexed maybe.

“The teapot?”

“Nay-ew, that white teapot thing wi’t lid wot Uncle Frank ‘ad”

Puzzled pause…

“Oh, you mean his billy-can? I think it’s in the cupboard”

She opened the pantry up and handed down a white enamelled jar, chipped blue in places, with a wired carrying handle, and the lid stored upside down on top, her puzzled look slowly becoming more intense

“Can yer dumee some tea innit?”

At his she stopped completely, and tried to fathom out why on earth her three-and-a-half year old son would suddenly want to start drinking his tea out of a builder’s billy-can.

The previous year, Mum’s younger brother Frank, had come across to England, and like many of his fellow Irishmen, had set out to make his fortune in the building trade. During his first few months, he’d used our house as a base while he got himself set up with work. Much of his initial work had been casual, so he would move about during the week, lodging in whatever digs were available, and coming back to ours at the weekend. It must have been a bit of an imposition for my parents, what with a large young family and all, but Frank was such a lovely guy that it never seemed like a problem. In fact, when he eventually moved out, and set himself up in business building tennis courts for rich people in Surrey, we all missed him terribly…..

……And he left his billy-can behind.

“What do you mean “you just do” “??

“I just do!” Bit of frustrated foot-stomping

“That’s not an answer. You can’t just decide to drink your tea out of a billy-can Stephen. There must be a reason behind it”

“It’s them mesters….”

A light bulb lit above her head as Mum’s quizzed face slowly eased into one of enlightenment, and she went to the sink to fill the kettle.

Now that building was well underway on our new petrol station, I had taken it on myself to monitor progress, making sure that everything was done by the book, and to see that the brickies put the walls up properly. I’m not sure what the builders thought of their pre-school foreman, but they were all so nice to me that I rapidly became one of the team, or at least it felt like it.

Hence the billy-can.

I ran up the dirt path towards the hut, holding the billy-can in one hand, and a jam sandwich in the other.

“Would you look at that…” Not the same accent as mum’s but very similar “The rascal’s only gone and got himself a billy!” Their looks betrayed incredulity, as I climbed up on the bench beside them and plonked my “lunch” down on the wooden table.

“Where in the world did you dig that up from?” More Irish

“Mi Mam sez I can ‘ave this nah that Uncle Frank’s gone dahn south..” I lied “..so I can have mi dinner ‘ere evry day nah”

I was quite sure that this would please them no-end, so I didn’t need to look at their faces as they went on chewing their beef sandwhiches, washing them down with Ty-Phoo. I busily dug in to my jam sarny, and poured a measure of tea into the lid/cup, and sipped it greatfully, giving a loud “Aaahh” and smacking my lips after each mouthful. Boy was I dignified!!

During that year, my last before school, I spent a lot of time with those guys. There must have moments when they just wished that I would go away, but if there were, they never let on. A couple of them, mostly the Irish guys, kept me informed of what they were doing, using in-house terms that I’ve long forgotten, and they even let me lay a few bricks, scooping up the gobbo with a small trowel, and carefully spreading it onto the existing line of bricks before placing a new line of bricks on top.

I constantly pestered them with dumb questions, but they always took the time to answer.

“What’s that foh?”

“Now sure, that’s a dumper truck”

“What's one o’them when it’s at ooerm?”

My mum sometimes came and spoke to them, probably chatting about the old country, but always well out of my earshot. She would often boil a kettle up for them, especially when it got a bit colder and their primus stoves found it harder to do the job. She seemed to sense when I might start getting on the poor guys’ nerves, and always called me in “Stephen - Rag Tag and Bobtail are on!” before it got tedious.

For years afterwards, I always felt that I’d played a part in building that Petrol Station, and was genuinely sad when, some twenty years later, they knocked it down and built a modern “franchised” contraption. It was a big part of my growing up, and had been many things to me.

It was a football pitch, the tarmac area at the rear providing a perfect playing surface, and the doors of the private garages ideal as goals.

It was an adventure park, climbing on garage roofs and jumping from one to the next, and then into a tree, being a terrific way of filling the school holidays

It was somewhere to buy fags (they’re for mi mam – honest!) and somewhere to smoke them, there being lots of nooks and crannies round the back where adults would never venture.

It was also where, at the grand old age of five, I first fell in love

The first proprietors were relatives of the Applyards (I think), and they had a daughter my age called Janet.

Janet was everything a five year old boy could want in a girlfriend. She was pretty, she was clever, and best of all, she swore! (Not proper adult swearing, just bums and buggers, and definitely not when grown-ups were listening, only when we were out playing on the field.).

Up until then, I wasn’t even aware that girls could swear, never mind that they would. I was fascinated and spent hours thinking of words that I could dare her to say (she always did, but with an air of contrition, which somehow made it better).

I even taught her a few irish ones that I’d picked up from the builders (“Bejayzus” and the like), and her attempts to mimick my brogue, itself a mimick, were funny and delightful

Sadly Janet didn’t stay round our way long. After a couple of years her family flitted, and the garage was taken over by their cousins (the two dads were brothers). I was heartbroken, and although the new family had a boy my age (another Stephen would you believe?) with whom I became good friends, it simply wasn’t the same

The new garage, which replaced the original after twenty odd years, wasn’t built with anything like the same care and attention. It was all plastic and well lit and clean and didn’t have oil spills and had assistants who wore smocks and all the horrible things that came with the 1980’s, but I guess that’s what rose-tinted specs can do for you.

Chapter 2

“Wot’s Appleyards dooin in aar field?”

  “Eh up Mrs, what’s tha reckon to this then?”

My mum was hanging out the washing as I scooted around the garden, banging into her about once every three laps. My toe was well on the way to healing now, and only hurt when mum needed help carrying the washing.

She looked across at Mr Booker next door, (we pronounced it Booo-ker rather than Bucker) then over his shoulder on to the field where he was pointing. Three large purple trucks had pulled onto the field where Ian Booker and me normally rode his bike, and were circling around like Indians. They were followed by a yellow bulldozer, a small dumper truck, and some official looking vans.

“Good heavens. What do you think is happening?” Her Irish brogue had softened over the years to a kind of neutral accent, but she had resisted picking up the ‘thees and thas’ her children employed.

“Looks like thi building summat” He replied.

In retrospect, it was inevitable that the fields of my childhood would eventually  become building sites, but it was still a shock when it started happening.

“Stephen, come back here!!!”

I was off down the entry on my scooter, and well on the way to investigating this mystery by the time I didn’t hear her.  I turned into the field, scooted along the dusty path, and pulled up sharp when a man with a clipboard blocked my way.

“Wot yer dooin’ on aar field?”

Clipboard man looked at me with barely disguised disdain.

“Bugger off or al githee a clip rarn’t lugoil”

The pencil behind his ear twitched.

Ignoring him, I spun back on to the pavement, went a further few yards along and turned back onto the field, this time hiding behind a truck, and watched.

Three men were gathered around a tripod mounted with a small telescope, and looked through the eyepiece at another guy who was holdin up a big blue and white ruler with one hand. From his other, hung a piece of string with a whipping top at the end.  He moved around the field, stopping every few yards, and the telescope team followed him with the instrument. Clipboard man wrote all this down.

After about half-an-hour, one of the trucks let down a side, and a man with a cap on started throwing picks and shovels off. His team-mates picked them up and, reluctantly at first, began digging

I tried talking to them but they didn’t answer, so after a handful of attempts, I pushed my scooter back home.

“What’s happening on the field?”

“Some mesters are dooin’ some diggin’ and some others are tekkin pictures wi’ a telescope, an a man wi a booerd threttend to gi’ me a clip!!” I followed this with an explosion of breath.

Mum just nodded, as if it all made sense, and went back to pegging white shirts on to the line.

 A few hours later the twins came home from school. Although very different, they often said the same thing at the same time.

“Mam, Wot’s Appleyards dooin in aar field?”

There were now more trucks, and the digger was starting to turn over huge clods of earth, and pile them up neatly on the path we used for access.  The twins walked over to the edge of the field, with me scooting along behind them, and joined the other kids in watching their playground get turfed over.

“Nah then Bushy, as tha seen this?” Dave Baldwin, using the universal Bush family nickname, watched eagle eyed as a small dumper started piling bricks up on the first available piece of flat ground.

“Wot thi buidin’?”

“Ant gorra clue. One er ‘em sez it’s a pub an’t other reckerns it’s gunna be a new Skoyl”

“ A Skoyl??” there was a chorus of dismay at this.

“Wot do we need a Skoyl for? Wiv got loads as it is”

Saddened at the prospect of a new school on their doorsteps, the kids drifted off home in ones and twos, and not long afterwards, the builders did too.

“Thiz a piece abaht it in t’final- it in’t gunna be a Skoyl, its gunna be a gar-arge”

John was telling his friends later that day, as they stood on our back path gazing over the hedge at the deserted building machines. A garage – pronounced garridge – was a small stand alone building, usually next to a house or on a site with other garridges, where vehicles were kept overnight. But a garage – pronounced gar-arge – was a commercial premises, made up of some combination of filling station, vehicle repair centre, and maybe a shop. This was to be all three and would come with the bonus of living quarters above. That meant new neighbours, always a point of interest.

“Mi mam sez that Appleyards are building it for them senn’s, an it’s gunna be fam-ly run”

At that time Appleyards were striving for world domination, and looked like achieving it. Grown ups spoke a lot about fingers and pies where the Appleyards were concerned

“Mind, it’s gunna tek ovver a yea-er ter build”

John’s mate Ray was firing a home made catapult at the big shovel on the digger, but his half-hearted efforts all fell short of their target, and having discussed it to death, they went off down t’Milnrow to play hiddy.

 “I’ve brock mi tooer!”

I guess that my very first actual memory, the first one I can really grab a hold of, was of something that happened a few weeks after my third birthday.

It was a warm summer day, and I was out playing in the back garden. Mum was well into her eighth pregnancy and had plenty to do, cooking and cleaning for the six surviving offspring. Apart from an occasional glance through the kitchen window, and me popping back in for drinks of water, (the kitchen floor was knee deep in suds, and the mangle was working overtime, so the kitchen was not a good place to be!) I was left pretty much to my own devices.

It was a nice garden. A flat central lawn surrounded by flower beds and a couple of laburnum trees. At the top end was a greenhouse, but that was out of bounds in those days, the latest crop of tomatoes and cucumbers being close to fruition …

Mum and Dad had moved up to The Cross in the late fourties.  They’d met during the war. Mum was a nurse who came across from Ireland, along with thousands of her fellow country girls, to help with Britain’s war effort. Dad came from a family of movers, and so had no natural home town. He served with the Royal Artillery, and met up with mum while receiving medical treatment.

Their first home in Sheffield was a “house share” on Albert Rd. Living in two rooms with common facilities, they managed to bring three kids into the world, two of them before the war was over, and were expecting a fourth when they were allocated a house on the  newly built Parson Cross.

Parson Cross was a large sprawling housing estate on the north side of Sheffield. Consisting of some ten thousand houses, and started just before the war, it was based on an area of farmland between Herries and Ecclesfield.  For the original inhabitants, all of whom came from inner city estates such as Heeley, Attercliffe, Darnall and Hillsborough, it was an oasis. The designers provided lots of open spaces for kids to play in. There were fields, parks and easy access to the woods at Ecclesfield and Greno. On top of that each house had a garden front and back – a luxury in those post-war days of rations and allotments.

Mum wept when they picked up their key from the housing office, not sure what they were moving to but glad to be moving at all, and wept again when they got off the 49 at Margetson Crescent, walked up Wordsworth, and let themselves into number 387.  

It was a beautiful house, built of startling bright new red brick, with pebble dash covering the larger surface areas, and havind a deep red tiled roof. Second in a group of four, it had an indoor bathroom and toilet, large front room, three good size bedrooms, and was very close to fields, which the older kids started exploring immediately.  The kitchen was probably the weak link. It was a funny “L” shape, and didn’t lend itself to being used as a diner, but it was certainly functional, and at the time one was very thankful for those small mercies. Compared to the old estate, which had suffered from being fifty years in the shadow of the factories and draped in all the grime that they produced, it just seemed to be a marvel of red brick and green foliage, clear roads and open spaces, an urban utopia in which to raise a large family.

The three houses sharing our block became occupied during the same few days, and the four married couples, of similar age and station, would be friends and neighbours for the next twenty years. (Mum eventually left the house for sheltered accommodation fifty years to the day after she moved in).

…. In the garden I had a few simple toys – I seem to remember a set of wooden soldiers which I’d arranged in football team formation  – and a bowl of soapy water, but my attention was focussed on a small blackboard, perched on an easel under the kitchen window. For some reason, now lost in the mists of time, I wanted to move it to the top end of the garden, and instead of shouting for help – much good that would have done on washday – I figured that I could carry it there myself. Now, a thing to bear in mind is that this wasn’t the modern, light, convenient chalkboard that you can pick up from Early Learning these days. This was an iron board which was about a half inch thick, and weighed roughly the same as a small car. One surface was covered in a kind of black pitch and used for chalking, the other was a sort of green corrugated rust.  I had moved everything else to my new favourite spot, beside the greenhouse. It was just a case now of moving the board, so I formulated a plan. Stretching my arms in a kind of star formation, I tilted my head, and took hold of it, top and bottom, at opposite corners. Having got a good grip of it, I leaned back and lifted, taking the brunt of the weight on my puffed out chest. So far, so good. It felt comfortable so I moved to stage two, turning my body in the direction of the lawn and slowly edging forwards in small careful steps. I walked and breathed in time, and stopped every few feet to recover. At the lawn edge there was a small concrete slab forming a path, and as I stepped onto it, my foot caught the lip, causing me to stumble forward and drop the board, corner first, on to my right big toe. To this day I can feel the pain shooting up my leg and bursting through my body. I tried to cry and scream at the same time, but although my open mouth was moving, trembling, no sound came for about five seconds. When it did however, it took the form of a loud blood-curdling scream.  I ran limping around the garden shouting “I’ve brock mi tooer! I’ve –sob – brock – sob, mi too-oo—err!” Mum recalled years later how, on hearing the scream, she stopped mangling and looked out of the window, to see me hopping, jumping and leaping around the garden, yelping at the top of my voice. I alternately picked up my foot, and put it down again. I ran clockwise, then anti-clockwise, round the laburnum tree. I even ran to the top of the garden, twice around the green washpole, then backdown again, and despite my obvious pain, my antics made her laugh. She stood back until I had stopped running and was now sobbing quietly, before coming out and giving me the TLC I so richly deserved. She bathed my foot, topping up the soapy play water with some from the kettle, with me going “ow, OW!!” every few seconds. My throbbing toe was then wrapped in the biggest bandage you ever saw, making it look like something from The Beano, (you could see it throbbing through the bandage!!) and I was led inside, carefully avoiding the washday suds, and I laid on the couch just in time to watch Andy Pandy and Teddy. A blanket from upstairs appeared and completed my comfort, and I must have dosed off, as the next thing I remember I was being woken up with scrambled egg on toast (still a favourite) and a cup of sweet tea.

I never saw the blackboard again.

 “Geeooer Ruwerin!”

A Parson Cross Childhood

 “Geeooer ruwerin or al githee summet to ruwer abaht... “

Wise advice indeed, to a child who is all too easily upset

    Introduction:

T’second house passed t’ garage

I remember being born

Well that’s not exactly true. I don’t really remember it, but I’ve heard the story of it so many times, it seems as though I was there!

Okay, so technically I was there, but I guess you know what I mean…

By all accounts I was an awkward sod from day one. Head first? Not for me. I chose to come out bum first, nearly killing my mum. Literally. I was the seventh of eight kids, and because the preceeding bunch were typical young children, my mum decided on a home birth, allowing her to look after them right up until the chosen time. Luckily there was a very capable midwife on hand, and I was eventually delivered safely. Healthy, if slightly battered.

Legend has it that my dad had been suspicious of my parentage, but when I finally arrived I looked so like him that there was no way he could disown me.

My sister and brothers were all a bit disappointed when they found out. Not because they wanted a girl, or even a puppy, but because it meant that the meager weekly spice allowance would now have to stretch that little bit more. Four fingers of Kit-Kat don’t divide into seven mouths very well.

My birth coincided with the end of rationing, which was just as well, as I was always starving.

My family lived on the Parson Cross (woebetide anyone who calls it Parson’s Cross), in t’second house passed t’ garage. Although at that time, there was no garage. It was a field, and it rung to the joys of children playin right up until 1960, when Cleveland opened their filling station.

Here is my story as I remember it.