The next school in the village, erected in the latter years of the war, was a wooden prefabricated two-classroom building. This proved too small, so at 11-years-old the children were sent to Haverton Hill. I remember the prefabricated school being built and this became another thing for us to play on. One day, Arthur Beard and myself were playing hide-and-seek in the attic space of the school, which had a ceiling made from plasterboard. Suddenly, the board opened up like a trap door and we fell through the ceiling, which was some 12 feet high. We landed on some ladders. Fortunately for me, I landed on top of Arthur who cushioned my fall! We both managed to walk away unharmed but I learned my lesson not play there again.
I was friendly with the Hutchinson family who owned Greenabella Farm. David, the son, and I were pals and in the summer-time I liked going to help with the harvest because I was allowed to drive the tractors, which was great fun. The other great treat was when Mrs. Hutchinson brought picnic baskets to the fields full of good food, which we ate with relish. On a Sunday I was often asked to stay for tea with them in the farmhouse and it was always a good spread, which was appreciated.
Our favourite games in the village were Monokitty, Knocky-Knocky Nine Doors, Hide-and-Seek, Tee-Mac-a-Nallyo. Also, we had gangs that made camps in the bushes that surrounded the village, usually made by digging deep holes and covering them with branches. In the corner of hole there was always a fireplace in which we burnt wood. We would cook potatoes in the fire and they always came out with the skins burnt black but we still ate them. The different gangs in the village had battles between them and this usually meant making wooden swords, bows and arrows.
On Saturday mornings we would go by bus to the picture houses in Hartlepool to see cowboy or Tarzan films and then come home to act them out. In wartime it was difficult to buy sweets so we made do with cinnamon sticks and liquorice roots that we bought from shops near the cinema. Sometimes we could buy peanut butter, which was always a treat. When some of our friends didn’t have any money, we would open the fire doors to the cinema and let them in to see the film. Usually the Manager would discover this and we would be thrown out!
Neither I nor any of the other kids in the village passed the 11-plus exam for the grammar school, so we all had to go to Haverton Hill Senior School. My mother, however, decided I was to go to the catholic St. Cuthbert’s school in Hartlepool. I used to ride on my bicycle four times a day (a distance of 20 miles in total) because I wouldn’t stay for the school meals at lunchtime. These meals were usually made from ‘smash’ potatoes and nondescript meat; the dessert was usually sago pudding, which everyone called ‘frogspawn’.
I saved up to buy my bicycle, a brand new BSA (British Small Arms) with a three-speed gearbox. To raise the money for my bike I delivered newspapers, and lit the village streetlights, for which I was paid 7 shillings and 6d a week by the rent collector Mr. Atkinson who had the nick names ‘Captain’ or ‘Lord John’. (I think he had these names because of his military bearing.) Next door to the Atkinsons lived Mrs. Wales the school caretaker. To me she seemed always to be an old lady, dressed in sombre clothes. Perhaps she was a widow; I don’t know.
The only time I left the village on an excursion was a day trip to Redcar, which to me was somewhere far away. A special train came into the sidings next to the village to take all the children. The only thing I remember about that day was that my brother John overturned a canoe on the lake and fell into the water.
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