Who the Hell Says I Can’T!!

By Margaret Kershaw

Imagine the possibilities that can follow from taking your first step into the unknown which could change the life that you have known, forever.

A middle-aged, working-class, Lancashire woman's true story of a lifetime, learning to start finally listening to her heart and to trust again.

When a life-changing chance of a holiday to visit a friend in Hong Kong brings a distant dream of travelling alive: to backpack around the world and change her life from everything she has ever known. A chance to leave behind the struggles she has faced and take a year away from her family, home and career to travel across the globe, visiting South East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and beyond.

Finally finding the real person she is after a childhood of abuse and poor relationship choices that followed, she forges new friendships and finds a new life among an abundance of fun and laughter along her way- with the occasional small disaster thrown into the mix! Concluding and meeting up with each of her adult children in New Zealand months later, travelling together through the North and South Island, backpacking together in a broken old hippie van.

At the years end, an inevitable realisation comes that there is no going back- physically or mentally. Life has to move on, it can never be the same again... and she will never be the same.

New experiences are encountered and dreams are realised that go way beyond a year of backpacking abroad. Read her story of learning to trust the instincts inside and to trust others too, finally moving on from the past and making a new future for herself and for her adult children.

It's not the journey itself, it's the people we meet on the way that makes our life the wonder that it is. We have one life, we have to live it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press UK
• Release date: Mar 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781982285272

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Copyright © 2022 MARGARET KERSHAW.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-8526-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-8527-2 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 03/26/2022

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Childhood and Innocence

Old hurts run deep!

Break up

My life had become a nightmare!

Lies and betrayals

Teacher Training

Marriage 2

China

The Journey

Malaysia

Phi Phi Islands

Bali

Darwin

Cairns

New Zealand

Rotorua

The Cook Islands August 2000

Hawaii

Acknowledgements

Firstly for my three, now adult children,

I am so proud of the kind, honest people that you have each become.

Also to my special grandaughter Evie, who is full of energy and fun.

I could never have chosen a lovelier family than you.

You are all the stars in my sky!

To my many friends and extended family for your help and kindness over the years,

who have always been there for me and listened patiently to all my many plans and ideas.

I must mention my dear friend Hazel who started all of this in the first place!

Without you, I don’t know which way my life would have gone.

To Lyn for her unfailing support and who gave me the final kick that I needed to finish this book,

during a long dreary winter and an endless lockdown of 2020.

To Ste for his talents and wizardry of designing my book cover and patiently scanning all my old photographs to add to the book.

Last but certainly not least to Joan and Leah, old and new friends,

who patiently helped me with my non technology skills to complete the book.

It would never have been finished and sent without your unfailing help.

To Balboa Press and especially to May Arado and others for your publishing skills.

I am truly blessed.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Introduction

The Book 20 years in the making!!

Who the hell says I can’t!!

Where do you begin to write an autobiography? who will want to read it? will I ever finish it?

Will it be good enough to let anyone else read or will it be too gloomy or personal, I’m sure that we’ll find out as time goes on.

Where to begin?

Lord of the Rings- We have to decide what to do with the time we are given

How true, in the great scheme of things our lifetime is very short and the choice is mainly ours.

At least in this century we as women are able to do and achieve many things that our mothers and grandmothers wouldn’t even think of things they couldn’t even dreamt of doing.

We have to make the most of our lives and not follow the negative patterns that our mothers, sisters often showed us, many of which we sensed were wrong, even as young children and to show our children a kinder, more loving future.

The here is now

How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, in your heart you begin to understand, there is no going back, there are some things that time cannot mend, some hurts that go too deep that haven’t taken hold. There and back again-a Hobbits Tale.

The sea calls us home

Where do you start to write a book and why? who am I that anyone would even be interested in my life or what I have to say? after all I’m a no-one, a normal? ordinary working class Lancashire woman. I have since being in my twenties I suppose always had the urge to write a book but about what? what do I know?

Many friends over the years have suggested that I write about my stories and there are plenty of them. I guess that’s the reason that I have now started to finally write it is because I feel that I can’t keep putting it off, it’s now or never. My dream has always been that if I could help ONE person to help give them the courage to make a start on changing their life then it would all have been worthwhile. After all if I could do these things, then anyone can! Believe me.

I’ve always felt that my life started in my mid forties, that was the time when I started to finally trust and believe in myself, the first time that I actually felt proud of myself, no one else ever had.

This was the time that I started to take control of my own life, that I could finally do what I wanted, how I wanted.

Previously I had a life which I felt was controlled by others, parents, partners etc. that my ideas or plans were always sneered at or I was told that I couldn’t do those things, which they considered wasn’t what normal working class people do, being put down had been a regular pattern throughout my life. I was never good enough even for myself.

People often ask how or why I’ve done the things that I have? why I am doing the things that I do?

My answer is simple that it’s all the shit in my life which has made me who I am today! and I’ve achieved all the things that I have.

I know from my own experience that it is the really hard times or lessons in my life, when I was up against the wall and I had to make a life changing decision and re-evaluate everything, my saying being at that time was that I had to sink or swim with three young children to care for who were always my main priority. I had to make some big decisions and then see them through, at least now my decisions were of my own making. Luckily I had friends who were always supportive who I could talk to and get some honest answers (even though some of the answers I didn’t always like) good friends will often be very honest with you! and that is very important, being honest with yourself and others.

My family didn’t want to know, about any problems which I had, after all it was always my own fault, so I stopped asking their opinion or even discussing my problems with them and I certainly never asked for any help from them. This was my problem and I had to sort it out myself, regardless and sort it, I did MY own way.

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1

Childhood and Innocence

Where do you begin when you really don’t want to open up a bag of worms? One which you have been carrying around with you all of your life.

I never remember being happy in my childhood. I can’t remember a time with my family when we were laughing. It always seemed to be full of anger, people falling out, fighting, and arguments. It felt like nothing that I ever did was right. I could never please anyone, no matter what I did.

My parents’ behaviour towards each other was appalling. Fights and violence seemed to escalate from nowhere, so at a very early age, I learned to keep quiet and avoid!

This fighting between my parents went on for almost fifty years, until my mum’s death. Imagine putting up with name-calling, fighting, etc. for all of that time. My dad was still swearing at my mum in the nursing home where they were living due to ill health. They were still arguing to the end. What a life. It made me more determined that I wouldn’t live like that, that mine and my children’s lives would be different, so I set out to change it. I didn’t want my children to be brought up with a similar life pattern and to have such awful memories.

I was born the youngest of three girls—the baby of the family. My sister Joan was three years older than me, and Ruth, the eldest, was seven years older. I was born on a small farm in a Lancashire cotton mill town, although the family left there when I was around a year old. I say it was called a farm, but not as we would now think of a farm. I have visited it a few times over the years, and I would think it would be more like a smallholding, as the house was almost a cottage in size and it had few outbuildings and probably had very little land to go with it. It would have been very difficult to make a living from it. At that time, in the early 1950s, they were still milking by hand the few cows that they owned. Then they would deliver the milk by horse and cart, walking straight into people’s houses. They would leave the milk jug and the money would be ready for the deliverer on the table (they all left their front doors open in those days). In later years I was told that there was very little money to be made in farming. The haymaking was all done by hand—cutting the grass with a scythe and collecting the loose hay onto the farm wagon then stacking it into a barn. It would have been very hard, physical work, especially with a young family to support. I guess as a family we were pretty poor. It would probably have been better to move into another of the nearby local towns where there would be much more employment in the many factories there.

As I was growing up I remember my dad once told me the story about him selling the horse he had used to deliver the milk. He sold it to another farmer up on the opposite hillside, across the valley on the other side of town. He was woken up the next day by the police who had followed the horse back home during the night. It must have escaped somehow from its new home and had taken its milk route to get back to the farm, stopping at each of the houses where it delivered milk each morning to find its way back—how clever that horse must have been.

From the farm we moved to another small, grimy cotton mill town in East Lancashire where there was the opportunity for more work to be found in the numerous cotton or manufacturing mills. The move also made us closer to my father’s family. The towns always looked dark and grimy with all the smoke from the numerous factory chimneys and also from the many terraced houses who would have to heat the homes by burning wood, coal, and most of the household rubbish. I was still a baby at the time, so I have no memory of moving there, and my sisters would also have been quite young at the time.

Once we had moved, my paternal auntie and uncle and cousin lived a few doors away from us and my paternal grandma and grandad were a couple of streets away. My dad never had a nice word to say about his family. Our house was a large Victorian terraced, with no heating except for an open fire in the living room and a fire with a back boiler in the kitchen, which heated the hot water. It had four large bedrooms. We had no bathroom for many years, just an outside toilet. I think that I remember that it was initially a drop toilet, which was awful and smelly, and later on it was modernised to a flush toilet. We never had toilet paper but used old newspapers torn into squares and hung from a string behind the toilet. It always smelled of paraffin in there, as my dad used to put a paraffin heater on the floor to prevent the toilet from freezing up during the winter.

I used to love visiting my grandma and grandad’s house and using their Victorian blue and white china toilet. Grandma reused the bread paper, which was the tissue paper that was wrapped round the loaf of bread when she bought it, and that made her bathroom always smell of fresh bread. The paper was so soft—it felt like a luxury. It felt much posher than our type of toilet paper.

Grandma would often bake gingerbread or parkin, so I loved the treats that we would get if we called round on any excuse after school. Even our old dog Gyp would walk up to grandma’s to see if he could get some parkin. He seemed to know the days that she baked it. He also would often walk up to the school and sit and wait for us coming out at the school gate. It was lovely having him meet us from school, as no one else did. We always had to walk home and let ourselves into an empty house on our own as our parents were out working.

Dogs at that time were thrown out every morning before people went to work and simply wandered the streets until their owners returned from work. No wonder there were always lots of mongrel puppies around.

As the house and rooms of our house were so large and cold, we (all three girls) slept in the one back bedroom in one bed. It was so cold in our bedroom during wintertime that the windows would ice up on the inside. That caused the beautiful ice patterns on the window panes that looked like strange leaves. I was always told that Jack Frost had visited during the night and painted the windows (probably told by my sister Ruth who was always like a mother to me). I thought this was magical and so pretty, although it was very cold. If you breathed on the ice and rubbed it hard, you could then see through a small gap in the ice, and it often stayed on the windows for days after until it thawed. The bedrooms were like ice blocks all through the winter, so it was probably a good idea that we all shared the same bed. We had to run downstairs every morning hoping that the open fire in the living room had already been lit so that we could get dressed in front of a warm fire. My mum would usually light it before she went to work that morning. We didn’t even have warm bedding. I can remember big heavy felt-type blankets that almost felt like they were crushing you, and when it was very cold we even had my dad’s old green army coat placed on top to keep us warm. It was so heavy that you could hardly move once you were in bed. As there was no inside toilet, we also had to have a jerry under the bed for us to use during the night, which got pretty smelly unless emptied each day. And if you needed to use it during the night and it was almost full already, then your bottom would touch the smelly freezing cold urine already in there.

One thing I’ve always been grateful for is that we always had pets in the house from as early as I can remember. I always loved all the animals that we had. The earliest I can remember was a green budgie called Micky who would squawk so much at night. My dad would curse and swear at the bird and threaten to strangle it until my mum put a cover over its cage—that always quietened it.

It was a good job that Micky never learned to talk as its language would have been pretty choice after listening to all the foul language that my dad used!

We also had an old dog called Gyp. I can’t remember him too much as he died when I was quite young, but he always seemed to be a lovely old faithful dog. He would often wait for us after school. We always had at least a cat as well as a dog together in the house.

Looking back the arguments and violence were always there as early as I can remember, one of my earliest memories is of lying in bed (which I was sharing with my sisters) when I was wakened by hearing a voice screaming come and help me, come and help me! It was my mum calling out for one of us young girls, I was terrified. I can remember wrapping the pillow around my head so that I couldn’t hear my mum screaming and my thoughts were that I don’t want to go in there or else I’ll get hit too. This would happen quite frequently so I learned to pretend that I couldn’t hear her, then feeling GUILTY for ignoring her cries for help even at that young age.

No wonder I used to wet the bed, sleep walk and bite my nails, I even used to get into trouble being shouted at or slapped for that. I always used to feel that I couldn’t do anything right, so I soon learned to put a mask on and pretend everything was alright by being silly and funny trying to make everyone else happy, so that if I could make them happy then maybe I’d be happy too?

One of my very earliest memories must have been when I was about three years old, my mum always went out to work in one of the local factories so it would have been an early morning start. My memory is of waiting for a bus while it was still dark and being very cold. I was being taken to to a Nursery for day care in a lovely old Victorian house but I hated going there. I was scared of one of the older girls, so the nurses would take me off upstairs to help with the babies I liked that and also the oatmeal porridge that we were given for breakfast each morning, it’s funny how years later I could smell that porridge whenever I was hungry. Even at that young age I was aware of the idea that I wouldn’t want that for my children when I grew up, that I didn’t want my mum to go out to work, I wanted my mum at home with me like other mothers. If ever I had children I would make sure that I looked after them myself, which luckily I was able to do for most of the time.

When I started school at four I was quite happy to go, after all my two older sisters were already attending the same school. The morning I started school, I put my head round the classroom door and said quite confidently I’m here! the teacher replied yes, I can see that I think I liked going to the primary school. One day when I must have been bought some new pyjamas and I was thrilled as I didn’t often get brand new clothes, being the youngest of two older girls, my clothes were hand me downs, even my navy blue flannelette school knickers were second or third hand. So I must have pestered my mum to let me go to school in the new pyjama top, I wanted to show my teacher.

I can remember that it was white with coloured spots on, I thought it was wonderful, I can’t imagine what the teacher thought when I attended school in a pyjama top that day.

In the nursery class, we were still put to bed in the afternoons for a sleep, the tubular steel beds, with a canvas base, like a camp bed which could be stacked on top of each other. On all of our coat hooks, beds or cubby holes we each had coloured pictures, none of our names just pictures of balls, caps etc. to remind us which was our hook etc.. I think my picture was an umbrella? We also had small cowrie shells to help us learn our counting with, I remember wondering where they had come from, as they seemed very exotic and pretty to me.

The nursery class was a large open room with an enormous wooden floor, the room was situated underneath the church, it was a Methodist school although we didn’t attend the church we were enrolled there probably as it was the closest school to our home.

On the beams under the ceiling there was fastened a very basic wooden and rope swing and it came down very close to the floor, as we all so small and we would have very short legs. It was now my turn to have a go on the swing and I loved it, I remember going higher with the teacher pushing me from behind when she shouted don’t put your head back! so of course, what did I do? I put my head back … Crack! very hard as my head hit the floor. I next thing I can remember is waking up in one of the small camp beds with my elder sister Ruth sat by my side and I was even given a cup of tea, which I thought was quite nice to be fussed over for a time but I doubt that I was ever taken to see a doctor and certainly not a hospital. Did no one know or care about concussion in those days?

After that I have very few memories of school and growing up but I can remember feeling envious of other girl’s mothers who used to come and meet their children at the school gate each day. Ruth because she was the eldest would always have to wait for me and take me home each day. At that time our old dog Gyp would also often come to meet us after school and sit at the gate waiting for us, I often wished that it was my mum that had come to meet us like so many mothers but she never did.

When I was slightly older (probably because Ruth by then would have gone to the secondary school) after school I had to walk to my mum’s works to stand and wait for her outside until it was time for her to finish work. I once peeped inside the doorway to see if I could see her but all I can remember is the noise was so loud, unbearably loud as it was a cotton spinning mill, no wonder the women often went deaf through the terribly noisy conditions that they had to work in, many of the women often using learning sign language so that they could speak to each other when working.

One day I was outside her factory waiting for my mum and as she came out she was talking to a workmate, I had earlier that afternoon been doing PE and climbing up some metal frames when I had slipped and fell forward and banged my forehead really hard and I had an enormous lump on my forehead under my fringe. I can remember standing and waiting for what seemed ages until my mum stopped talking before I dare to tell her, I dare not interrupt! Eventually when I told her she said Why didn’t you tell me? my reply was because I’d always been told that you don’t interrupt when people are speaking. Once again I wasn’t taken to see a doctor, perhaps they really were trying to kill me off?

I have no memories of ever being hugged, cuddled, played with or laughing with my parents and it was only as an adult that I’ve realised that I’d never heard either of my parents ever say they that they loved me and I don’t suppose my sisters did either. It was a word I never heard used in our house, how very sad for each of us. I’ve often wondered over the years how different my life would have been to be brought up into a loving family? I really can’t imagine it and I wonder how differently my life would have turned out, would I have been a different type of person?

But we are what we are and we have to make the best of it, there is no going back.

One day I was playing in our backyard with my cousin Rita who is a year younger than me and Joan my sister had joined in, when Joan came to play she would often cause trouble between us I never knew why, it just always seemed to cause trouble.

My dad must have been watching us through the window and he shouted loudly to me to come back into the house, my heart sank as I knew instantly that I was in trouble. I have no recollection of what was said or done when we were playing but I knew that whatever it was that I hadn’t done it, it had been Joan and I was walking into the house to take the blame! I don’t remember going into that room I think that I must have blanked out the memory of it all but I do recall the injustice of being hit for something that I knew that I hadn’t done!

My dad always used his thick leather belt with a heavy buckle on the end to punish us with, that was always his deterrent, we often knew that we would get belted and we did. I don’t remember anything being mentioned after that when my mum got home but the day after when I was in class the teacher called me out to the front of the class and asked me what had happened to my legs? I was horrified and I remember that I felt so humiliated that I had to stand in front of my classmates and make an excuse. I would never have told the truth as I was too ashamed because after all I must have been very naughty! I remember looking down at my legs and seeing that they had large red, tram line weal’s all across the front and down the length of my legs without any gaps, I was quite young at the time, I must have been around six or seven years old. Old enough to feel guilt! I felt so ashamed, after all I must have done something bad, I never considered saying that my dad had strapped me.

I don’t recall my mum ever sticking up for any of us, it just seemed to be accepted that it had been our own fault, we must have done something wrong to get hit.

I can’t imagine what the school did or thought about it, surely the teacher would have reported it to his colleagues or maybe in that period the late 1950’s they just turned the other cheek, perhaps it was a just normal occurrence in poor, working class families?

One short memory that I have is of my mum holding me in her arms before taking me up to bed (so I must have been quite young at the time) as she walked towards my dad she told me to give him a kiss goodnight, I pulled away and thought to myself Why would I want to kiss him? as young as I was I knew that I didn’t really like him or rather his behaviour.

Quite often if the rows were during the daytime and it escalated to fighting then we were told by my mum that we had to pack our bags and leave, my mum would take us to stay at a friends who never seemed to be the same person each time, I suspect she did it so often that people wouldn’t have us back twice. It was so embarrassing (even at that young age) to be stood at someone’s doorstep while my mum cried, recalling the story about what had just happened and asked if we could all stay for a day or two, these were usually people who I had never seen before which I think made it feel even worse. As young as I was I can remember feeling so embarrassed and guilty and told myself that I would never ask for help from anyone because I knew these people didn’t really want us to stay, that they were simply being kind and feeling sorry for us.

The next day would be just as bad as my dad would then turn up at some point and they would then after another row on the front doorstep, start kissing and cuddling and we’d be told that they were getting back together, that it wouldn’t happen again and we’d all have to trudge home again feeling terrible and knowing that it wouldn’t be long before it all happened once again, I hated going home.

I think I began to realise quite early on that for my mum and maybe even my dad was that they seemed to enjoy the arguments and certainly the making up, well at least for the next few days. This behaviour was repeated numerous times over the years and I hated the times when I was told to pack your things, we’re off because I knew the outcome was always going to be the same.

One time when they were arguing at the top of the stairs, we think my dad must have pushed my mum downstairs, she fell to the bottom with her clothes pushed up and her stocking tops showing, I remember screaming and thinking that my mum was dead, that my dad had killed her. One of us children were screaming at my dad You’ve killed her, you’ve killed her!

A really frightening experience as we were all so young. She mustn’t have been too badly hurt as very soon after this she told us to pack our bags.. again but this time we were leaving for good and we would never be coming back this time and we all set off by bus to stay with my auntie and uncle in Rochdale (my mums brother). I was quite happy with this as I thought we’d be living forever with this auntie and uncle, who seemed to be even poorer than us as they had a large family of seven children all at similar ages to us.

They were quite a rough and ready family and the house wasn’t too clean (not that ours was either) but they were a happy family and we were always made welcome or that’s how it appeared to me. They had a large unkept garden, so we got to play out and run around and we didn’t get shouted at, even when we were acting silly, it felt so relaxed compared to being at home. That first night we were all put to bed so that there were four of us girls in one bed, two at the top and two at the bottom, when I woke in the morning I realised that I was wet through and smelly, someone had wet the bed and I suspected that it was me! I felt mortified and I was so upset so I obviously kept quiet and hoped that no-one would notice. I think we must have only stayed for a day or two, we never managed to stay anywhere too long.

Years later (after both of our parents had died) my sister Ruth once asked me if I remembered the time that we were locked in our bedroom for days? She told me that it was because my dad had been in such a bad temper that my mum had locked us in out of his way? That our mum had brought the food up to the bedroom and emptied the potty from under the bed? which I didn’t remember at all but now I wonder if that’s why I don’t like to be locked in" anywhere? I have a fear of being locked in, even now I rarely lock a toilet door behind me (which has been embarrassing a few times) but I’m always worried that I won’t be able to get out again, perhaps that was the time the fear started?

Where we were brought up in the small mill town most of the people living there were hard working men and women and like us they had very little money (as I remember it, but maybe some people did have more money than others) we certainly didn’t. Our diet was very basic, we used to get pobs most mornings for breakfast, for those of you who don’t recognise this culinary Lancashire delight, it was simply stale bread, boiled in a pan with milk, until it was really sloppy. It tasted awful but it slid down easily and filled you up for breakfast. At lunchtimes we came home from school for our lunch, as my mum always worked full-time in the mills, we had to help ourselves to whatever she had left for us the night before, our diet was very basic, mostly being potatoes.

Ruth being the eldest was a sort of mother figure to Joan and myself, she would take us and bring us back to school each day, which would be quite a responsibility for a young girl, as we were all attending a local primary school at the same time and there were seven years between us so I must have been very young at the time and Ruth could only have been only ten or eleven. Once we got home at lunchtime Ruth being the eldest would warm up the lunch for us (usually it was stewed potatoes a stew made of just potatoes, very little meat if any and onions) and then she would take us back to school once again after lunch. One lunchtime I found a some of my food was still cold so I went to throw it onto the open fire to burn it. I always had the habit that once I was home I would take off my socks and shoes to walk about the house in my bare feet.

As I walked over the fireguard which had been left down on the floor in front of the fire, I caught my toes in the wires, tripped forward and put my open hands into the hot ashes of the fire-grate to save myself (luckily the fire wasn’t built up at the time so there were no flames, just hot coals.) I ran down to my Aunties who didn’t go out to work and lived five doors away and she must have bandaged them up for me. I don’t recall ever seeing a doctor so I’m not sure what happened afterwards but I can remember being in school with these big bandages on both hands, I couldn’t write with my right hand for awhile which had received the worst burns, so I struggled and practised to write with my left hand. I still have scars on my hands today from that incident so long ago.

Sometimes I felt that we were lucky as we occasionally stayed for school dinners, I thought they were great, as there was probably a better choice of food than we got at home but getting school dinners caused other problems, my mum never seemed to be a good manager with money, she certainly never seemed to have any even though she worked full time but both then my parents were drinkers and smokers, which wouldn’t have helped, the arguments were often about a lack of money. I think that’s the reason I’ve never smoked or drank very much as I didn’t want to turn out like them as they were always crying poverty! as we used to call it.

School dinners at that time cost five shillings a week for each child and I seem to think that some children may have got them free if they came from a very low income family. Whatever it cost it always caused a problem, the night before it was due to be paid to the school my mum would say that she had no money! whether this was a ploy from my mum to try to get some extra money out of my dad I don’t know but whatever it was it didn’t work and it was always upsetting to us children as we all knew what would come next, you’ll have to go up and ask your grandma and granddad for the money and I’ll give it them back when I get paid at the end of the week. Somehow I knew even at that young age that my mum wasn’t telling the truth, that she had no intention of paying my grandparents the money back.

Grandma and granddad, my dad’s parents lived closer to our school, in a side street, they been hard working farmers all their working life, with very little reward or anything to show for it but they were happy with their lot, they by now were retired and living on a basic pension and were both very quiet gentle people who tended to keep away from us, probably now I realise to keep out of all the arguments. The three of us sisters would walk up to their house with dread before school that morning and all the way up to their house we’d be arguing It’s your turn to ask! No, it’s your turn I asked last time and this would go on all the way from home until we arrived at their house, then someone had to knock at the door You knock no, you knock I asked last time! and this would go on until one of us dared to knock and ask for the dinner money.

I remember vividly one day standing outside with my sisters, staring at this old fashioned door and I could only have been four or five at the time and thinking to myself that I would NEVER when I was a grown up, ever borrow money from anyone, that if I hadn’t got the money I’d manage without it and that has stayed with me all my life and I have stuck to it, if I can’t afford it I don’ t have it, which I have no regrets about but I think that was probably the start of my independence and real stubbornness to always manage on my own and not ask for anything.

We never knew or asked grandma if the money was ever repaid, even as young adults, we never dared to ask, I think we always knew that what was ever was borrowed wasn’t going to be paid back and that would be too awful to even think about.

One Christmas I can remember getting ten shillings inside a card from my grandma and granddad, my mum took it off me and said that she’d put it in the bank to save for me, as young as I was I knew that I wouldn’t get it back. I never did, I never had a bank account when I was young so the money never reappeared and I doubt that it was the only time that I was given money as a gift? Another Christmas when I was seven, grandma gave me her old large white Victorian pot dogs for my present, I was thrilled with these, I still have them and love them just as much and I always call them my grandmas pot dogs even many years later. My dad always called his own mother a tight old b … h! because every Christmas she would give us presents that someone had given her the year before (she used to stick a label on the bottom of each gift to remind herself who had bought it.) we all knew and accepted it (except my mum and dad) I doubt looking back that grandma had very much money, she had always had to make do and she would never ask her family for anything and I never heard her complain.

My mum once told me that grandma and grandad didn’t like us (children) she said that my grandparents would often walk down the back way to get past our house and take my cousins out for a walk but that they wouldn’t take us children out as they did for my cousins. Now as an adult I realise that it wasn’t that grandma and grandad didn’t like us it was probably more that they were avoiding us as a family and trying to keep out of all the troubles! but I recall feeling hurt and upset for many years because I’d been told that my grandma didn’t like us.

As I grew up especially after I had my own children I became very close to my grandma, my grandad had died in his early sixties quite suddenly of a heart attack when grandma had gone