Biography, Autobiography, Old Steve of Scarborough, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom

1. Some of us were even let out of school to go shopping for the teachers and that was great fun. But being too scared to argue with anyone I would stand there while the local greengrocer, his wife being one of the illiterates who believed she could teach, would add the goods to my mothers account and send me back with the money or take all the money from me and deduct it from my mother's account and I would go back to school with no change and be dragged by the ear, back into the village until the matter was sorted out. I always knew when it was sorted for I would get the customary slap at the back of the head and then spend the rest of the day wondering what it was that I had done wrong. I grew very fond of teachers and wondered much later, if they and those moronic shopkeepers, unfit for war work, did it on purpose? Either way, they and many others, made my childhood a misery.

2. I have some clear memories of the Upper or Junior School, though not many in total. There was one teacher I even dared to mention that I quite liked, but my father took the piss out of me, so I decided that I must have got that wrong.

3. Weather permitting there was always more gardening to do but also, because we were bigger boys, there was plenty of Coke to shovel, (not the coke you are thinking of). The school boilers ran on coke (coal preheated and having the tar, gas and various other elements removed from it, was then used as a boiler fuel) and this would be delivered on a regular basis and dumped in a yard. From there 'us big boys' had to shovel it through a hatch in the wall, so that it slid down into the boiler house. Also it was in that large storage area and boiler house that the Punch and Judy Man would perform. A scruffy character, with a glove puppet resembling Punch and Judy stuck on each hand, would stand there and make out they were talking to each other. I don't recall the theme as I only went the once. Not knowing what it was all about I followed a group of kids in and listened to his patter. At the end he held out his cap and told us to put our pennies in it. Not having and never having any money, I started to make my way out, only to have him shout after me and for me to be stopped by a teacher standing by the exit. I was told to stand and wait. When the scruff and his puppets came out he passed some money to the teacher and took off. I got the customary crack for cheating and then got balled out again for being late back into class. Every year after that when he came back I hid thinking he would remember me and ask for my penny.

4. It must have been around this time, or perhaps earlier that I was taken and shown a very impressive Nursing Home in nearby Shipley, and told that that was were I was born. But there was never any evidence to back this up and sometime later I recall hearing in general conversation, like you do, that some woman had been in our house, at the time I was born and had put my mother's best metal Tea Pot against the open fire and blackened it. Who this woman was, where she came from and what she was doing remains a mystery to this day but there was a definite reference to her and my birth.

5. I had a tortoise called 'Oswald'; you see I remember its name and clearly remember it dying, having fallen down the stone steps at my grandmothers, but why at my grandmothers, I don't know? I don't remember it at home, if it was ever at home? But I do remember the puppy we had, that didn't last a month and disappeared as mysteriously as it had appeared and I cried. It didn't have a name but I called it Tango when I had it out for a walk. It showed me affection and wanted little in return but then it had gone and where to, or why, I never found out. I do remember, however, the army rifle turning up and being kept, for quite some considerable time, in my mother's wardrobe. Where it came from or where it eventually went I have no idea either, but remember it being stripped down and carefully cleaned and oiled.

6. I was once taken to a large house, 'in the nice area,' at the top of the village, where they kept rabbits and where my mother claimed they were friends and that she had worked for them, as a House Keeper. I never did work that one out but remember the strained atmosphere before we came away and one of the daughters asking, not quite out of ear-shot, what they were doing entertaining ex-staff and their brats and then my mother complaining that we hadn't even been offered a cup of tea. The nice thing about it was that, years later, their brat ballsed up her marriage by getting pregnant to a local farmer, while the husband of the other one, her sister, screwed up and wrecked their family business.

7. During the war days and while still at school I remember being sent round to sell raffle tickets for some hand made doll or other, for the war effort, and being asked all sorts of questions by people that I couldn't answer and being refused more times than not and then later being sent round again, to everyone, including those who had refused to buy, to tell them who had won and that was usually someone where my father worked. The one question I could never answer was how much had been raised and what it had actually been raised for, simply because I was never told. On one occasion I was sent to my headmaster with a bag of tickets and told to ask him to make the draw and write down the winning ticket number. To add to my agony, of having to approach this evil article, my mother went spare and had a really bad time, we could see that by the way she carried on, wondering how my father would react when told we owed the headmaster six pence (old money) as his claimed fee for making the draw. I took it the following day and having handed it over was told, by him, not to bring any more raffles to draw. He didn't have a hope in hell as had been made very clear to all who cared to listen or who came within ear shot, before my father produced the six pence and threw it in my direction. I suppose it was all right for my father and his cronies to work a scam but not all right for the headmaster to want his cut.

8. I was required to cough up all the odd coppers that came my way, to help pay for Red Cross Parcels that were made up and sent to my mother's twin brother, who was a Prisoner of War in Austria. There was a lot of talk, at the time, of those parcels being misappropriated on route and at the other end. I wonder if those thieving sods realised they were stealing my pocket money? What with them and my mother, no wonder I was always skint. You see, every now and then, in fact quite regularly, my mother would take our School Savings, which we had to take to school every Monday morning to show we were as good as anyone, and draw them out, just in case the bank got bombed and we lost them and do you know, I believed that?

9. Also for the war effort we collected Jam Jars and took them to the local Scout Hut. At the time I was not old enough to join the Troop but one Saturday morning, having helped to load up their cart, I followed them to the local Co-op Store where the small ones were sold for half a penny each and the larger ones for a penny. The Scouts never got anymore, from us, after that and the effort of going round and scrounging them became very well worth while and turned into a nice little earner, while the Co-op still thought they came from the Scouts.

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