Besides the festive occasions associated with the Chapel, there were other notable events throughout the year. Some, like birthdays, came on fixed dates, and could be anticipated long beforehand. Others were not pre-arranged (or at least we children were not aware of our parents’ preparations), and so they came as a pleasant surprise.
Of all the longed-for events, Christmas was the best, not only for the presents and the family parties, but also for the pre-Christmas visit to Manchester. This always took place on a Saturday in early December. Father would go off as usual to the office, and Mother, May and I would follow on a later train.
Our first port of call was Lewis’s department store to see Father Christmas on the top floor, pausing briefly to admire the enormous set-piece which always filled the central well, reaching up two or three floors from the ground: angels, reindeer and choirboys, all made of papier maché and tinsel.
The approach to Father Christmas was through a fairy grotto or in a magic aeroplane. I have even travelled in the cab of a jolting steam engine. But whatever the artifice, it was prefaced by a booth at which Mother had to pay a shilling (5p) for each of our ‘gifts’. When at last we reached the great man himself, he would request our name and age, and ask what we wanted for Christmas, whilst parents would strain their ears to catch the whispered wishes. Meanwhile a fairy helper would be finding a parcel appropriate to our age and sex.
One year I wanted a toy rifle, but my parents had pacifist inclinations at the time (the machinations of Adolf Hitler altered their views later), and they refused to buy me one. To my intense delight and my mother’s obvious disgust, there was a gun in my shilling parcel. Although I had ceased to believe in Santa Claus, my faith was almost restored. Usually, however, we received useless bric-a-brac, despite Mother’s advice to add a year to our age when we were asked.
We would all meet at ‘The Office’ before lunch, giving us a chance to persuade Miss Brown, the secretary, to let us do some typing. We had to meet “The Guv’nor” as Father always called him, and we would stand, tongue-tied and embarrassed, before him. Then off to the Kardomah restaurant in Market Street for lunch. There was the aroma of freshly-ground coffee as we entered, and we pushed our way through the crowded tea-room to the restaurant with its tiled tables and mock-Tudor decor.
After lunch, it was back to the toyshops. Wiles, next door to Lewis’s, was first on my list, since it always had a magnificent model railway, as well as countless expensive and ingenious playthings which I knew I could never have. Then to Lewis’s again, for Dad always gave us some money to spend on a pre-Christmas present of our own choice. We were sure of getting at least one gift we really wanted!
So we came home in the late afternoon, past the clanging trams and the brightly-lit shops in Piccadilly, our arms full of parcels and our eyes bright with anticipation of joys still to come,
Birthdays meant parties and more presents. Our friends would come round for sandwiches, jelly, blancmange, biscuits and, of course, the inevitable cake. Often this came from Pollard’s shop: a sponge covered all over with soft pink and white icing, with one’s name in the middle. There were candles to denote one’s age, with squares of paper to prevent the dripping wax from spoiling the icing. Candle-holders were a later invention.
As summer approached, we began to think about the Parish Church Fete. This was held at the end of June behind the Drill Hall, but the preparations went on long beforehand. The ladies of the Church were busy getting together things for their stalls, and selling raffle tickets. Mrs Jowett always ran the sweet stall. Right through June, her kitchen was filled with jars of sweets and boxes of chocolate bars. And right through June, we deserted Millards’ shop every Saturday afternoon in favour of Mrs Jowett, who allowed the scales to go down with a bump for her young customers.
We also had to prepare for the Fancy Dress Parade which, led by the Marple Prize Band, marched through the village in the early afternoon. Despite our fetching appearance as bathers (in our costumes, caps and towelling wraps), or as a policeman and a nurse, May and I never won any prizes. The honours went, year after year, to an almost naked youth, painted black from head to toe, who writhed and wriggled as in some tribal dance. He apparently went round all the local shows, winning at every one. We regarded him as unfair competition – a professional in an amateur’s game. But no-one thought that he was being unfair to primitive people.
But once on the field, all petty jealousies were soon forgotten. There, in the huge marquee, were the stalls selling cakes, sweets and ice-cream, and there was the bran tub for the lucky dip. Outside, there were games of skill and chance: hoop-la, a coconut shy, and even a wonderful game in which you tried to knock the top hat off a brave man walking up and down behind a wire-netting screen.
In a little tent of her own sat the fortune-teller, known despite her gypsy name to be a Mrs O’Connor, a resident of Gibb Lane, and the mother of my organ-blower friend. In the middle of the field the children ran their races – sack, egg-and-spoon, three-legged and plain sprint. In a vacant corner, the band played on.
The last great secular event of the year was Bonfire Night. Most years, I could have two Bonfire Nights – one at a friend’s house on 5 November, and one at home on the nearest Saturday. The weeks leading up to this time were spent in gathering wood for the bonfire, which at ‘Beaumont’ was built on the site of the empty vegetable patch.
A guy had to be made. Old clothes were turned out of cupboards, stuffed with newspaper and sewn together. A mask was bought for his face, and an old tobacco pipe added the final touch. The buying of the fireworks was usually left to Dad, and since we invited our Aunts and Uncles to the function, they could be relied on to bring a few more.
Mother, of course, made this another family occasion, and provided home-made parkin and treacle toffee, ginger cordial and coffee. In the dying embers of the fire, potatoes were roasted in their jackets and eaten (raw in the middle and charred to a crisp on the outside) with great gusto.
At our friends’ bonfires, more daring feats took place. ‘Little Demons’ (powerful ‘bangers’ costing a halfpenny) could be dropped into tin cans to produce a deafening explosion, and rip-raps were thrown at the feet of spectators.
One of our unscheduled treats was to go to Belle Vue (then a zoo and pleasure gardens on the outskirts of Manchester) for the firework display. On the island in the centre of the boating lake, a huge set would be erected, depicting the plains of Waterloo or the streets of Sebastopol. As dusk fell, a maroon would be fired, and a great battle took place before our eyes. Cannon boomed, muskets flashed and star-shells lit up the sky. Victory was marked by a display of rockets and Roman candles, and the show ended with a brilliant set-piece of the Union Jack, or portraits of the King and Queen, in coloured fire.
Belle Vue was the scene for another occasional treat – a visit to the zoo and the fairground. We went, inevitably, by train to the nearby station with its long platforms built to take excursion trains from Lancashire and Yorkshire in the days when whole towns came en masse to the Gardens.
We fed the monkeys and looked at the giraffes. We had a ride on the elephant, lurching around the asphalt walks in a wooden box strapped to Jumbo’s back. Then, after eating our sandwiches, we explored the fairground. There was a miniature railway for straightforward rides, the Hall of Mirrors for a distorted view of things, and a trip on the Caterpillar and the Scenic Railway (a ‘Big Dipper’) for more excitement.
In January we might go again to Belle Vue to see the Circus. The wild animals bored me; it never seemed worthwhile to spend so long erecting the great iron cage and dismantling it again for the few minutes during which the lion-tamer tried to raise a snarl from his beasts. The clowns were what I wanted to see, especially if they had a motor car with wobbly wheels and a leaky radiator, which would finally explode leaving its driver with his hair on fire. The spreading of a tarpaulin over the sawdust meant that water was about to be thrown in considerable quantities. I was never disappointed.
More slapstick comedy could be expected at the pantomime at the Palace Theatre in Manchester. Whatever the story, the formula was the same – a principal boy who was clearly a young woman; a dame who was equally clearly a middle-aged man; two comedians who were robbers or broker’s men; a ghost invisible to the cast but not to the audience, who had to shout when they saw it; and a large sheet which descended from the flies with the words of a song we all had to sing. No pop-stars, no hackneyed catch-phrases, no blue jokes – just robust family entertainment.
In the summer, we would often go for an impromptu picnic. Mother would pack a basket with sandwiches of her beef-and-ham roll, or home-made strawberry jam, with a bottle of lemonade (also homemade) to wash them down. As a special treat, there would be sponge cake set in jelly. Then off we would go to Soldiers’ Nob on Cobden Edge or to ’The Furze’ above Podnor Farm.
Sometimes a few of our friends would come along as well, and then we were able to play hide-and-seek among the hushes. These excursions could also become expeditions for the picking of blackberries or whinberries, the scratched arms and stained fingers being regarded as a small price to pay for the pleasure of eating blackberry jelly or a juicy whinberry pie.
With the summer, too, came holidays, and we never failed to go to the seaside for two weeks each year. When I was very small, we stayed at Miss Nightingale’s boarding house in St Anne’s, a resort to which I was to return with my own family thirty years later. But from my being five years old, our holidays were always spent at a guest house of the Christian Endeavour Holiday Homes – by no means as pious and stuffy as the name suggests.
So we went to Kents Bank on the edge of the Lake District, to Penmaenmawr in North Wales, to Bideford in Devon, to Cromer in Norfolk, to Saltburn in North Yorkshire, and even across the water to Ventnor on the Isle of Wight. There were always a hundred or so others enjoying their holiday with us, and their laughter and shouts filled the house. Three days a week we made excursions to local beauty spots by charabanc – the precursor of the motor coach, with rows of seats, each row with its own door like a car, in an open gondola. If it came on to rain, the hood had to be raised, metal hoops erected to support it, and celluloid side-screens clipped into place. My greatest thrill was to sit alongside the driver and to watch the intricate co-ordination of hand and foot as he double-declutched and changed gear.
One evening there would be an impromptu concert – a packed programme of songs, recitations and humorous sketches; it was the Sunday School Concert all over again. During the week there were tournaments for those skilled at tennis and croquet. New friendships were made, and old friends from previous holidays were rediscovered. It was through the holiday home movement that I met the young lady who became my wife, but that story, too, must await another book.
All too soon the holiday came to an end. Our fortnight had run its course, and new arrivals would shortly take our place. We bought sticks of rock to take home to our friends and, clutching our buckets and spades, trailed forlornly towards the station and the train back home.
However, we sometimes had a second chance to see the sea before the next annual holiday. At Eastertime, the railway would run excursion trains direct to Blackpool from many local stations, including Marple. So we were able to see the Tower and the Pleasure Beach, to have donkey rides on the sands, and to paddle in the cold waves which lapped on to the beach.
Two great events took place in my boyhood, but since they were only two years apart, time has blurred them into one: the Silver Jubilee of King George V and the Coronation of King George VI. I cannot avoid comparing them with the Coronation of 1953, when everyone stayed at home, or visited a neighbour, to watch the happenings in London on television. With no TV to deter us from enjoying ourselves, the earlier events were each marked in Mellor by a procession through the village, led by the Scouts and Guides, Cubs and Brownies in uniform, carrying their flags.
Then followed a Sports Day, marred only by the tumble in which Vincent Hall, the postman’s son, broke his leg. A farm gate was removed from its hinges, and Vincent was borne away on this makeshift litter. In the Drill Hall, there was a village party, each child receiving a souvenir mug.
Every house was decorated with bunting and Union Jacks. Those of us who had fairy lights for the Christmas tree (yes, electricity had reached us by 1937!) dug them out of the attic and strung them around the front porch. Gold cardboard crowns, shields and lions were on sale in the stationers’ shops. My friend Norman Attwood, believing that the threepence he had been asked by a local shopkeeper for a crown was extortionate, went into a second shop and asked “How much are your threepenny crowns?” – a question which not only received the obvious reply, but was one which we never allowed him to forget.
A chain of beacons was arranged by the Scouts, running the full length of the country. As soon as a beacon was sighted on a neighbouring hill, the next was lit, and so on. Our beacon stood on Soldiers’ Nob, as it had done for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee and the Coronations of Edward VII and George V, Since he had lit all these earlier ones, John Taylor from Tarden Farm was called on to light those in 1935 and 1937. Years later, when as Scoutmaster I supervised the building of a beacon for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth, old John Taylor came out yet again to light it for us.
The Silver Jubilee brought my first opportunity to visit London. My father had contrived to audit an account in the city during the week of the celebrations, taking his junior Lawrence Delaney (who later found me a bicycle) with him. Towards the end of the week, Mother, May and I went up to join them, taking what was normally the School train from Marple, changing at Chinley on to the now defunct Midland route to St Pancras. For the first time in my life I sat in the dining-car, not to play push-penny, but to eat lunch.
We stayed at the Kingsley Hotel in Southampton Row (always a favourite of my father). Two events only from our visit stick in my memory. The first was being unable to finish a banana fool – a tall sundae glass full of bananas, sugar and cream, whisked to a froth – in a Lyons’ Corner House. It was most unlike me to be beaten in this way, and ranks as a record in the family annals.
The second event was more exciting, if somewhat frightening, We all went one evening with the crowds to stand outside Buckingham Palace and chant “We want the King!” Eventually he appeared on the balcony with Queen Mary, waving to their loyal subjects whilst the spotlights played on them and we cheered ourselves hoarse. May and I were each hoisted in rum on to Lawrence’s shoulders to get a better view.
Then the royal couple retired for the last time, and the crowd began to disperse. Try as we would, we could not keep hold of each other, and Mother and May were snatched from us to be swept away down the Mall with the throng. Worried and sad, we three males walked back to the hotel. It was midnight before the ladies returned; they had been carried into an Underground station only to have the gates locked behind them, thus cutting off their retreat. The crowds were too great for the already over-full trains, and it was hours before they could escape to join us.
Now we can spend our vacations on the other side of the world, and through the medium of television we can watch earth-shattering events as they happen. But nothing will compare with those high days and holidays of long ago, when life, however simple, was one big adventure.