Born on the landing, 1946

I was born at Twickenham Road in 1946 on the landing and put into a dressing table drawer as I had no cot but soon got one of a neighbour, the house had a small living room with a lovely coal fire and ovens by the side of the fire, my mom kept our pjs and vests and liberty bodice in the oven to keep warm in the winter, everyone hated the liberty bodice it had big rubber buttons down the front, my dad kept snow fire in the oven too it was kept soft for when we came home from school to put on our knee’s and back of our hands, as the cold got to them and made them very sore, the girl’s could not wear trousers then we had socks to just under our knee’s and it was so cold in the deep snow in the winter. The Kitchen’s and the hall ways had red cardinal floor’s which our mom’s kept clean and had to cardinal them every week on their hands and knee’s and we had what they called a dolly tub and a bosh to do the washing in, later on though we had a boiler with a ringer attached to it, much easier .washing drying and ironing was all done on a Monday, and bath night was always Sunday night, no one got more than one bath a week as they couldn’t afford to heat the water up everyday for baths and you had to share your bath too with your brothers and sisters, me being the youngest though did get the bath to myself as the others were growing up. also in the kitchen there was a big cupboard that you could walk in, the coal was kept in there, the coal my brothers had to fetch from the coal yard in an old pram. My lovely dad was a milkman and he had a horse and cart, he was up at 4 in the morning everyday to do his milk round, in the winter when it was icy your milk would be left on the step and the tops were frozen, the cream off the top of the milk was delicious. Every week we had a rag and bone man who used to collect any old rubbish you had and he used to give us a balloon.