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There was a small bump as if we had run over a rabbit or other small creature and
drove on in our new position on the road ... or so we thought.
This was not so for after we had travelled some way like this the fog lifted and we found out that what Mum had thought was the road turned out to be a path at the side of it and we had been driving with one set of wheels on the path and the other on the road. This also explained the bump which was as we crossed over the grass verge. We must have looked very funny driving home like that. The good thing was that we arrived back safely after our day out.
Another trip out in a different car was not as successful this one only got the outskirts of Winterton on the A1077 road when trouble developed with the car and while we were disappointed Dad managed
to turn round and head for home. Later Dad found that the trouble was with the drive in the back axle and the result was that he scrapped the car.
Not so much ‘kicking the habit’ as ‘kicking the punishment’!
Many young lads and some girls tried their hand at smoking as the grew up. I along
with Bill and John my brothers were no exception, done under the stern warning from our parents that if we were caught we would be punished. The punishment would be for each of us having to smoke a pipe of
tobacco that our father smoked.
The tobacco that Dad smoked in his pipe at that time was called Thick Twist the
only way to describe how it looked was that of a dried up puppy turd and was black and hard.
The way to make it smokeable was to cut a piece off and roll it in your hand till
it started to break up and then fill the pipe and smoke it.
Eventually one of us was caught smoking and as promised we were punished. Dad
filled his pipe and in turn we had to smoke it. My brothers went first and started to look rather ill, one more than the other. I followed and smoked the pipe which had no effect on me!
A number of
years after Dad’s death we were talking with Mum and the incident was brought up. This was when I told of how I had been cutting bits off the tobacco and keeping it till I had enough to fill a pipe and then smoking
it. Dad kept his tobacco and one of his spare pipes behind one of two brass ornaments on the mantelpiece where I gained my access to it well before we were told that we would be punished if caught. Until then no one
knew why smoking that punishment pipe had not affected me!
When I left school I took up smoking again both cigarettes and pipe and gave up
smoking twice.
The first time was when I got up to sixty a day and the second was a few years or so later when I would purchase a pack of twenty and only smoke two or three out of it due to my brothers coming round on the cadge as they had run out or they found that it was cheaper to let me spend my monies on them instead of them paying for their own cigarettes!
Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow!
While attending the Secondary Modern School that was in West Street Winterton (and
now is now used as the Junior School) those of us living in Winteringham were normally allowed to leave the school to attend the Doctors Surgery or to to do what was requested, as long as we had a letter written by
our parents asking that we may leave the school premises and explained why.I
In my particular case it was to attend one of the local hairdressers to have my hair cut. On the day in question I had my school
dinner and after giving the Teacher in charge my letter I was given permission and left school. The hairdresser that I went to was only a few hundred yards from the school and the pupils could be heard inside the
shop as I waited my turn. When I was about two thirds of the way through having my haircut we heard the bell go to start afternoon school. With haircut finished I ran back to be met at the gates of the school by my
classmates coming towards me as our next lesson was down in the library next to the Co-op shop on Market Hill. I was given instructions to go to my lesson tell the teacher that I was there and when the lesson
finished to report back to my form room and await the form master who would come and mark me into the register. When standing outside the door waiting, the teacher from the class before mine asked what I was doing
there and on my answer which he was not too pleased with marched me into his room, produced his cane, and proceeded to give me a number of lashes with it stating that I should have left the hair dressers when the
bell went and reported back for registration as I was and not have had my form master keep his register open all afternoon.
My form master asked what had happened and apologised for me being caned as he had
given instructions for me via other class members that I complied with and was pleased with my hair cut and said I looked quite smart.
There is a BUT in the above memory and that is that it was another TEN years before I had another haircut!
My view was that if I was punished for trying to look neat and tidy and having my
hair cut then why bother and I grew my hair long, as a large number of lads did like the pop groups of the time. I have had the odd trip to the hairdressers since that ten year gap to have my hair tidied up but it’s
still on the long side.
I‘ll let my eldest daughter have the last words on the subject of long hair and they were said just before she got married.
When told I was going to have my hair cut short, she was adamant that I wasn’t, saying “Not likely it stays long! It will not be my Dad with short hair.” ... And it’s still long!
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