Chapter V
Toys and Things.

Toys, however simple, play a big part in any child's life. They enable the child to cherish something as his or her very own; they stimulate the imagination, and enable the child to have control over things and situations which would otherwise be the sole prerogative of the adult world. e.g. One can assume the rôle of mother, teacher, nurse etc. to a doll, or to a toy animal. Another can become a train driver, engineer, racing driver, tank commander and so on.

At the age of five, I had to go into an isolation hospital at Hayley Green, about five miles from home. There I stayed for six weeks having contracted Scarlet Fever. There were no antibiotics in those days and the fever was very infectious. I recall being put into an ambulance and becoming traumatically separated from parents. I was told afterwards that the house had had to be fumigated on the orders of the M.O.H. after I had been taken away. They certainly knew how to make a child feel contaminated and unwanted! Did I have to be told? "Lord, protect us from the dishonest honesty which is meant to hurt!"

I was allowed to see visitors - through the closed hospital window - and to converse as best I could.

It was whilst in Hayley Green that I developed a life-long hatred of liquorice - even more when it is pronounced 'lickerish'.

Medical as well as domestic opinion then seemed to be that 'keeping your bowels open' was the sine qua non of existence. Unaccustomed immobility caused me problems, and I was encouraged at frequent intervals with doses of liquorice powder stirred up in water. This is a most disgusting looking mixture, both in appearance and taste. It looks as though you could make army great-coats from it by a process of injection moulding!

Father kept me supplied with books, paper and pencils. He had bought about a dozen full length pencils, cut them in half and sharpened them, so that I had two dozen pencils to wear down between visits.

Having to stay in hospital over Christmas meant that such presents as I had there had to be destroyed when I left because they were 'infectious'. I was however promised another set of presents when I came home, and the folks were as good as their word. The most important of these presents was a gramophone. It was a toy one, but of good quality and it could play full sized records (78's). I was given two or three of the latter including one of Isobel Baillie singing 'I know that my Redeemer liveth" and 'Che faro senza Euridice?' from Gluck's 'Orpheo'. This was hardly a predictable choice for a five-year old, but it introduced me to the classics, especially to the 'Messiah' for which I have been perpetually grateful. Other records included a selection of Souza marches and the Poet and Peasant Overture. The two main record makers at that time were 'His Master's Voice' and 'Columbia' I sympathised with the dog's dilemma on the former label as I, too, could not understand how the sound came up from the record, through a needle, along a horn and out of a grille on the side of the gramophone.

Soon after this I acquired a clockwork motor car made of painted tinplate. Unfortunately this had some very sharp edges and I cut my finger rather badly on the underside of the running board. The cut 'turned septic' and so gave Father a chance to use his first aid skills. This involved, for some time, a nightly session of torture with very hot water and boracic powder. Protest was met with a threat to take me to the Doctor and have it lanced! - not exactly the way to endear yourself to the patient.

Had this accident happened today, a spot of penicillin ointment would have worked the trick in a day or two. How fortunate we now are.

One Christmas I was given a model stationary steam engine, but no-one had thought to buy the methylated spirit which was vital for raising steam. It was a long Christmas day, only relieved by finding Brazier's the Chemists open on Boxing Day when the necessary fuel was bought. This engine drove one or two models by elastic bands.

I remember being given another year a battery operated 'cinematograph' which projected images on to the wall from a short length of film.

The next major toy I can remember was a fairly big tipping lorry, loaded with six wooden crates with sliding lids and into which 'things' could be put. It had a heavy flywheel in the back axle, so if given a hefty shove, would continue to run for some distance. There was also a steering wheel which, when turned, would steer the front wheels.

At some time prior to this I had been disillusioned of the belief that steering wheels were coupled to the driving wheels and that it was the action of the driver in turning the steering wheel that actually propelled the vehicle.

Whilst on holiday at a variety of seaside resorts we acquired things like model yachts which could be guaranteed to run into a sort of doldrums in the middle of the yachting pond, and tinplate speedboats which corroded rapidly in sea water and hardly ever made it home.

Like most boys, I think, I longed for a train set, and this was forth-coming one Christmas. Having studied the catalogues avidly, I was disappointed to get not a Hornby, but a 'Bing' set, a well-known German make, which could be obtained wholesale from 'the warehouse' I was allowed to spread this out in the 'front' room when the latter was not required for other purposes. The set consisted of a locomotive and tender, three carriages and a set of rails which made an oval about 4ft. x 3ft. Like most clockwork engines of the time, it went too fast - the scale speed must have been about 90.m.p.h. and so it was inclined to de-rail on the bends. I soon found that by sliding off their roofs and loading the coaches with several of the lead figures which we had acquired over several Christmases and birthdays, the centre of gravity of the coaches could be lowered sufficiently to give better stability. This all goes to prove that sometimes it is not what you are taught that is important, rather is it what you find out!

The rails supplied with this train set were compatible with Hornby rails which were obtainable from 'Shaw's' the toy shop in Lower High Street which was both an Aladdin's cave and an unattainable heaven. At various celebrations I acquired extra rails, a level crossing, a station and points, whereby a siding could be organised.

I was not happy with the latter as it had no terminal buffer-stops, and everybody knew that buffer stops were essential. One day when I was playing with the train Jack Overton, one of the Gas Fitters, came in to do a maintenance job. He showed interest, and some days later I was presented with a buffer stop which he had made from a block of lead and some copper pipe. If Jack made it to heaven he can, I hope, accept the thanks of a small boy who still remembers!

In a similar way I was presented by Wilf Hall, who 'maintained' our 'wireless', with an electric motor which he had made himself from a magnet, lots of wire and a wooden commutator.

At the age of ten, having 'Passed the Scholarship', I was given my promised reward in the form of a really big Meccano set - size G - they were lettered at the time - which, the following year was upgraded to an 'H' - the largest but two. From then on, other toys paled into insignificance.

The exception was the later addition of a Meccano Aeroplane Construction Set. That set provided parts with which to build authentic-looking models of several of the types of plane which were common in the 30's, and included such things as model radial engines, and floats for seaplanes. Had I known, I would have kept this in its original box - they are probably worth a fortune today - but then, had I done so would I have learnt about aircraft construction?

More remarks about THE Meccano set will be found elsewhere. Bits of it survived until the 1980's when what did remain, including the clockwork motor, was shipped out to Canada in the charge of Mavis's nephew.

Manufactured toys were sometimes supplemented by home-made ones. I recall trying to make a boat to sail on the soft water barrels in the yard. The woodwork having been prepared, parts needed to be stuck together and I went down to Harrolds, the 'D.I.Y' shop (not known as that at the time) and enquired whether he had any waterproof glue. His reaction I well recall. It was a sort of bewilderment, mingled with uncertainty as to whether this lad was 'taking the mick'. I have since derived some satisfaction at the expansion of the adhesives industry whereby one is no longer limited to 'Seccotine' which, as I had already discovered, was NOT waterproof.

We did have an assortment of boats provided during the various seaside holidays which we enjoyed. There were wooden yachts, and the occasional tin-plate clockwork motor boat. The latter, under the influence of salt water soon disintegrated. Yachts tended to disappear over the horizon.

Another interesting marine toy was a small boat which had a 'boiler', fired by a small piece of 'Meta' fuel, which caused it to be jet propelled, long before Whittle invented the jet engine.

This boat was small enough to be sailed on the water butt.

During the early years at New Road I had a cricket set. Father played for the Gas Works team, and considered himself a bit of a demon bowler. Whether or not he had any ambitions for me in that direction I do not know, but he never seemed to want to give us any coaching. One day, a younger cousin, John Williams, came to visit and we started to play cricket.

I took the bat. Unfortunately, John's idea of bowling was to throw a large stone at my head, which bounced off and went through the kitchen window. Possibly it was this incident at a very early age which gave me a similar reaction to fast bowling as had another experience to liquorice powder.

Much play with the Cookson family next door was enlivened by using various domestic articles, and a good deal of imagination. A motor bike and sidecar was made simply by placing somebody's scooter alongside an old wooden ammunition box from the first world war and using a dustbin lid as the third wheel Dustbin lids made good shields, bows and arrows could be made from garden canes and string, and swords from any sticks that happened to be lying around.

Souvenirs of the war, however, were still around. Among these was a solar topée which Father had used in Egypt, a khaki 'cheesecutter' cap with an R.A.M.C. badge, and a wooden ammunition box. The Cooksons next door had a R.N. rating's cap with a band which read 'H.M.S. Furious'. With all this militaria we managed to put together a formidable 'combined force'.

I took with a grain of salt Joe's insistence that his father had been a General in the war, this being a little inconsistent with the naval rating's cap. At other times he would have it that 'H.M.S. Furious' alone had been responsible for the defeat of Germany, and that the Army had had very little to do with it.

From the distant time of 1999, the difference between 1918, when the first world war finished, and 1923 when I was born, seems to be very small, but in, say, 1930 when I was seven, that war seemed just to be part of distant history.

(In these latter days I find it odd to find someone with some grey hair who cannot remember what it was like in 1960!)

With this basic equipment we put together a tolerable 'Army'. As the eldest I was, of course, the General. Brother Paul was assigned some lesser rank with the peaked cap. Joe Cookson, the second eldest contrived to be a Captain with a rating's cap, and Geoff, the youngest, was a very ordinary seaman.

Our amphibious force waged pitched battles against imaginary Germans which we always won. Transport was contrived by using a scooter alongside the ammunition box, against the other side of which was rested the dustbin lid to be the sidecar 'wheel'. This did have a vague resemblance to a motor-bike and sidecar outfit - enough to fool the Germans anyway! Suitably shaped sticks provided the weapons, and with a bit of a time-warp, dustbin lids made excellent shields.

Discipline was enforced by dire threats to 'bash you' either with a broom, or a clothes-prop.

Later the Cookson's daughter, Margaret, was loosed from infantile confinement and caused difficulties when she wanted to join the 'army'. The A.T.S. had yet to come, so there was no equivalent rôle for this small female. I had a great deal of sympathy for 'Wjlliam' and his difficulties with Violet Elizabeth Bott.

In the days before television and when radio was in its infancy, evening amusement was often provided by an assortment of table games, including dominoes and 'Lexicon' which was a card game with letters, resembling the later 'Scrabble'. Standard playing cards were verboten as they were connected with gambling. which, after alcohol and fornication were THE Non-Conformist mortal sins. There were also 'paper and pencil' games such as 'Consequences' and 'Bird, beast, fruit, flower, vegetable, fish' in which a letter was announced and everyone would have to write down things which began with that letter. One learnt that there were such things as Quaggas, Quails, and Quinces, but nothing much began with X!