‘Hi De Hi’ by Joyce Hayward

Many years ago, when the children were young, I took them all to the dentist for a check-up.
Patients had to ring a door bell and wait outside for the door to open electronically. After it had opened, we all went into the adjoining waiting room and were sitting amongst a few more elderly, grim-faced, magazine-reading individuals when the door bell rang to the tune of ‘Hi De Hi’. This was a TV favourite at the time.
The door opened slowly, a patient walked in and our eldest son greeted him in a loud voice like Ruth Madoc. ‘Hi De Hi,’ he said.
Whereupon, the chap wryly smiled and sat down.
Needless to say, I was gobsmacked because, of the four children, Michael was the quietest one. I just found it hilarious and hid my face behind the pages of a magazine, shaking quietly with laughter and tears running down my cheeks.
The younger ones kept asking, ‘What’s the matter, Mum?’; but I couldn’t answer. They were not old enough to understand why it was so funny or understand the joke.
Needless to say, even to this day, I smile when I recall it. Our son still has a dry sense of humour and loves shows featuring stand-up comedians.

'The Tin Box' by Jan Lloyd

The pitter patter of rain on the caravan roof as it pours down on the tin topped box.
Packed like sardines in our seaside home I listen, wrapped up in the bunk below.
My brother sleeps on in the bed above, our parents are stirring in the room next door.
Seagulls cry out as the downpour persists, my thoughts turn to what we will do on our first day away.
Will we be walking, running or jumping. swimming, biking or fair ground riding.
Instead we sit staring through windows, pressing our faces against cold misty panes, hoping and longing for the drizzle to clear.
Board games are played to stop boredom descending until the sun peeps through and the beach beckons us out.
We run out into the salty air, collecting shells and splashing in pools, glad to be free and racing about.
Our cheeks are red and the sky is blue but the billowing clouds pile up and it starts to darken.
The pitter patter of rain returns and we run fast and breathless, back to our tin box for shelter, staring out once more eating hot soup and toast, pleased to be safe in our holiday haven.

'Oops' by Louise McClean

Shortly after I retired from teaching, in the early nineties, I agreed to do voluntary English teaching in Poland for six months.
The Polish people were wonderful to me, so friendly, generous and patient and I was very happy there.
Together with the Polish teacher of English, I was often asked to dine at their homes. I soon learned not to admire anything or, at the end of the evening, it would be wrapped up and presented to me as a gift. They had so little, but wanted me to have whatever I had admired.
One winter’s evening while visiting in Magda’s house, I noticed some really strong shoes by the door and remarked that these were exactly what I needed. The shoes I had brought with me were not nearly strong for the severe Polish weather and the deep water filled holes in the roads in which a small child could have drowned! I decided I would look for some similar in Warsaw the next weekend.
Later in the week Magda’s husband, Miki, knocked at my door, said something in Polish ( dear knows what) and handed me a brown paper parcel. I took it, thanked him and off he went. On opening the parcel I found the same shoes I had admired earlier. Magda was giving me her shoes. This would never happen in England where no-one would give worn shoes to another, but it was quite common in Poland, where everything was in short supply.
Now I had a problem. Should I risk hurting Magda’s feelings by returning the shoes or should I gracefully accept them and be thankful? I decided to keep the shoes.
I wore them to Warsaw the next weekend and several times the following week. They were great; the right size, waterproof and very comfortable - in fact they were perfect in every way. I was delighted with them.
One afternoon, while walking home from school, Beata asked me if I still had Magda’s shoes. I said I did and they were wonderful and wasn’t it generous of Magda to give them to me? Beata stared at me, howled with laughter and informed me that Miki had given me the shoes to pass on to her so she could take them to the menders, but because of the language problem I hadn’t understood Miki!
I hadn’t been given the shoes at all; it was a mistake! I was mortified and so contrite. Beata, on the other hand, thought it was hilarious and fortunately so did Magda when she was told. I, of-course, apologised profusely.
The story of the shoes spread among staff and pupils and caused much merriment in school and much embarrassment to me! I decided to make more effort to learn Polish, but, alas, I never did master the very complex Polish language.

'You Have Arrived' by Rosie Pugh

You have arrived
quickly but gently
and the place has become alive:
brown earth turning green,
wild primroses on the grass verge
and trees cloaked in blossom.

You have arrived,
flowers flutter in the warm breeze,
birds sing as they gather twigs
making a new home for their young
and lambs skip by their mothers

You have arrived
even in the busy town
where people crowd the pavements
and walk with a fresh spring in their step

Yes, you have arrived
bringing the warmth of sunshine

'A Wet Weekend at the Glastonbury Festival' by Elisa Hill

A wet weekend? Wet feet! Wet kids! Ankle deep mud. A sea of tents, stretching up the surrounding hills. Old tarpaulins to keep the rain out! Large, old buses converted in to homes. An instant city!..
One day this was an empty field, with a few bored looking cows. A few days later it has a new identity. There are: places of worship, fairground attractions , shops, buskers, open showers, smelly toilets and dogs running free. After a few days it’s an empty field again and all that life and energy have gone.
Is this how it’s been all over England. Once there were vibrant living communities and now they have gone. An iron age village where a wood now stands - once a saga played out as engrossing as a soap opera. Whole families lived out their existence, babies born, old ones died; and now no trace, except a few broken cooking pots.
We live in an ancient land. The hillside I live on is covered in red brick. Maybe once this was a sacrifice site for the druids or a temporary home for animal drovers who watched their flocks graze below? Many people walk as I walk, many mums thinking of their children. Fathers despairing over what to put on the table, an empty pocket, soon empty bellies again.
How many families have lived in my house in the last hundred years? One of them, the granddad of my son’s friend, who walks past my house and stares at the dirty front step, his job to scrub till it shined, as a child planted the apple pip which grew into our 60 foot apple tree. When he lived here his mum was ill, terminal, his father’s mistress moved in when she died it was not a happy house. I hear children cry for their mother in the night and they are not the cries of my children..
Do archaeologists see this land as it was then? Is it an overlay of time zones, repeating like a video. Do they see battlefields as the places they are today; or do they see them as the scenes of chaos, grief and despair they once were?

'When the Bomb Fell' by Marina Jeavons

I was crossing the old wooden stepping bridge on my way to school with my best friend Brenda - when the bomb fell!
As we skipped, jumped and hopped the steps as was our wont, Brenda suddenly stopped and turned to me, “Course ya know he aint yer real Dad is he.”
“Wot ya mean? He aint me real Dad. ‘Course he is!”
“No, he aint. Me Mom told me. That’s why them cousins o’ yourn keep hitting ya, they doh like yer.”
My heart bumped about in my chest as I pondered her words and I went very quiet for a moment. Then retorted, “Oh doh be daft, yer doh know wot yer talking abaht!”
We carried on to school, but for the rest of the day my thoughts kept going back to the conversation on the bridge and episodes at home that had often puzzled me. I hurried home that afternoon on my own, I didn’t wait for Brenda, nor did I hop and skip along the bridge, I went straight to the little back kitchen where Mom was, as ever, slaving away at the kitchen sink, where all our washing, and cooking preparation was done. “Mom” I said, “Brenda said Dad isn’t my real Dad, he is isn’t he?”
Mom turned and looked at me. She didn’t have to say anything. The look on her face said it all.
I turned and ran and ran and ran, tears running down my face. I reached the park and clambered into the basin of the old iron fountain that had not seen water for years. I lay there cocooned and hidden as I cried. Lots of things started to make sense. The times I felt left out. Dad’s relatives not bringing me presents back from holidays or at Christmas, yet my brothers and sisters getting them. When I had been punished for misdoings with the belt and Mom saying “Stop that, you have no right”. My elder sister Kath not living with us, but staying at Gran’s and many more such episodes.
I lay there till night fell.

'Waiting' by Angeline Wheeler

I was summoned at about three in the morning. Now I know why this hour is known to some workers as the graveyard shift, your body feels dead and your mind sluggish, but still I dressed and went. I walked into the room. It felt stifling, airless and my attention was drawn to the huge, bright light, angled low in the centre of the room. On closer inspection it was three lights in one, like a huge monsters eye gazing intently, intimately on the sole occupant beneath.
Oh when will you arrive?
I approach and look into the woman’s face and see the frightened eyes of the child looking back. A single tear slips down her face. I touch her arm for there is little else I can do for her now. The monitor by the bed beeps steadily and the red light flashes intermittently.
Oh when will you arrive?
I sit on the lone plastic chair near the chair bed that she is on and watch her as she dozes for a few minutes. Away from the monster’s eye in the semi-darkness I look round this dull room, dull blue walls, dull brown floors that curve slightly where the floor meets the wall and I notice the grimy line where both meet. Needs a good scrub this place does. Further around, one sink, one towel dispenser, one clock, oh the clock, eyes focus again and again, time is almost standing still.
Oh when will you arrive?
One closed blind. I wonder if there is a window behind it, if so I’d love to smash it just to let some air in but it may hide something unspeakable. She is awake now, in pain and I look to the monitor by the bed still sending out its signals. THEY come and another machine is set close to her and a drip fastened in her arm. She can not last out much longer.
Oh when will you arrive?
I look up to the ceiling and there is some attempt at artexing having been made but that now, is dinghy, faded to a greyish white. She moans and my heart goes out to her for this is now her journey and one she faces alone. It is nearly time, nearly over they tell me as once again they make their checks on her.
Oh when will you arrive?
Please, please let it be soon because the woman is losing strength fast. THEY come again, exchange low pitched words indicating urgent attention will soon be needed. The woman and myself, we both need you to arrive. I glance at the monster eye overhead, which never wavers is dispassionate, and send up a silent prayer. I am informed you are on your way. You are close now and then finally, at
six thirty in the morning you arrive.
I look at you and I love you. I hand you to your mummy whose face is very tired but oh so jubilant. Welcome to the world my beautiful grandson. The light is switched off and I leave the room, leave mother and son to rest. I walk out into the cool, fresh, morning air and let the tears roll then dry on my face, unashamed, for haven’t I just discovered and witnessed the Greatest Show on Earth?

'The Humpty-Dumpty' by Peter Hodges

The Humpty-Dumpty of my childhood was nothing to do with a nursery rhyme. Yet to me it was no less magical. It was a field, if it could be called that, for it could not be put to much use, but in there lay the name. Humps and bumps, scrub thorn and rabbit holes, gullies, pieces of iron, brick and lumps of concrete, and this was our playground. A magical place where mist might sneak up from the canal that bordered the far side. Or the wind would scurry and sigh. Or snow would fill hollows and our sledges would drop in and we with them.
Humpty Dumpty, now there was a name. As I go back to those days the name gathers a momentum of memories. Then it was just a name made up by us kids because it identified where we played. Now, of course, I know why it was like that. My village was valued for sand. Dark red and smooth, it was in great demand by Black Country metal founders. It readily took the shape of the pattern, would hold firm when the metal was poured, easily cleaned away when the casting was cool. All around my village were quarries. Open pits, sheer cliffs, made by whomsoever gained the rights, and when exhausted, gone bankrupt, or simply died, these places were abandoned. A pit or a spoil heap, a waste that to nature was never waste for long, quickly became a playground.
Now, as I look across from the stile on the cliff – or where the stile and cliff used to be for both are gone to way make for houses and mothers with pushchairs – I wonder how much I recognise. The humps and the bumps, are they in my imagination? Do I really see them? Is the old path part of my memory or is it also imaginary? Am I in the same place? The right path? From where I used to live to the bridge where we would wait for the trains. To laugh and cough as smoke blew in our faces. To wave at the engine driver who never waved back. Between hedges and old farm shedding to where I now stand. Is all this what I once knew? Where we hunted for rabbits and never caught one, raided birds nests knowing it was wrong. The canal's still there. Narrow boats now. Then it was barges pulled by horses with noses in oat bags puffing out dust at each laborious step.
Old Creswell's horse lived on the Humpty Dumpty. A large white beast that, to us, was part of the place. Never doing anything but wander and graze, never bothering us, and we never bothering it. Now gone, like Old Cresswell's gone. Like Humpty Dumpty has gone because we all grew up and left and the name came with us.

'The Move' by Rosie Pugh

I sat in the picture house and became part of a fantasy world for a few short hours. I wondered if what I saw was true for I had never seen it happen in my everyday life. I was fifteen and was just finishing my second holiday job before going back to the polytechnic college in the autumn term
On the way home we went to the sea cliff and dangled our legs over the edge watching the sea lap the sandy beach below. From one of the café’s music was filtering through playing ‘Mary Lou’. A dark blue, velvet sky hung above where the stars shone. The moon peeped through and the sound of the ocean was near by. It was heaven. But when I went home I would receive news that would break my heart and change my life forever.
Nothing had prepared me for the shock when Mum greeted me with the news that we were off to England. England to me was where my father had gone to find work. I begged and pleaded, but to no avail, this nightmare would not go away. I was leaving my beautiful Ireland. Mum’s health was deteriorating and she was concerned that we would be split up. I was forbidden to let our father know.
I didn’t fully understand because the issues were never explained. In those days children just did as they were told. Everything was sold, even the beautiful Bible that was our father’s. All that we took was what we stood up in and a few extra items in a suitcase.
We went to say goodbye to friends and cousins of Mum’s near Great Uncle Barney’s place. And we made our last goodbyes to the mountains, sea and surrounding fields of Frosses and Meenbrock.
My brothers were only seven and ten. How they felt I don’t know. Even today it’s not mentioned. We stayed at the Mc Nulty’s before we departed in the morning. My pain was so great I ran away. I was engulfed in a sea of tears that ran down my face as fast as my legs were running. But there was no place for me to hide. I feared that if I stopped I would crumble into pieces. Eamonn my friend found me. There was a search party out looking for me. Reluctantly I went back; I was terrified. I was leaving everything behind that I loved and the place where I felt safe.
Much of the journey I don’t remember, except sailing across the rough sea, which was horrific. We huddled on deck: my brothers Philip and Johnny clinging to our mum; me gazing across the ocean - tears as wild as the sea would not stop running down my face. The pain in my chest was fierce. I could not breathe. People were huddled together, crying and being seasick. The sky was as dark as the sea below. Waves tossed the ship from side to side as it made the journey across the ocean. How long we sailed I don’t remember. I had switched off. As we drew near people were shouting and pushing getting ready to leave the ship.
When we disembarked, I saw tall buildings, fast cars and no smiling faces. I did not know our destination at the time; only Mum knew. We boarded a coach that would take us to Scotland to some friends of Mum’s. I stayed outside as I did not like the feel of the area and it would be years later that my brother Philip would tell me the name. Mum emerged from that place and once more we boarded a coach where we slept for the night.
We arrived in Birmingham with no place to stay and wandered the streets looking for help. Finally, Mum found an organisation that helped immigrants; funny though, Mum and Dad were not immigrants and neither was I but because we came from living in Ireland we were classed as one. We found a room for the night, and then the next morning we were moved again; where, we did not know. What was to become of us?
Our father knew nothing of these plans. We had not seen him that summer. What had gone on for Mum to bring us? The light of the early morning filtered through the window of the small room that the four of us shared that night. It was cold as we emerged into the light of the day to once more wander the streets until finally we were put in touch with a woman with a grown up son in Yardley.
Time went by and Mum went to meet Dad and that was when all hell was let loose. Once more it was my fault. He roared at me. Why did you not tell me what was going on? I started to explain. No one wanted to listen.
In due course we moved to Chester Road. My parents rented the top flat of a very large house, which was the attic. It was both the sitting room and my parent’s bedroom. My brothers had a room next door and my room was on the second floor. By then I was working at Woolworth’s. I had to hand over my wage packet to my father unopened.
After a couple of years I left home and by nineteen I was married.

'Tales of a Carer ( Number 2 )' by Peter Hodges

Reg is six-foot-six. His thinning hair brushes the top of a standard doorway. This means his white cane is so long that it stretches out in front of him. A cane is chosen for the individual: length because the handle is held at chest level; tip type to suit terrain and likely hazards.
Meeting Reg in a doorway is a hazard in itself. If you don't see the ball tip come nipping through like a rat out of a hole, it's between your legs before you know it.
Cars on pavements are a particular bane to the visually impaired and here the stick offers a kind of perverse satisfaction. Whereas the cane will detect the vehicle, the tip may well go under the bumper or be caught in a wheel arch; the consequence of which can be a bent cane or the tip broken off. The stick may not notify of the hazard and the user may well get barked shins or a bang on the face. This leads to a sudden surge of anger and a rush of adrenaline. If anyone is in the vehicle or, indeed, in the vicinity, they will be adequately informed of the situation as that stick soundly smacks each body panel as it passes. Well worth it, one might say.

'At the Bottom of My Garden' by Maureen Bradley

Every year Blackpool Illuminations caused chaos by the volume of traffic that queued up outside my house, which was situated on the Blackpool Road, on the outskirts of Preston. It was like this from September to November each year. I suppose we got used to the noise of the cars and coaches and the frustration of trying to cross the road.
If I walked down the garden and opened a small gate in the fence there was a totally different scene. I stepped out into a park where I had spent many happy hours as a young girl.
My dog Buster went for a walk there every day and loved to have such an expanse of grass to run after balls and sticks. I played putting, pitch & putt and tennis with my friends. I often went to the bowling green to watch my granddad and uncle play bowls.
In the middle of the park there were some woods and a pond that always had a few ducks on. It was a good place to play hide and seek. We used to pick bluebells, primroses and make daisy chains.
On a Saturday afternoon I used to watch the local cricket teams play and then the football teams later in the year.
It is only now as I look back that I think how very fortunate I was to have such a lovely park at the bottom of my garden.

‘Walking in the Dark’ by Joyce Hayward

That night we had gone to a ball in the local town hall, leaving my parents to care for our four very young children who would be up early – if not awake during the night itself. So it was imperative that we got home at a reasonable hour. Also, we needed to milk a herd of cows ready for milk collection at 8.00am.
We had left the town and were going up a gradual bank when the old, green Volvo estate car ground to a halt. We tried in vain to get it to go; but to no avail. There was no option; phone boxes were far away ( no mobiles then ) and so there was nowhere to ring for help. We realized we had no alternatives, so we had to leg it home in all our finery – and me in high heels too.
We knew the family at the first farm we passed; but at that time of night there was no way we could call there for help as they had an Alsatian guard dog because there had been a spate of farm fires and the arsonist was still at large in the vicinity.
When we reached the next tiny hamlet, about a mile further along the road, our footsteps disturbed every dog in the district; but no one was about and everywhere was in darkness.
By now I was beginning to get very weary and footsore and clung on to my husband. The wind was getting up and the trees started creaking. The leaves in the ditches were rustling and shadows appeared everywhere. Owls were shrieking and things were running across in front of our path. By now, I was scared stiff and as I was never keen on the dark, my imagination was beginning to run riot.
Eventually we heard a vehicle approach from behind; but it passed and turned off at the next lane. So we carried on regardless.
A few minutes later another drove up from the direction in which we had just come. The car slowed down and a voice said, ‘I thought it was you two – I saw your car on Birch Bank. Do you want a lift?’
You bet your life we did and he took us home.
He was a young neighbour of ours who lived in a lane overlooking our house. In fact he had passed our car and gone home. But then decided to drive along the lanes until he returned to find us in his headlights.
Years later he and our eldest son are now brothers-in-law having married two sisters from a neighbouring village.