My earliest memories are of the winter of 1963, it was one of the coldest of the 20th century in the UK and living as we were at that time on a farm where my Dad was working we had many days of snow and it was a long winter in a house that was many years away from having central heating. Coal fires were the only way to keep warm and that was only in the downstairs main room, with on cold winter mornings it was a regular occurrence to wake up and find patterns on the inside of the windows in the ice formed after an overnight frost. As I got older and we moved into a town in Southern England I was given the job of cleaning out the fire of the ashes from the previous night in the mornings. I would soon learn that the faster I did this job the faster the new fire would be built (soon also to be my job) and then some heat would be added to the room. In those days it was not unusual for kids to have many small tasks to be completed daily and in my recollections at least there were no spare pennies to go around so pocket money was never known.

My first school was over a mile from where we lived at that time. There was a group of us kids that had to walk to and from school everyday, back then it was safe to walk on the roads, it was not thought of for parents to take us to school. There were no school buses either.

Other things I remember form these early days of childhood were that TV only had 2 and then 3 channels to choose from. To change channel you had to physically touch the button or switch on the TV set (no remote control from the comfort of your armchair, quite possible we didn’t have one of those either). TV did not begin until late or middle afternoon at the earliest, except weekends it would begin mid morning. And it would be finished by midnight or not long after at the weekend.

Another of those distant memories is of the shops or stores. They were all a lot smaller than they are nowadays. None of those where you can buy everything under one roof. The opening hours were a lot different too, nothing open after 6pm and on a Sunday the only ones open were those that sold newspapers and then only for a few hours during that morning.

One final memory of mine from all those years ago was of the bathroom. Often there was not one, the toilet was often down the opposite end of the garden or yard and not a place small children wanted to visit after dark. The only showers we knew about were those of rain, and bath night was when the tin bath was brought out of its hiding place and filled in the kitchen. Talking of gardens, I hated having to assist out in ours, all that digging. I also had to dig into the garden all the compost from the vegetable peelings and spread the ashes about from those I had removed from the grate when cleaning the fire place earlier in the day. It was I feel a lot harder than how things are today but it also did me some good to learn all of those values that I still hold today.