TALE NUMBER 200 ON EAST LEEDS MEMORIES.

TALE NUMBER 200 ON EAST LEEDS MEMORIES
This month marks the 200th tale paraded for us on the ‘East Leeds Memories’ site so kindly and efficiently collected and archived for us by WordPress. Thank you WordPress for brilliantly allowing our tales to live, I am particularly grateful because it allows old East Leeds folk particularly ex-pats in places like Australia to remember their roots. Many who have contributed to the site since its beginnings on 2007 have passed to that great story collector in the sky but in a sense I believe that while we still read their tales they are still with us.
For the 200th anniversary I propose to reproduce the first two stories on the site in 2007 ‘The Pantomime’ by Joan Elliot (nee Dobson) and ‘Working in my Dad’s Butcher’s Shop’ by Eric Allen. Perhaps they are looking down on us?
ENJOY,

THE PANTOMIME
by Joan Elliot
My life in 1941 revolved around: going to school (St Hilda’s) and to the Easy Road Picture house on Monday and Thursday nights; these were the days when the programme changed. If we went with an adult the cost of admission was 7 ½ pence. We were very lucky in that my life long school and after school friend was Vera Wood; she had a sister older than us called Mary. Mary was a very lovely young lady and talented in many ways, she was particularly good for us for she could take us into the pictures and act as our chaperone.
School at that time was quite boring, Johnny North, our teacher, had been one of the teachers brought back from retirement to take the place of the teachers who had been called up for the war; he was far too old, must have been in his seventies and to us young ten year olds that seemed absolutely ancient. Then we got the ‘call to arms’ as the saying goes. The city of Leeds had decided to buy an aircraft carrier: ‘The Ark Royal’. It was think time! What could we do to help raise the money; Save jam jars? Collect rags? Neither of these seemed an option, we didn’t get enough jam to make saving the jars worthwhile and we had lots of uses for rags ourselves; rag rugs was one (if you don’t know what rag rugs were ask one of your elders). Then one of the gang came up with an idea: we’d have a concert.
At that time Frances Ladler, was producing the pantomime, Cinderella, at the Theatre Royal. That was the answer; we would do a copy of that wonderful show. Fortunately for us, the mother of one of the girls in our class was a cleaner at the theatre and she brought us home some old programmes left behind by theatre goers. At the back of Mr Wood’s garden in St Hilda’s Crescent, there stood a big shed, this was our property, or so we thought at the time – I think it really belonged to the railway, which ran along the bottom of the gardens {The Navvy}. We spent hours in that shed, always busy doing something or other. From now on it was to be our pantomime workshop.
First of all we had to get a cast together; there were plenty of willing girls but the boys were another ‘kettle of fish’. We managed to get Peter Dunhill to play Baron-de Broke and Keith Hobson was Buttons, Vera Atkinson played Cinderella and Vera Wood Prince Charming. I played Dandini. I can’t remember who played the ugly sisters but I remember that half our class at school were in there playing some part or other. From that very first day our lives were taken up with: planning, begging, sewing and borrowing old frocks to cut up and make into other things. At this point it should be remembered that at the time the war was in full swing and not a lot was left; clothes and food were on coupons, plus anything of any use was taken up for the war effort but we were given lots of help by our parents and relatives. After a lot of fun and planning we began to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
The next worry was: where to hold this magnificent production as the shed was certainly not big enough? The houses in St Hilda’s Crescent were in pairs and between each pair of houses there was a yard were the back doors of the houses faced each other. We decided that one of these yards was to be our theatre. We borrowed draw curtains for the bottom of the yard and draw curtains for the top. The scenery was painted on old rolls of wallpaper out of a neighbour’s attic. The stage at the top end near to the gardens was made higher by wood lent to us by another kind soul. I must say at this point that the generosity and kindness of all our parents, relatives and neighbours could not have been better, everyone by now wanted to help.
On the night of the show chairs came out of every house. Mrs Wood’s piano was put under the window and Mary Wood was the pianist. In the shed all the costumes made by the girls taking part in the show were ready.

The show opened and ran every night for a full week at two pence for an adult and a penny per child. We played to a full house every night for a week and raised a grand total of £20 for Ark Royal.

Great tale, Joan and there are still a dwindling few around who can remember that special week over 75 years ago!
*************************************************************
Working for my Dad in the Butcher’s Shop
By Eric Allen
My dad was a butcher and when I was a lad I used to help make the sausages. First I had to collect the ingredients. We hadn’t a car at the time so I had to take the butcher’s bike to Stoke and Daltons for the rusks, which went into the sausage meat. I’d have to collect a full sack and it was very large and heavy. I’d put the sack into the basket of the bike but it was so big and heavy I couldn’t then turn the handlebars properly. This of course made it dangerous to ride but then being stupid I always did try to ride – Well You never push a bike if there is chance to ride it do you? That bike was like a taxi. I’d regularly take our Brenda home to Knostop in the carrier; it was all downhill so we could make good progress. In actual fact, if just kids were involved I could get five on, three in the basket, one on the cross bar and myself.
When I had the ingredients back to the shop I’d begin to make the sausages proper. First I’d mix the ingredients, which made up the insides of the sausages (the sausage-meat), in a mixer. Then it was a matter of stretching the skin over the outlet of the mixer and turning a handle to force the sausage-meat into the skin. We used beast’s intestines for the skins in those days. The problem was they were not consistent in size. One day I got a really big skin – it was really huge. Undaunted I continued winding the handle to fill this huge skin until it had taken virtually the whole of the contents of the mixer, which was supposed to be enough to fill a whole batch of sausages and I just had this one giant sausage. When my dad saw it he went mad, ‘Silly b…..,’ he said, ‘who the b…. hell would want a sausage as big as that?

Gordon Brown and I were joint scores and bag carriers for East Leeds Cricket Club. The bag was a huge affair – it was bigger than us and heavy too being full of bats and pads and all the rest of gear wanted by the cricketers, it’s a good job it had two handles so that we could hold one handle each with both hands to get it off the ground. We had a real job manhandling it onto buses and trams for away matches, for this we would be paid two bob and our tram fare. We took it in turns to be scorer. Only one could be the scorer along with a scorer from the opposition. The beauty of being the scorer was you got a free tea. The one who was just the bag handler for the day had to ‘whistle’ for his tea or spend six pence of his bag money on a sandwich and a cup of tea. When East Leeds was playing at home it was always the highlight of the day for the scorer to have his tea in the pavilion along with the players.
Thanks for a great tale, Eric

The World We Have Lost

The World we Have Lost
Viewing that award winning Irish film The Banshees of Inisherin with its 1920s hovels reminded me of my own time in what now seems a lifetime ago when I was sent as a young boy to stay with an old aunt who lived a rural lifestyle in such an old stone built cottage attached to a farm many a mle from the neatest bus route. It was at a time when I was evacuated there to escape the expected bombing of Leeds in the Second World War.

The cottage had stone walls which were very thick and had tiny windows with deep sills filled with plants and ornaments it was devoid of: Electricity, gas, radio or TV, telephone or running water. There was a dry toilet out the back and a tap bringing water that tasted of iron out of the wall in the yard outside. News always ran late as there were no newspapers delivered either so news came by word of mouth if anyone deemed to call. Upstairs were two tiny bedrooms with one tiny window in the gable-end, you had to pass through one bedroom to get to the other. The lowing of the cattle was the only persistent sound but Oh! those country smells, the cows, the chicken bran, wood smoke from the fire and the smoky oil lamp and of course the terrible aroma from the dry toilet, the more pleasant smells were the lovely aroma of wild mushrooms we would pick on a morning, The lead filled wartime fresh green paint and also the lead scented petrol from the occasional motor car that called. Uncle would sit looking into the fire and adding to the smoke with his tobacco pipe. A bonus for me was the battalion of feral cats always around, There were no street lamps so the sky was always black velvet with a million stars and there were fields and woods for me to explore

My aunt’s own children were now grown and had left home but when they were young and enrolled in the nearest village school they had to walk miles over muddy fields which meant walking in bare feet and only putting their shoes on at the school gates or risk getting told off by the teacher for muddy shoes, one of those children, Muriel, returned for a nostalgic visit to her village school many years later and penned this poem. After her passing around the turning of this century I found the poem, the original of which I have on my wall at home and a copy of it I will include here for your pleasure.

A Village Remembered – Bramhope By Muriel Hird.

Is this the school fifty years smaller with the sound of voices singing country songs through open windows and the scent of bluebells from jars on windowsills?

Is this the old porch were many coats were thrown on fewer pegs, dominated now by the extension of the youth club.

A playground fifty years smaller where once a skipping rope flip-flopped on dusty grounds and was shared by all where droned the singing games, ‘The Farmer Wants a Wife.’ ‘Poor Mary Sits a Weeping’ and many more.

Where are the paths of adventure with hard baked soil and scent of conifer?

Instead the cramped houses of modern suburbia with their picture windows stand and almond and cherry trees stand where once horse chestnuts stood.

Gone too the fields where buttercups clung to bare legs and kingcups nodded.

The post office re-sited with a boutique for company.

The village blacksmith fifty years gone where eager hands pumped bellows midst the smell of burning hooves.

The village joiner fifty years gone where once young feet trampled shavings.

The Village Institute lives on but the grass is not so green where once tiny feet skipped around the maypole to a one two three hop.

The scents and sounds still to be remembered of a country village fifty years ago.

Those were very primitive conditions which we would not tolerate today in our luxurious 21st century world but you know there was a magic about county living which we seem to have lost, We are now a cosmopolitan nation and have embraced many folk from less happy lands than ours and for this we should be proud but just as these folk still, I’m sure, have a yearning back to remember their roots, would it be so wrong for us too to remember back to our own roots in that rural idyll before WOKE and when we stood alone.. I suppose modern UK is alroght butl old UK was alright too.