Time for another article! I do apologise if I sometimes repeat myself but when you’ve written so many articles, it’s hard to always keep track!
In this article, I’ll write about my childhood in the Potteries in Castleford. I used to love living there. There was always a lot going on. I’d be about 11 or 12 years old and lived amongst a lot of interesting people. My grandma and grandad lived two doors away from our house. I lived with my parents and my four sisters, so, our house was always full of noise.
I used to go and visit old people and ask them if they needed any jobs doing or help with their shopping. A lot of them needed help, so, I volunteered to do this and run errands as many of them had bad legs. They let me keep the change from shopping which was usually a few pennies and occasionally a three-penny bit. I was always grateful for any money as I was very young.
My grandparents would ask me to put on bets for them at the bookies. I had to wait outside the shop and ask people to put on bets for me as I was obviously too young to do this myself. If they won, they would give me a three-penny bit. My grandma would also often go to Stockton-on-Tees to see her second family. My grandad didn’t mind as they had an unconventional type of marriage and often didn’t go out together; he liked going to the pictures (cinema) but they are all closed now – the nearest one is at Freeport which is a couple of miles from Castleford.
In Castleford, in Smithson Square, there was an old lady called Mrs Richardson. One day, I was playing netball with a girl called June Evans and Mrs Richardson saw us and asked me to go to the shops for her. She said her son was working and that she couldn’t go herself. She needed a loaf of bread and some potatoes. She also said she would soon be alone as her son was getting married and she would need someone to help her, and that, if I did so, she would give me some money. I said that I would ask my mother who agreed as it was quite near to home. My mother never had much money so I gave her what Mrs Richardson gave me.
I started going shopping for Mrs Richardson and once her son was married, she wanted me to stay and keep her company. So, every day, after school, I visited her home until one day she said she was expecting someone to visit her, and asked me go down the pitch-black cellar. But instead of fully descending, I sat listening on the top two steps. I could hear every word and soon realised that Mrs Richardson was in fact a money lender and that is why I had had to disappear.
Another time I told Mrs Richardson that I was going to Stockton with my grandma and would visit her on my return. Mrs Richardson asked me to bring her a teapot and gave me some money to bring her one from the market there. I went to Stockton and bought her a nice white teapot; soon we were on the train and was pleased with her purchase, and, when I thought I would examine it, it slipped through my fingers and broke. I was devastated and didn’t know how I could possibly now face Mrs Richardson.
Once home, when it was dark, I wrote a little note with the appropriate amount of money and shoved it through her letterbox. I was a very nervous child and didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t have the courage to visit Mrs Richardson again. The children with whom I played, told her of my predicament and she said I was a silly girl. But I never plucked up the courage to go see her again.
Bye for now. Love June. X.