The room is warm and quiet, the silence broken only by the gentle ticking of the small clock on the mantelpiece and the occasional hiss of the fire as the logs and coal settle. The smell of warm clean clothes, hanging around the fire on the clothes horse, permeates the room. The hearth rug is cosy, inviting and I spread out my Disney snap cards, face down, on its bumpy surface. I feel safe and secure. Happy in the knowledge that Mum is at work in the adjacent kitchen, and no-one would know that I am there, cocooned in the surrounds of the washing. There is a knock on the back door. It’s George the Co-op insurance man. He always comes on Monday. His money and the book are laid out on the table ready for him. “Good morning Mrs. Keech” he says “How d’y’do”. He always says this and raises his hat on the words How d’y’do. Is it magic I think to myself? Could he say How d’y’do without raising the hat? Would the hat raise itself if he forgot? It’s all a mystery to me, the little girl secreted away inside the clothes horse. I’m not sure if George even knows that I am here as he ticks off the payment in the book on the table. He never speaks to me. I’m glad about that as I would immediately retreat into my shell. Besides I don’t want anyone to break the spell of my little hideaway. When he has gone I continue with my game, picking out and pairing up the round Disney snap cards. My favourite is the Bambi card, blue with a circle of pink flowers round the edge, Bambi’s face smiling out of the middle.

After a while Mum calls from the kitchen. “Would you like to help mince the meat?”

Scrambling up I hurry into the kitchen. Mincing the meat with the little mincer screwed on to the worktop in the kitchen is a favourite job for me on Monday mornings. Mum has already cut up the remains of the Sunday joint and she feeds it, along with an onion, into the mincer while I turn the handle, catching the mince in a glass dish. The dinner is now ready to be topped with mashed potatoes, heated in the oven, topped with a can of baked beans and returned to the oven for the final heating up just before Dad returns from the shoe factory for his dinner at Twelve o’clock . A knock at the door heralds the arrival of the coal man and I scuttle back to my hideaway and watch from behind the lace curtains, as they carry the bags of coal down the yard and into the coal barn. Their black faces highlight the whites of their eyes, which glisten when they look at you. I am frightened and stay in my safe cocoon until they have brought in the correct number of bags and left by the back gate.

“Bup” a cheery voice calls. The co-op bread lady arrives up the entry and calls out to attract the attention of Mum and our next door neighbour Mrs. Timpson. She holds an enormous basket containing a variety of different bread. I long to have the exotically named cottage loaf or the barrel loaf with marks round the outside, indicating where you should cut it, but Mum chooses a white tin loaf as these make the best sandwiches. I look longingly at the basket and receive a smile from the bread lady. I’m not afraid of her. She is always happy and smiling.

If asked I would probably say that this is my first memory, or the one that probably sums up the little girl that I was all those years ago. Home was an end of terraced house, 156 Queen Street, Rushden, next to the King Edward VII pub.  I was born on the sixteenth of September 1948, the third child and only daughter of Lillian and Leslie Keech, in the front bedroom of the house, which, at the time, was lit by gas light and heated with coal fires.

As there was no bathroom, washes were taken in the big kitchen sink. The weekly bath night (Friday) was a mammoth task for Mum and Dad. Water was heated in the large gas copper and the long, thin, tin bath, which all week hung on a nail on the outside wall of the barn, was filled with buckets full of steaming hot water followed by buckets of cold until the correct temperature was reached. It was a luxury when we had a bath cube to share to scent the water. Mum and I only of course – perfumed water was considered sissy for men and boys. Lifebuoy soap was the order of the day for them. In later years men began to use aftershave and the favourite was “Old Spice”. Dad had a shaving bowl too which had “Cedar Wood” shaving soap in it. This was a Christmas present from me and he used it lovingly for years and “Cedar Wood” became another favourite. What a luxury this was after years of Lifebuoy and carbolic. Eventually “Camay” came into our lives, the rich creamy lather supposedly enhancing our skin and giving it a “healthy glow”. Nothing quite like the healthy glow achieved from the harsh scrubbing with “Lifebuoy”! We had Gibbs toothpaste which came in a tin. This was a hard block and, by wetting your toothbrush, then scrubbing it over the hard paste you got a foamy lather on your brush with which to clean your teeth. There were two colours, blue and pink. Blue had a minty taste but the pink was a bit like germoline. Health and Safety executives today would be appalled as it would be considered very unhygienic with germs just lurking on the paste waiting to attack your toothbrush. It’s very strange how people didn’t seem to be so ill then and didn’t keep popping off to the doctors. Perhaps it is true what they say that a little bit of muck never hurt anyone. Maybe we’re too clean and worried about germs today!

The toilet was situated down the yard – a tiny room with the door open at the bottom through which the wind whistled fiercely in the winter. You didn’t hang around in there for long. When it snowed in the winter the first job for either Dad or the boys was to make a path down the yard to the toilet. If it kept on snowing, they kept on clearing. It could be a very slippery task to get to the toilet when it froze over and so a lot of salt was used to help keep it clear. Dad also sprinkled the ashes from the fireplace over the frozen snow as these made it easier to grip to your shoes. I often waited until I was absolutely desperate before venturing to the toilet. At night you had to take a torch with you as there was no light as we had no electric. This could be quite a tricky operation. The torch, placed on the floor while you attended to your business, cast eerie patterns and shadows on the wall. Spiders scurried out of the gaze of the torch’s beam, hanging precariously on the ceiling over your head. Not a place for the nervous or faint-hearted. After everyone had gone to bed, potties, kept under the bed and commonly called “Jerries” or “Guzunders”, were used and emptied in the morning. Toilet paper was hard and rough (Izal) and if you ran out before the weekly shop, newspaper was cut into squares and hung on a piece of string from a nail in the door. Once a year, in the Spring, the toilet room was white-washed to clean up the walls after the winter.  The white-wash mixture, made from a block and mixed with water, was stirred, usually by me, in a bucket with the copper stick (this was a stick used to stir the washing and take it out of the boiling water in the copper). Dad emerged from the task completely covered in white as the runny mixture  dripped everywhere. When it was dry you had to remember not to lean on the walls as it dried very powdery and best clothes could easily be ruined with white marks. Notices proclaiming “Now wash your hands” and “Don’t lean on the walls” were fixed to the toilet door.

Sue Aged 9 in her 'Easter Outfit'

It sometimes took days to get the washing dry and there was nearly always a large clothes horse around the fireplace in the living room. This was one of my favourite places to play as the clothes horse kept out the draughts from the door and I felt snug and secure, happy to be in my own little world.

As we had a coal fire the chimney had to be swept regularly. This was done by Mr. Evans, who used his traditional sweep’s brushes until electricity was installed. All the furniture in the living room including the carpets had to be removed. Mum and Dad did this last thing at night and Mr. Evans usually came about 6.30am . I never saw him as I wasn’t allowed to get up until he had left, but I always heard him as the room echoed with the lack of furniture. After he had finished, Mum and Dad replaced all the furniture before going off to work.  

We had a radio which was powered by an “accumulator” (a bit like a car battery) which needed to be topped up every so often. The boys would trundle it down the street in the wheelbarrow to Ivor Espin’s Bike shop in Queen Street . Ivor supplemented his bike sales and repairs by re-charging batteries.

We didn’t have a television until I was about twelve and so evenings were spent doing a variety of crafts – knitting, embroidery, sewing as well as doing jigsaws. We enjoyed listening to the radio and serials such as “Paul Temple” and “Dick Barton-Secret Agent” were great favourites. A once a week episode always ended on a cliff hanger so that you wouldn’t dare to miss the next week’s episode. Some of my favourite memories are of sitting by the light of the coal fire, listening to the radio and toasting bread on a long brass toasting fork. On Fridays Mum and I used to go to my Aunt Flo’s house to watch “Take Your Pick” hosted by Michael Miles, and “Emergency Ward 10” on her television.

Days were punctuated by the Co-op factory siren. This sounded at intervals to let the workers in the factory know that it was time to get back to work. It would sound ten minutes before time followed again five minutes later, by which time workers should be ready to clock in.

  One of my favourite pastimes was sitting on the wall waiting for my Dad to arrive home from work, collecting car numbers as they went by. I usually only collected three or four numbers a day as most people either walked or had a bike. If you had a car you only used it at the week-end or to go on holiday.

Another activity that always drew a crowd was when the steam roller came to repair the roads. Huge vats of steaming tar would be put on the road, followed by gravel which was then pressed into the tar using the huge rollers of the steam engines. The road and the nearby house shook under the weight and noise of the rollers.

At the week-ends the ice cream man would arrive on his bike which had a huge refrigerated box on the front. Ice creams were either rectangles that were eaten with a wafer each side or cornets. These were made with little round blocks of ice cream which had a circle of cardboard round the edge which was removed once the ice cream was in the cornet.

Often the knife and scissor grinder would come round to the houses to see if we needed our scissors or knives sharpening. He was very exciting to watch as his bike had a grinding wheel on the front. After propping up his bike he would pedal really fast and the grinding wheel would rotate sharpening the scissors and making sparks fly.

I spent a lot of time with my Dad. How I loved Saturday mornings. This was the time Dad spent on his allotment and I went with him to allow Mum time to go shopping and clean the house. The allotments covered the area that is now housing in Short Stocks, just past the cricket ground, and most men had a plot to cultivate their vegetables. We had a little shed where Dad kept his tools, string and old newspapers, half opened packets of seeds etc. There was also an old potty in case I needed “to go”. I can smell that shed now as I think about it – musty, damp and earthy, with grass growing through the floorboards, but the memory of it makes me smile. Dad would hang his coat on a nail by the door and put the flask and biscuits on the shelf for later. I used to enjoy looking to see if the little patch of violets that peeped out from under the shed were flowering. If they were, Spring was around and Summer not far away. I pottered about – not doing much- holding the string, thinning out carrots, picking plump pea pods and broad beans, pulling beetroot. We ate the biscuits and had a drink from the flask. We didn’t wash our hands but came to no harm. Dad grew flowers as well and the last job of the day before going home was to pick a bunch of flowers for Mum. Dad couldn’t afford to buy flowers but my Mum had a bunch of flowers every week. Pinks were my favourites as they smelt so beautiful, but he also grew Michaelmas daisies and Esther Reeds. Everything was piled (sometimes even me) into the home-made barrow for the return journey.

I enjoyed the freedom of the allotment and learnt quite a few tips on how to grow things. Dad gave me my own patch in the back garden and I grew marigolds, deep blue cornflowers and snap dragons. One of my favourites in the garden was a dark red peony which grew in the corner and flowered for most of the summer. I used the petals to make “scent”, stirring them in a pot of water with a stick. Tall foxgloves grew up against the fence and I was fascinated to watch the bees buzzing in and out of the tiny flowers on each stem. I spent many happy hours in the garden, poking about with a stick, mixing mud, watching worms and spiders and sowing seeds. The back garden was my playground. There were not any children living near to us and as a consequence I spent a great deal of time on my own amusing myself. I played two-ball upon the wall, skipped endlessly – forwards, backwards, cross hands – chalked out hop-scotch grills, played with my Hula-Hoop, sat in a deck chair and read a book and learnt to spin plates on a stick (plastic ones). Sometimes I would clean the windows for my Mum.

For a long time Mum talked about getting a piano. She had learnt to play at an early age, had a lovely alto singing voice and belonged to the Rushden Operatic Society. Mrs. Timpson, next door, had a piano and sometimes let me go in and “play” on it. She taught me “O can you wash your father’s shirt”. This was all that I could play and I’m sure she was heartily sick of it but she encouraged me to investigate the notes. I was very eager to have piano lessons and so was very excited when Mum learnt that Mrs. Copperwheat, who lived in Upper Queen Street , wanted to sell her piano. So it was that one Saturday morning a piano, which was to become Mum’s pride and joy, arrived in the front room. Piano lessons were arranged for me with Mrs. Joan Hart, who was the accompanist at the Operatic Society. Every Saturday morning I went to her house in Church Street (where the Salvation Army charity shop is now) and met other would be pianists. I can always remember her saying “Keep your wrists up” but as she said this to almost everyone else it didn’t bother me much. (When I was quite small, a gypsy came to the back door and, seeing me sitting on the step between the living room and the kitchen, said to my Mum “That little girl will be very musical!” How could she know this? As it turned out music has been a very big part of my life and still is.)