Fond Memories, Happy Days

I was born at 44 Main Street, better known as Music Row, in 1943 and moved to Kimberley in 1958. I have many fond memories of living there, huge bonfires on the "donkey piece", making "winter warmers" out of a tin with holes in and coal. Scrumping in Mr Wardle's orchard, it was also he who also recharged our accumulators up for our radio. Everyone had "gadda's" or made bows and arrows. No TV or playstations in those days. Grazed knees were the order of the day, and mother's spit cured all sorts of cuts and bruises, and kept hair tidy. Food was on ration with not much money around, and many a time I had cardboard in my shoes, as the soles of my shoes had holes in them, not much good when it rained though. Mr Winterbottom ruled the junior school with a rod of iron, and woe betide you if you couldn't recite your times table straight off. We had lots of fun swimming in the "cut" and making fires to keep warm with the brickettes from Cossall pit. Spent lots of time down the Forty Bridges, tracking on our bikes on the red hills from the chemical works, or making rafts to sail on the ponds behind the chemical works. Sometimes we played in the piles of timber in Noel Clay's wood yard. We spent hours roaming around the fields, making dens etc, spying on courting couples and whatever took our fancy. A favourite was climbing the trees in 3 Tree's Field, or riding bareback the two horses Sandra Howard (rich) kept in the same field, sometimes they were knackered when she came for a ride. One bit of daring was to go on the railway line near Bennerley Bridges, where there was a trap door, go down it then walk across Bennerley Bridges underneath on some wooden planks that were there, some still are, but you had to hang onto the sides when a train went across above, as the bridges really shook and swayed, but we went right across to the other side. Good job my parents never knew. Down Shilo there was a wood yard owned by Fred Morley (no relation) who built a huge alpine slide which was really good fun to go on. I used to fetch my dad a pint of beer from Chapmans "beeroff" where he put it a bottle via a copper funnel, then stuck a seal over the top so I couldn't have a drink on the way home, and the only fast food outlet was "Berry's" fish and chip shop, opposite Crown Street. My friend David Draper lived next door to Mr Wardle in a large house, and his dad kept pigs in the barn, we used to ride on them at times, and they had sides of pigs salted in their pantry hanging up. I went to the Chapel on Station Road for a while, but sometimes I nipped into Wardle's orchard first when apples were ready. I passed my 11 plus and went to Henry Mellish Grammer School at Basford, catching the train from Awsworth Station to Basford North Station, and it from that station that I saw the George Brough works, and after leaving school that is where I had my apprentiship Awsworth has changed almost beyong recognition to what it was when I was young, my house has gone with all the others, and the train lines that were at the bottom of our yard, and now I have decided to write a book on my life, and it was looking at my old photographs that has bought all the fond memories back. If anyone has any photos of old Awsworth, or the people, that I may borrow to copy for my book that would be wonderful and I would be very grateful for the loan of them.