HAPPY TIMES IN FIRBECK

My memories of Firbeck are wonderful and I share them with many people. I lived there for around 8 years and my Dad was the village policeman so we lived in the then policehouse near the top of the village. We used to wait by the church gates on a sunday evening for the ice-cream man to come around on his weekly visit and it was exciting for us. Also on a Thursday evening one of the locals, Uncle Lester as he was known to everyone and one of the few people to own a car went to a local fish and chip shop in Llangold so anyone wanting something from the chippy placed their order with Uncle Lester.

I remember the Royal Family making frequent visits to Lord Scarboroughs residence and again we used to congregate by the church gates and hopefully get a wave from Prince Charles or the Duke of Edinburgh of whoever it may be making the visit.

We used to play for hours in the woods, picking wild flowers and climbing trees. I went to school in Dinnington, the school bus used to pick us up in the village every morning and drive us the 15 minutes or so to school.

Mrs Walsh owned the only shop in Firbeck where my Mum used to work helping her out from time to time.

I went back to visit about 3 weeks ago and my how it has changed a lot of new houses and the people that now live in the Police House have drastically changed, it looks lovely but I could not help feeling a sense of sadness that things weren't "as they used to be".

We used to play on the farms, walk for hours, play in the fields, go potato picking and pea picking for about 6 shillings a sack, we all used to climb on the tractor and trailer with our sandwiches and off we would go for the day.

I could go on forever talking about Firbeck it was a wonderful time of my life and I would love to speak to anyone who lived there and remembered me Christine Townend. I had a lot of friends there and we all used to do everything together. Happy Days.