Kiddy Times And Shuffle

A Memory of Kidderminster.

In the fifties Kiddy bristled from dawn to dusk and back to dawn again as the Lowry-folk on 'six-'til two' grumbled and tumbled out of their beds and either cycled or 'legged it'
(if they couldn't afford the early-bus) into an ill let Dickensian reminiscent Market Town an hour or two before the day shift weavers and creelers and tuners and winders were shaken cruelly from their rhythmic-drop-forge- hammered slumbering beds by a bellowing bull ( that from memory roared at seven...and again at a quarter past...to remind the snoozers.....then the dim-lit eerie-yellow bright red double decker busses bulged and grunted diesel that spewed out fag-fumed-billowing communal fog that trailed after them like ribbons on a Stourport Carnival Day. The drop forge beat its rhythm day and night...excepting Sundays when everything seemed to halt and in the absence of the drop-forge hammers and the bull, it was the silence that disturbed the town's folk's rest. Pre TV and with the shops all closed we played back to back football on Naylor's field... with endless substitutions as the younger kids came and went in response to their mothers yodelling cries.... or their hungry bellies...or both...whilst the older lads called half-time and sloped off to the pub, in the shadows of their dads to re-join the fray a couple of hours later, somewhat less nimble on their feet and errant in their passing. Some of us would rest up on Naylor's greasy, lanolin-oozing bales; so kindly stacked in disarray as they waited on spinners and provided us a fortress, riddled with oily tunnels and offered always the softest landing to every death defying leap. Sometimes we'd head for the cut, making mischief in Lisle avenue, raiding the mobile grocery coach for American Cream Soda, Dandelion and Burdock and Nibbets. They must have felt safe behind their splintering tongue and groove but there was no such thing as a safe and secure fence on a sun blistering Sunday when the town stood still.