The Wire Trellis

A Memory of Barnsley.

I was something of a naughty boy back in those years: there were four of us young lads who were to bus it to Barnsley from Royston where we were barely old enough to go sampling Barnsley Bitter. If we were sixteen let alone eighteen we went into the pub which was where the In-door Market stands. although the Landlord asked us of our ages where we were to tell him Porkies, he was to simply frown upon us and poured out the beer. There within this pub were old codgers where I noticed some of these men having a Ten shilling note pinned onto their top pocket. At first I never knew what this signified until many years later, shall we say that there were young women of misrepute where a woman would tap one of the men on their shoulder, where then they'd disappear through the door way. On reflection I was but four years of age when my mother ordered my dad out of the house until she had cooked the Sunday dinner. Off we went with me on my dad's shoulders some three miles away. We arrived at the White House (Ryhill) where at the back of the place was a small caravan: there was this woman by the name of Daisy Thomas ('Topless'), she was peering over the half door and began to smile and mentioned my dad by name as she knew him well. Anyway she invited my dad in and then told me to wait outside and gave me a glass of orange juice. I sat down on the draw-bar of the caravan where it began to quiver up and down like mad? Years went by where I worked at Woolley Colliery. Sat down eating our snap and men began to reminisce of the good old days where they'd mention their visits to the white house with Daisy Topless within the caravan! It was then that memories came flooding in from the past; where I exclaimed out loud ''So that's what he was doing when I was three years old". If ever there was a man that could keep six women going it was my dad. Anyway to finish off, can anyone tell me the whereabouts of Rita Jennings who worked at the R S P C A in Barnsley? Bless her, she would see dogs and cats which were to be humanely put to death and would take them home: she ended up with over three hundred animals in her care and paid for their upkeep out of her own pocket. She'd be in her late fifties now and was to move from Barnsley to possibly Woolley?