Childhood In Minster

A Memory of Minster.

My two brothers, my sister and I were all born in Minster in what is now called Turner Cottage but was then "The Swifts". My granddad was a village postman and my best friend's granddad was also a postman and we used to race to school perched on the baskets on the front of their bikes! At Watchester Farm we fed the ducks and loved seeing the piglets with the sows. We bought fishing nets in the corner stores (now "Morton's Fork") and fished for newts and minnows in the streams and dykes at Watchester Farm. We begged the metal ties from the potato sacks from the greengrocer and caught cobwebs on them from the fences in St Mary's Road on the way to school. In summer we'd play outside all day long, either "down the rec", in the street or on the marshes. Mum knew we'd stay together and look out for each other and we always did. If we cut or grazed our knees we'd lick our hankies and rub them clean and when we got home we'd have TCP liberally applied! Mum shopped in Vyes or Turners and we were often sent round to the butchers for a pound of mince ("Bring me the change"). Charlie the baker used to deliver the bread - he always wore a fair-isle knitted hat, whatever the weather. The dustmen used to come round to the back of the house to collect the bins and they always returned them to the back as well! We played mud fights with the Bates brothers over our garden wall - standing on top of the bonfire that was a permanent fixture until Guy Fawkes night when Dad would spend all day setting dozens of fireworks and when it got dark he'd light the bonfire and the dodge about setting off the fireworks with the end of his cigar, and delighting us with rockets, screechy owls, roman fountains and catherine wheels. We'd have potatoes roasted on the fire and sparklers to hold and we'd burn the guy we'd have made a week or two earlier that we'd spent hours touting round the streets beforehand shouting "Penny for the Guy"! In winter, we'd be so excited if it snowed! Out came the wellies and warm hats and mittens and if it was the weekend Dad would take us round The Lanes, hauling us on the sledge. At Christmas we'd go carol singing and my uncle Ron would provide a turkey. We loved watching him gut it on the metal lid from the twin tub on the kitchen table! Mum spent days baking and the house would smell deliciously of mince pies, sausage rolls and Christmas pudding, and we never minded being sent to Vyes for another bag of flour and 2lb stork margarine! ("Bring me the change"). Once a week Dad would take us to Richmonds and we'd be allowed to spend a sixpence each on sweets - we could be in there for ages making up our minds whether to buy a mars bar or two milky ways. We loved stopping by and watching the cobbler, Mr Barker at work (Coles Funeral Directors are on the plot now), and I shall never forget the first time my little brother saw two of the nuns from the abbey walking up the street - "Look, Mum - Daleks!"
Minster provided a wonderful place to grow up in, but it was also the time in which we grew up that made our childhoods so special. We knew nothing of computers or mobiles - we didn't even have a phone until I was 10. Our world was one of roller skates, footballs, skipping ropes, dolls, running as fast as you could, riding your bike (picked up from the tip and done up to look like new by granddad), comics for rainy days and Watch With Mother and Children's Hour the only things you saw on the telly. Happy, innocent, wonderful days when we hadn't a care in the world and every day was an adventure.