Growing Up In Kings Norton

A Memory of King's Norton.

I was born in 42 Lindsworth Road in 1960, our house backed onto a cricket pitch which was owned by a local resident who kept it beautifully maintained and at the end of the cricket pitch was the canal or the 'cut' as we used to call it back then.
It was a wonderful place to grow up in, vast fields and miles of canal was paradise to us kids. The hours we spend playing along the canal, fishing for newts & sticklebacks with our nets & buckets.
Playing hide n seek in the fields and constantly having to apply dock leaves to our nettle rash which used to sting to high heaven and develop red blisters, but it was a small price to pay for all that lovely green & pleasant land.
I've lost count of the times I fell in the canal and had to walk home sodden wet, but it was all part of the fun. In the summer holidays we'd all head down to Stirchley swimming baths, and after all that fun & exercise we'd be starving so we would all pile into the cafe, a crowd of kids with damp hair, tired & hungry.
Every first Monday in October was the 'Mop' on Kings Norton Green, that was great fun, I was never satisfied unless I came home with a goldfish in a plastic bag !! Saturday's at the picture house (flea pit) as it was locally known was another fun filled adventure. Hopscotch on the pavement, chalked out from 1-10 , all little girls owned a skipping rope, and if you were lucky you had a bike too.
I look back on my childhood and I have alot of happy memories, I live in Yardley Wood now, but it's strange how even at age 53, I still regard Kings Norton as my true home.