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I was 17 years old and lived at no 7 Tivoli Road, and when Father Christmas arrived at the front door with 4 cwt of coal my mum put newspaper down the hall and throughout the house so that the coal man could dump the coal in the shed. So Christmas Day we all sat around the fire to keep warm - and cold at our backs. We cooked chestnuts on a shovel and played cards, and my dad played the piano and we all sang carols. No ...see more

I grew up in Southall in the 1940s and 50s. We lived in Gordon Road in a terraced house that backed onto The Tube. We had an outside toilet, no bathroom and, until I was about 6, no electricity. At the age of 5 I could change a gas mantle. My mother continued to live there until she passed on in 1989. Two doors away was Mrs Ridgewell's grocery shop and on the corner there was a greengrocer's. I recall being ...see more