A 1960s Childhood in Northampton - Part Three The Cottage

My parents business gave them little freedom, in those days we still had a half closing day, so on a Thursday afternoon the shop closed at 12.30pm and reopened to sell the evening newspapers at 4pm. Sunday mornings in the shop were surprisingly busy, coach loads of men heading out for a day of fishing crowded into the shop to stock up on sweets, cigarettes, newspapers and magazines. By the time the shop closed it was almost lunch time and my parents had already done the equivalent of a full days work. We would sit on the stairs and enjoy a milky coffee together before re stocking the shelves with sweets and cigarettes ready for the following morning, only then could we turn our back on the shop and escape for the afternoon.

Summers Sunday afternoons were spent at our cottage about thirty miles away in the north of the county. The car would be packed with food and toys and all the essentials for an enjoyable afternoon. We listened to the radio in the car, Jimmy Clithero was a great favourite of mine and his series The Clithero Kid was often on as we travelled. I still recall the whooshing noise of passing cars as we travelled along with the car windows open. The journey of about an hour took us through Kettering and out towards Corby past the huge cranes and the quarries that scarred the landscape, until we reached the village of Weldon. It was our routine to stop at a little shop there to buy an ice cream and I was allowed to buy some penny sweets, my parents didn’t sell such things and to me they were a great treat. The last part of our journey took us into a pretty rural world completely different from our everyday surroundings and I loved it. The bumpy farm track led us through a field of cattle, they surrounded the car and followed us lazily across the field to the cattle grid at the top, and then we drove away from the cattle along a lane bordered by the forest on one side and on the other a field sown variously with wheat, barley or fodder crops. The lane turned at the next cattle grid and led us past the farm house and on down the hill and up again towards the cottage and freedom.

For me the afternoon stretched into endless adventure, but for my mother and grandmother there was still work to do. We often had a cooked Sunday lunch, perhaps we had cold meat, I don’t recall, but the smell of minted new potatoes still conjures up memories of summer Sundays at the cottage. We always had a glass of pop with lunch on Sundays, Tizer or my favourite Cherryade, on other days we drank water with meals. Tea was usually a salad with tinned salmon, pork pie or cold meat and piles of bread and butter. Grandma always peeled the cucumber, sliced it thinly and served it in vinegar; I could eat it in those days but I decided long ago that life was too short to wrestle with the evils of cucumber or Brussels sprouts. Throughout my childhood tea was taken in cups with saucers, the mention of a mug would send Grandma into a decline and drinking out of such a thing was, like walking outside the house in your slippers, evidence of being ‘common’ and not properly brought up. Tea was made with loose tea in a teapot, the little spoon inside the tea caddy measured out just the right amount of tea, one spoon for each person and one for the pot. Even on a warm summer Sunday the teapot was adorned with a thick tea cosy to preserve the temperature while the tea brewed. There was always a homemade cake for Sunday tea time, Madeira perhaps or a fruit cake with almonds on the top or my absolute favourite, cherry cake. Often there would be jelly and tinned fruit and cream as well. Tinned mandarin oranges were a special favourite of mine, but I liked them just as they were, not with cream, ice cream or anything else. My other grandmother, known to her grandchildren as Nanny used to get the tinned oranges especially for me, but she always put Ideal milk on them, apparently my older cousin Calvin loved it, but I wished that she would keep it for him because it spoiled my oranges.

I had a sandpit at the cottage and a beautiful swing, sometimes we took my paddling pool, my dolls pram or my little bicycle, but I was happy to play on my own wandering in the lane looking for wild rabbits or bird’s nests. Often there were cattle in the field at the back of the cottage and I would spend hours leaning over the fence feeding them handfuls of long grass and letting them lick my fingers. I wasn’t afraid and even as a very tiny child I loved the cattle. There was ample evidence of the presence of moles and it was my job to jump on the molehills and flatten the soil. I only saw a live mole once; it had fallen into the pit of the cattle grid and become trapped. I wanted to stroke it until the farmer known to me as Uncle Joe said that it would bite me, but as an act of kindness to me he rescued the mole and set it free. That is one of the few occasions that I recall him making a concession to sentiment.

Rhubarb grew in the cottage garden, sometimes my mum would cut a nice stick of rhubarb for me, and when it was washed and cleaned she would give me a saucer with a little bit of Sugar on it to dip my stick of rhubarb and eat it raw. We picked gooseberries from the bush in the garden, I wasn’t quite as keen on eating those raw, I wasn’t over fond of them cooked either! Plums from the tree in the farmhouse orchard were much more to my taste as were the blackberries that grew in the hedgerows as summer turned towards autumn. Uncle grew peas, potatoes, runner beans and all sorts of salad crops in the cottage garden and we often went home laden with produce. I liked to pop the pea pods and scrape the peas in to a colander, but it was a pleasure tinged with fear as occasionally the pod would contain a wriggly maggot and I dreaded accidentally touching a maggot.

I recall little about the homeward journey, I always looked out for the Teddy Boys in their bright suits with drainpipe trousers as we drove through Kettering, but the movement of the car soothed me to sleep long before we got home.