My Family - continued - page 2

Anyway, back to my early years and my memories of life and growing up in Simms Cross.

My early memories of my Mum are of this white haired lady with beautiful skin who was always busy looking after the house and the children (varying in number between 5 and 10) and I then was given a photo of Mum, taken in about 1943 ish, with 3 girls and SHE HAD DARK HAIR (see photo below) and was very pretty.

I don’t recollect my mum when she was younger so my older sisters fill in. What I’ve been told, but don’t recollect, is that as a youngster I was spoiled (I was the first "Keogh" grandson and Dads first son after 4 girls). I am told that to get what I wanted I would throw myself on the floor and kick and scream and cause a fuss - not like me at all from what I remember!

The schooldays Years

I remember going to St Maries Nursery (in the concrete building behind the church in Lugsdale Road) and being given a small bottle of milk and going to bed in the cots for a sleep during the day - was this because we were so small and tired that we needed to sleep in the day OR to give the staff a break from the hoard of screaming kids?? Who knows.........

I vividly remember my first day at St Maries Infants school. I was dressed in my school clothes, short grey pants, white shirt and coat. It was possible that my socks were darned and my shoes had cardboard in them to cover the hole in the sole, but in the summer and autumn that wasn't a problem normally, it was only the very wet weather that was problem - it made the cardboard soggy and your feet then got wet - then you had to cut out more cardboard to use next day. Anyway, I had no problem going to school that first morning, many of the kids were taken there crying and not wanting to leave their mums - but I went willingly and enthusiastically, possibly because of my going to Nursery in my earlier years. My Mum duly arrived at lunchtime to take me home for dinner as promised (a short walk from St Maries to Grenfell Street) and I went home to eat then hoped to go out playing......... then I found out the bad news! I had to go back for another session in the afternoon, and I was not happy... I then remember having a tantrum because I thought I'd finished for the day - so a mixed first day for me at "proper" school.

Those of you who are turned 50 or so will no doubt have grown up in the many communities of Widnes in the same kind of conditions as me and my older siblings. Terraced houses, two up-two down (3 down when you include the toilet down the bottom of the yard), no locks on the doors, gas lamps in the street that the lamplighter would light up at dusk with his long pole, great neighbours who were like family and people who looked out for each other and helped each other. I remember having a Ration Book for sweets and going to Knox's toffee shop (around the corner in Widnes Road) each week for our "treat" - when we had some spare money to buy them......

There are some memorable names from that area when we lived there, the Lomax's next door ( I think the womans name was Rosie), The McGuire's, Garnetts shop on the corner, Mrs Hattons shop in Travis Street (Syl Hatton was our bridesmaid when Irene and I married - small town Widnes!), the Naughtons, (went through school with Mike and became friends after), Pat Dearden, the Whites from round the corner, ............and more to recollect later.

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Dark haird Mum with Margaret, Pat (baby) and Eileen - around October 1943

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Festival Queen with me as a page boy (centre) - around 1951 in Grenfell Street