Wolverhampton

Upon returning to the UK the two families split up. Grandma and granddad bought a fish shop on Sprotborough Road in Doncaster. Mom dad and I moved to Wolverhampton, initially moving in with grandma Alice. This period is the first to provide me with real memories. I remember a few things about living at grandma Alice’s house. It’s here I stuck my thumb in a live electric switch to see what would happen! I still have the scar. I also remember a wooden stool, I can only describe it as part of a tree trunk carved all over and upholstered on the top. It had a mighty axe cut in the side of it and the story was my dad and his brothers did this in their youth; I wish I knew more and what the circumstances were. I believe it had been made by my granddad Edward, a cabinet maker and furniture restorer and it was of some rare and very hard wood. Ironwood sticks in mind, but that might not be true. However, it was still in the parlour even after it had been attacked. I remember playing with the neighbour's children across the road where they had a big tree with a rope where we used to swing. It is here that riding my three-wheeler bike, like a madman, outside grandma’s house I had an accident where the chain wheel dug into my cheek, another scar I still have.

One specially vivid memory is of the garage outside grandma Alice's house.I remember getting played hell with for going in there there, investigating, playing as kids do. I later learned that my grandad Edward Noake had commited suicide by hanging himself in there. So realise now how sensitive it must have been to Alice. I want to finish this topic by adding that mom found Edward a kind quiet soul. He and Alice didn't get on well and when he retired he just could't cope. It seems he was a very skilled woodworker and antique furniture restorer who got his sense of self from his work. This information came directly from mom and try as I might on the geneology sites I have been unable to confirm or add to the details.

During this period, we moved to Catherine Crescent, near Penn in Wolverhampton. My clearest memory here is the 'crater' in the middle of the crescent, which I took to be the result of some air raid or other. In it the remains of ordnance and the biscuit shaped charcoal slabs from gas masks made excellent props for our adventures. I remember well my mom teaching my how to ride a two-wheeler bike on Penn Common, here I also collected golf balls from the pond on the golf course and sold them back to the golfers! I broke my tooth here by getting the end of a golf club my dad had made me, stuck on my front tooth; don’t ask me how! Final reminisce; while out on my bike the local police pulled me up while cycling and then commended me for my safe riding! I even got a certificate I think. During this period dad worked at Orme Evans the engineers and Friday nights he would bring home some mechanical tit-bit from the works; a switch or some electrical component and I would proceed to take it apart to see how it worked. Often weekends we would visit my dads brothers and there I would play with my cousins David and Andrew.

When we first moved there I went to - what seemed to me to be - a large primary school and I was, I'm told, very unhappy there. Eventually mom and dad decided to move me to the village school where I was much happier.

I look back on this time with a great deal of fondness. Visiting the park at weekends with mom and dad. Playing on the common and then sitting outside of the Holly Bush pub and getting pop and crisps. Not to last though...