It's A Lock Out X 2

Let my son Dave watch Dave and my wife watch whatever she wants: I am off to Ushaw Moor memories where people don't answer back.... well not very often.

So let's dim the lights, remind the audience to switch their mobiles off, and away we go.

Last week I found out that my mother, then 18, had a very similiar experience to mine: back in  1942 her guardian [cum maternal grandfather] locked her out for being very  late back home. I think this drama was played out in Eshwood Street, Sleetburn and my mum's reaction was to take refuge in the nearest lavatory located  some distance away. She was found there during the night by her father, Dickie Hope, likewise an Eshwood Street resident. He was there to use the lavatory prior to working a shift at Sleetburn pit and was understandably shocked to come across his daughter. I can try and imagine their conversation and the odds are that he was sympathetic towards her.

That experience is separated from mine by about 27 years. I was ordered out of the house when found doing some office work at one o'clock in the morning. On reflection I do not blame my step-father, afterall what a waste of electricity at a time when household money was tight. I was confined to the shed: it was about eight feet by four feet and very cold; it was also gloomy as I only had a nearby street light to chart my way through a world that was suddenly small and dispiriting. I had nowhere to sit and little more than a knife fork and spoon box to gaze at. For some reason one of my parents had put my old school reports in the shed years earlier. I gazed at them and found that, with one exception, I had finished seventh off top in the 'A' form. I know for a fact that six girls had ended in a position higher than mine in 1960 and I pondered about their names. Let me see, Lorna Bone finished second or fourth [having been top the previous term] as for the rest there would be the usual lovable culprits such as Edith Smith and her friend Pauline Newman.

I can confirm that I  never worked late again in that household.

WB