Memories of Childhood
by John Appleby

~ 17 ~

We children were never keen on Sundays. All our childish games were forbidden. We had to wear our Sunday clothes, and were not allowed to jeopardise their cleanliness. After dinner, we would trudge down to the Wesleyan chapel with our pennies for the collection. We would sing "dropping, dropping, hear the pennies fall". I used to think to myself, "he wouldn't miss one would he?" So one fatal day I played truant and although haunted by guilt, I spent my halfpenny on sweets. I was seen and reported, and very soon I was dragged by the ear, quaking, and harshly done by. I didn't like the teachers - the girls were alright, but the men wore blue serge suits and smelt of yellow soap, mothballs and hair oil. The seats were hard and we had to sit for what seemed like hours listening to somebody telling us how to be good. Our legs would develop cramp, only relieved by standing to sing, and we would shuffle until, glad to be out, we would race back home.

Before my fifth birthday, a splendid promenade was constructed, and Fred and I, and other excited children watched workmen preparing great hardwood piles stacked on the quay wall. On Auntie's request we gathered chips and off cuts of wood for her kitchen range. The promenade stretched from the quay wall almost to the Needles Eye. It was where families could take the air on Sunday summer twilight evenings. The men would raise their hats to the ladies, and groups would stand chatting or listening to a concert from the band Rotunda. When we arrived home, supper would appear on the table, this might be a piece of cheese and onion tart, or a bowl of fried leeks and bread and butter.

The appealing part of Sunday for me was the morning walks in summer. I remember a lovely pearly ambience over the bay as we looked from the top of the bank, and the silvery glitter of the tiny waves breaking on the beach. Most of the time Dad would take us up past the farm, to the stately Northseaton Hall, and the rookery, to meander along Summerhouse Lane bordered by hawthorn, deep grass and wild flowers. Dad had an uncanny ability to find bird's nests, and would take an egg to show us before returning it. Mam and the girls would be cooking and doing things domestic. We were so near to the woods and fields, so the seasons would divulge their bounty of bluebells and bird's nests, blackberries and bees, mayflower, meadowsweet and moorhens, skylarks and stubble, rooks and rabbits. It would be two very tired boys who would arrive home, with Dad often chewing a hawthorn twig and urging us to do the same so that we wouldn't die of thirst. Our saliva would begin to rise as we sniffed the glorious aromas of cooking all the way along the silent streets, past our neighbours and then into our house. We would wash our hands, take our places and the beef we were about to eat may have been grazing out in the fields last week. The vegetables, which would have been dug and picked and pulled from Dad's allotment were here steaming on the plates.

© 2003 John Appleby, New Zealand

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