Sample Text: |
Letter number 5 Wednesday 27 January 1932
Dear Bob,
There’s dreadful news from here and with you being in the Navy it seems personal. A submarine M2 has sunk off Portland and they can’t find her. There are 56 officers and men on board. We are all keeping our fingers crossed and praying that they will be rescued. Have you heard about it? And talk about coincidence, there’s a photo in the Gazette of Captain John Bell of Redcar who rammed and sank the first German submarine in the War. He’s just died.
You will want to know what is happening at home. Well, the new swimming baths are nearly complete and will soon be ready for opening. Sadie and I were talking about it, and Sadie said that Jack Hatfield had swam two lengths in the new baths. Jimmy, who had his nose in the Magnet but with his ears flapping in all directions piped up. “Mam. How could Jack Hatfield swim two lengths if there was no water in the baths?” I said to Sadie, “Take no notice. It runs in the family.” and she said, “Which side, yours or your ould fella’s?” I gave her one of my cutting looks.
Talking about our Jimmy, we’ve got a new Catholic church on Linthorpe Rd. It’s called the Sacred Heart and St Philomena. Well, I don’t know whether it was that that started it off but Jimmy came in and said he wished he was a Catholic. So I said why, and he said because you can go and confess your sins and God lets you off. Well, our Jimmy wouldn’t know what a sin was if one jumped up and bit him so I said you can confess to me if you done something wrong. Or your dad. Well he was definitely against confessing to his dad and he didn’t think confessing to me left him much room for mischief. So I said well what have you done wrong and he said nothing. So I said if you’ve done nothing wrong there’s nothing to confess to God about is there. That put him on the ropes. And that reminded me of the time when he came in with his trouser pockets bulging. “What’s in your pockets?” sez me.
“Nothing.” So I looked in his pockets and got two apples out. “What’s these?” I said and he looked at them as if he had never seen them before.
“Where did you get them?” says I. Sometimes our Jimmy’s face reminds me of a Christmas card we got once. It was all snow and there was a five barred gate and a robin on it looking as if it was wondering what came next. “Where did you get them?”
“I don’t know.” he says. Then the light came on inside his head that lights his face up and you know inspiration has arrived. “They fell off a tree.” he says.
“Where is this tree?” I asked.
“Limes Road.” he says.
“And who was up the tree?”
“Nobody” he says, all hurt like.
“If you were confessing to God He would know who was up that tree”.
That got him.
“Peter Cassidy.” he said.
I might have guessed. Like father like son. His dad John was a little rascal. But he’s settled down now and works on the docks. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was Peter that put the idea into Jimmy’s head about being a Catholic and confessing and having a clear week ahead. But I didn’t ask Jimmy. Children have to have some secrets if they are going to survive in the adult world that waits for them.
The Ford American motor car company is opening a new factory at Dagenham in London that will make 200,000 cars every year. I can’t imagine that number of motor cars. I asked your dad if this would mean work for the steel works here but he thinks we make the wrong kind of steel. But you never know. Your dad doesn’t know everything. I’ll have to ask Stan Cole. He does. I don’t know why they are going to make cars here when there is so much unemployment in America. A man who was in the Labour Government has just come back from America and he says there’s no dole or public assistance there at all. And we complain about the Means Test. Not that I am in favour of the Means Test, I’m not, and there’s some very bitter letters in the Gazette from people giving their experiences with the Public Assistance Committee. It’s very humiliating. But to have nothing at all doesn’t bear thinking about.
There’s been a mutiny here in Dartmoor prison with convicts and warders fighting each other. Part of the prison has been set on fire. Some of the convicts helped the warders so you wonder what the trouble is all about. I was talking to Mrs Levinson, you know the lady I clean for, about it, or she was talking to me about it while we were having a cup of tea. She says the world is a very troubled place now with the trouble in Spain, the Nazis and Communists in Germany and now the Japanese and Chinese are at it. She blames the Communists and Socialists for stirring up trouble though what that’s got to do with China and Dartmoor I don’t know. Between Mrs Levinson and Stan I will get an explanation. Actually two explanations. And then I’ll wish I hadn’t asked.
The corporation is going to build a lot of houses on the Whinney Banks and Brambles Farm so there will be a lot of work for builders. I said to your dad that this could be the end of unemployment like the sunblind theory. I told you about it in one of my letters.
There’s been another pit disaster, this time in Wales. There was an explosion.
Sadie was telling me that she got Mr Muir going again. She’s a real trouble maker. It was the Cleveland Scots annual Burns dinner and she was pulling his leg that she saw him in the Gazette in his kilt. He never learns. We had him the same way last year and he fell for it again.
Well that’s all this time. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Your everloving
Mam
PS Sheffield Wednesday 1 Boro 1
|
Back to Publications page