If you had a hole in the sole of your shoe and there was no money to buy new shoes, then you had to make do with a bit of kitchen lino if you were lucky, or cardboard if you were not so lucky (cardboard soaked up water) and made into a sole and slipped inside, so you don’t wear a hole in you sock, I should know, I’ve worn them shoes when I was a boy. If you had holes in your socks, they were never thrown away, they were darned instead.

We didn’t have an inside toilet in the house just an outside one, they were not very pleasant being cold and damp, squares of newspaper cut up and hanging from some string from a nail in the wall is what you used if there was no toilet roll, there was no electric or gas light in the outside toilet, it was usually a little paraffin lamp or candle we had for light as well as a mousetrap in the corner, just in case a little visitor crept in, we did have mice in the house, one day when I was looking for my shoes in the cupboard when I was about 6 years old, I got the fright of my life when I realized there was a rat in the cupboard and it leaped across the pile of shoes in front of me, thank goodness my family always had a cat to take care of that problem. Another item I always remember being kept on the top shelf of the cupboard was a jar of “Goose Grease” that was commonly used to rub on your chest and back if you had a cough or cold and it used to stink!

The winters in the North East were freezing with a lot of snow in them days, cold enough to freeze to death the family cat at night if you forgot to let it in, one cold winter killed our family cat, I found it curled up frozen stiff on top of the snow capped wall dividing our house from next doors. I remember snow drifts 3 feet high against the outside doors, gloves were a luxury when I was a kid, we were a big family with 7 brothers and sisters and so if we had to go outside we had to make do with socks over our little hands. If a pullover was worn out, then the wool would be unpicked and another one knitted, not a lot went to waste in our family, my family were good recyclers, they had to be.

Ron Summerson