When I was the same age as my now visiting grandsons which is eight today, my brother and I, he just a little older than me, lived with our parents in a police house on the edge of Wigan in the then very industrial North West. My father had been promoted to sergeant and was transferred every time he got promotion, which was quite frequently. We'd come from a house in the country, modest enough but in a lovely location, to a semi detached place on the edge of some waste ground, a 'garden' of sorts was guarded by a very cheapest of picket fence. Modest again, very modest but considered quite posh for the area.
Nearby were rows of old terraced housing of the Coronation Street variety, the police station just around the corner a red brick old place on the main road, handy for the shop then.
The view from the kitchen was of a sort of wooden encampment on some waste ground, sheds and home made large fence with an area inside full of scrap and junk as well as a horses cart. The old horse might have been tied to a rope outside the site with a bit off binder twine and a big metal pole ring driven into the waste ground so that he did not wander off, which given his age did not seem likely anyway. There was barely any grass to feed off. Bill, the owner of the Rag and Bone site would occasionally wander into view looking at the bits of metal he'd collected on his rounds obviously wondering if they had any resale value, then would chuck it on the ever increasing pile of junk. He was tall and thin and wore a gabardine mac permanently whatever the weather as well as his flat hat, his wife was shorter and came occasionally to the site. She wore a similar mac that came down to her ankles and a headscarf. She was known locally as 'Destiny' and was of somewhat limited intelligence. These days one might describe her condition as mild mental illness, she went to any local funeral she could get into and was fond of the 'wakes' afterwards. If she missed one she would inevitably ask if the dear departed was 'buried with ham' , in other words if ham sandwiches were on offer at the wake. This an indication of a funeral that was of high stature and not to be missed if at all possible. This habit of hers was where the idea of her name was born from, by someone we do not know. When some years ago I heard that a girl band had called them selves 'Destiny's Child' my first thought was 'Oh No!'. Not a good idea. In Wakes Week there were parades and Bill would bring out a special decorated cart that he would hitch his old nag to, and give the local kids a little ride. He once asked my mother 'Dus wan sum shite? ' meaning ' Would you like some horse manure?' She was at first surprised and said what for, and he qualified it by adding "for yer rhubarb". She then came back at him and said that she preferred custard on her rhubarb, he had the decency to smile and she had the decency to accept his kind offer. 'Destiny' also came to the kitchen window once, this a relatively rare occurrence, and asked my mother what she was doing, she replied that she was 'making scones...baking'. Destiny replied that she too liked baking as it got her fingernails clean. She demonstrated by holding up a pair of grubby hands.My mother politely agreed, but the mental images of Destiny's scones was not exactly mouthwatering, and it became a family saying that clean nails offered the promise of scones.
The Pit, or coal mine to give it its proper title was a short walk away from our house. The pavement outside was on the route for some of the miners whose clogs we heard very early in the mornings and evenings. A scene not unlike one that might have inspired the painter L S Lowry.
The main railway line from Euston to Scotland was just the other side of the waste ground together with others cross crossing here and there. Sidings and the steam shed where quite a few locomotives were kept was about half a mile away. Out friend Bryan Winstanley, very Lancashire name, lived in one of the nearby terraced houses and his dad, a train driver, took my brother and I for a short trip once on his steam locomotive. My brother and I also used to, from time to time, run over to the bridge over the railway line to catch site of the Royal Scot speeding towards its next stop at Wigan, smoke billowing over the bridge and the sight of the last coach disappearing with a big tartan badge on the back. It went through at 12 noon every day, a wonderful sight indeed.
On a good washing day putting the bedsheets on the washing line would result in fine dots of soot here and there on the drying laundry, if the wind was in the wrong direction. It did nothing for my mother's mood.
It would have been around 1957.
The inside of Concorde's tiny flight deck.
The boys, eight years old today.
I'm reminded of all this looking at my grandsons as we wandered around the Concorde Museum in Filton, near Bristol. Concorde in a Museum. An amazing sight. There were lots of questions as well as loads of other planes and bits and pieces to see. A video of someone drawing plane plans with Indian ink and specialised pens you dropped the ink into, set squares and French curves! Engines everywhere which are frankly works of very fine art. Old photographs of women assembling the wings of early aircraft with fabric and 'dope' which was brushed onto the fabric and gave off heady fumes that made them stagger occasionally, hence the term 'dopey'. Nothing a quick glass of milk would not cure, I kid you not, this is indeed what they used. Not a lot of concern for health and safety. A stroll through an original Concorde, the flight deck with hardly a space for anything but a switch. Not a computer on sight. Under 3 hours to New York, flying on the edge of space at 1200 mph, and all this just ten years after John and I watched steam trains, and now consigned to a Museum.
When we lived in Wigan, John and I learned on the grapevine that a new diesel locomotive was parked in one of the railway sidings and that we should go and see it, we did. Deltic,then the very latest technology, was a huge big blue thing looking nothing like the steam trains around at the time. The next time I saw it was in the Science Museum in London in the 1970s.
As for Destiny's Child, they never really caught on, perhaps they were 'buried with ham'.
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