Home
My very earliest recollection is of sitting at the table in my home, on a sunny afternoon and feeling very much in the black books of my parents.
I had played truant and was only awaiting the moment when Father had finished his meal, or perhaps it was only a cup of tea he and Mother were having. Then I was to be taken to school and I was very afraid of all kinds of things.
I was duly taken to school I suppose, though any other part of the incident is quite forgotten. I can really only remember the feeling of guilt and the fear of the consequences.
We lived in a small pub, this I believe is the only thing I can remember of that home. Other than the cellar doors which even to me now seemed to have been huge, double doors towering away up into the darkness of the cellar ceiling. No doubt they are only quite normal ones.
My bosom companion I understand at this time was one Eric Hays, who lived two or three doors away and whom I can remember spending a holiday with some years later. They had removed to Whitehaven and I should think I spent a part of a summer holiday with them. That he inadvertently hit me in the eye with a golf ball about that time I am quite sure. The eye has troubled me ever since.
And then I recall leaving the little pub (The Queens Head it was called) and going to live at the other end of the village. My own leaving was to the accompaniment of my Father, the dog and a basket of puppies which I helped carry. Daisy walked by the side of us with her nose as nearly in the basket as possible and whimpering to the puppies who whimpered back.
Our new house was "Mountain View". Whether it was called that before we went to live there or whether one of my sisters gave it the fanciful name I don't know. But that there were no mountains within view or anywhere near I am quite sure. Perhaps from the front bedroom windows St Bees Head could be seen between the end of the house opposite and the farm barn. Anyhow Mountain View it was and still is.
To me it was a lovely house. There were two sitting rooms out the front, and the front entrance had a trellis porch and one went up the five steps. Five steps which were of red sandstone and were reddened I don't know how often, perhaps each morning. The house lay back behind the adjoining ones on each side and had room for a front wall and a garden, the wall having cast iron railings and a roundel on it. The front was covered entirely in Virginia creeper and made a home for a few sparrows, I was never allowed to climb to them.
Behind the sitting room was larder, kitchen and therefore there was a front hall and back hall. The house being built into the side of the hill gave a sort of basement kitchen, and eight or more steps led into the garden, a very small one, bordered on the south side by a byre ¹A cowshed.
Upstairs there were five bedrooms, one on the first landing and four on the second. My sisters and I all slept at that time in the lower bedroom, whose window came level with the garden at the back and one could quite easily climb out. It must have been a fair sized room because there was a four poster bed and a three quarter bed set end to end. Dad's desk was in that room and what we always knew as the Big Black Box, a chest of drawers, a hanging bookcase and a fireplace. The Big Black Box was full of clothes and I believe they were all used by the girls for playing grown-ups etc.
How old was I then? Between five and eight I suppose because I can remember, what seemed a long time after, the signing of the armistice in 1918.