A Lass from Richmond Hill

About the Book

This book was originally intended just for my 9 grandchildren, but as time has gone on, and more people have found out what the subject matter is about, I suppose it must now be for a wider audience.
I am now in my 70’s, and thankfully I still have a retentive memory. With having led a longer life than those younger members of my family, I am able to give them some idea of what life was like when I was once a child, although some of the youngest ones feel it strange to think that their Nana was once a baby too! These are the early memoirs of someone who lived through the last World War.
Although I was comparatively lucky because we weren’t actually living in those areas which suffered from those ghastly bombing raids which claimed so many innocent lives, we were still affected by the restrictions which dominated all our lives here in Britain. I have commenced the book at the commencement of my own life, and each chapter is dedicated to one year of my life - up until I reached the grand old age of 16.
Most of the incidents I have written about during the first 3 years of my life have been prompted by what I remember being told to me by my mother and sister, but after that you will find that each chapter becomes longer than the one before as my memory recalls more and more incidents from my distant past! I have been helped of course by friends I have made along the way, and they have been keen to refresh my memory about various occasions from our past which have left lasting impressions on us.
Writing about these numerous events throughout my childhood has brought to the fore memories which had been long forgotten, or in one case in particular – pushed to the back of my mind intentionally. This was a nasty memory when I was indecently assaulted, under cover of the darkness, during a children’s cinema performance by a man who should have known better. I was only around 11 years old at the time, and one chapter near the middle of my book is about what happened at the time, and what it led to, and the final conclusion. It wasn’t a very nice memory to recall but it proved to be quite cathartic to record it. I have included it as a warning to all those other innocent children out there who may experience similar horrors themselves – heaven forbid!

I will include an extract here from chapter 12 of the book, which was during my first year at the local high school after I had passed the 11 plus exam!

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Being at the High School meant that I now had to do homework! That first year we didn’t get too much homework – just one or two subjects each night. Barbara had a lot more to do. Her average subjects each night were four or five. I knew I would have that to look forward to later, when I too would reach the Upper V. Sometimes I managed to get out and play with my friends on an evening, but only after I had finished any homework I had been set. I soon realised that some set homework did not have to be handed in immediately on the next school-day. Sometimes we had two or three nights to complete the set work. I discovered for myself that it was much better to complete the homework as soon as possible. That way it would not be niggling away at the back of my mind that I still had homework to finish. Some girls appeared to leave theirs until the last minute, and could be seen in the cloakroom before the bell, hurrying to complete essays, or finish off other written work that somehow had to be handed in as soon as ‘the bell’ went! Weekends were usually free for me if I had completed my homework on Friday night, so I was able to spend time with some of my other friends. At first one or two of them suggested I was now too stuck-up to bother with them, but that soon passed. We often played team games, such as cricket with a tennis ball, using the lamp-post at the junction of Beechfield road and I’Anson Road as the wicket. Or we did skipping – and even practised high

About the Author

Having spent my early, formative years in North Yorkshire, I still think of myself as a ‘Yorkshire Lass’, even though I now live in County Durham. My working life started at Darlington GPO, where I stayed for eight years. After concentrating on raising our family for a few years I then worked as an auditor for a fi rm of chartered accountants. It was only after I took early retirement and took up Family Tree researching, that I decided to set down in writing my childhood experiences, for my grandchildren and their children to read.