Must iron some curtains before they become dry so few words, but on passing through the news this morning came upon this link, which will take you to 20th British films on the changing social landscape of Britain.
You just have to search for the town/village you are interested in and up comes a real OLD look at how Britain was.
Pat (Weaver of Grass) will love this one, it is about Wolverhampton, the 'Black Country' from where we both come, and has school children doing a historical tour round the town. They first visit St.Peter's church, which bought back the memory of when Louise our Italian 'maid' got married there to a Polish man, and for the first time I saw Polish dancing, and sucked those hard sweets with an almond in the middle.
Louise looked after my brother and me, as our stepmother never seemed to be there, and I always remember her climbing the old large pear and apple trees in the garden, and collecting the fruit in a large yellow basket, the apples would be stored along the shelves in the cellar, giving this dark place a sweet smell of slightly rotting fruit. The other memory of her is when we came back from a holiday when she was married, she had looked after my collie puppy at the time, and her first words "he s***, s*** everywhere". Sadly it was distemper, and the puppy died, my first big heartbreak!
I hadn't realised your association with Wolverhampton Thelma. I was actually brought up in the fenland of Lincolnshire, then moved to another part of Lincolnshire until my son was five, when we moved to Lichfield for seven years. Only then did we move to Finchfield in Wolverhampton, where I taught for thirteen years. Good place to live in that it was such a good jumping off spot for so many places - good walks in Shropshire, good concerts and art in Birmingham, easy to get to Stratford - and as you say the incredible Black Country History. I well remember the setting up off the marvellous Black Country Museum. Now we are both in North Yorkshire - another marvellous county for so many reasons.
ReplyDeleteApologies Pat, should concentrate more.... I suppose one could say it is good to travel. Back from Pickering after shopping, and bought myself a rather expensive Mason bowl for mixing cakes. etc. It was expensive because I bought it at a local ironmonger, whilst we were there several large tractors and trailers came through, with what only could be described as silage, rain is not helping.
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