In the summer of 1938 mum and I went to the Isle of Man for a week. Dad did not want to go but was quite happy for us to go. Mum had been when she was a girl with her two friends, Blanche and Gladys Temperton and their father. We went on the ferry from Liverpool and I think it took about four hours to reach the Isle of Man.
We were staying in a boarding house in Douglas; we were just paying for the room and buying our own food, which the landlady would prepare. The weather was warm and sunny and I remember it as a happy time. We went to Groudle glen, Ramsey, and on a tram to Port Soderic and were suitably horrified by the enormous drop from the side of the track to the rocks below. We went to the Villa Marina where there was dancing every night. Mum didn’t dance but I did. There were lots of young men from the two holiday camps at Howestrake and Onchan Head. These camps were for young men only and were very popular for many years. During the war years I often thought about all those happy carefree boys, and the very different camps they would find themselves in.
Preparations for war were going on everywhere. On the newsreels at the pictures we saw trenches being dug in Hyde Park, and sandbags outside all the public buildings, and these also had sticky tape criss-crossed on the windows. Deanna Durbin was one of the main attractions at the cinema and our favourite radio show was Bandwagon, with Arthur Askey and Richard Murdoch. They were supposed to live in a flat at the top of Broadcasting House, with ‘Lewis’ the goat. It was said that many people sent parcels of carrots and a variety of food for Lewis! Arthur’s girlfriend was Nausea Bagwash.
It was becoming obvious that in spite of Neville Chamberlain waving his white paper and declaring that it meant ‘peace in our time’, preparations for war were going ahead. Alsager was thought to be very vulnerable with Crewe station, the Railway works, and Rolls Royce factory just six miles away, and of course the Royal Ordnance factory at Radway Green right on the doorstep. We were assured though that the roofs of the factory buildings had been made to look exactly like a large wood! We took great comfort from this and the fact that the Germans were ‘easily fooled’. How horrendously ignorant we were.
The weather, that uneasy summer of 1938 was mostly hot and sunny. Miles of ‘shirrlastic’ was sewn into dresses to create the ‘dirndl’ waist, and Hungarian peasant blouses were all the rage. These were white voile with quite low necks and embroidered very boldly with deep blue and red and yellow. I had one, a present from Manchester, and thought it was wonderful.
I went to the pictures when I could finish work early enough. Sometimes with George, or Joe Astley. He was a Telephone Engineer and always seemed to be around. Sometimes I went to Porthill with Stan on Wednesday lunchtime and we went to the pictures in Burslem. I remember the first time this happened, Kathleen came with us. I thought she was very serious and old fashioned, no make up and very dark clothes, whereas I was inclined to overdo the lipstick, mascara, and powder, and later we got ‘Max Factor pancake’, this was really exciting. Kath came with us because it was a special film in which Charlie Chaplin spoke aloud! He had been famous as a comedy star of the silent films, and then had not made any when ‘talking’ pictures started. However, he had decided to make this one, and people were going to see it chiefly to hear him speak. it .sounds absurd, and it was so far as I was concerned. I was not impressed.
Air raid shelters were being built at a great rate. They were like brick boxes about as big as a bus shelter with just a small opening. They were really meant as a shield from shrapnel if you were caught on the street in an air raid. We were all issued with gas masks complete with cardboard box and a length of string to carry them by. It is only now, fifty years later that we have been hearing that women who were making these masks nearly all died early and painful deaths from the effects of the asbestos used in their manufacture.
Everyone was making ‘black out’ curtains. ‘Seeds’, the drapers I have mentioned earlier must have sold miles of black sateen. Customers coming into Hunters would buy a few odd items then say, “Oh, and two pounds of sugar. Everyone was hoarding sugar. Our regular customers who had orders delivered were including 28 pound parcels with their groceries. Cost, by the way, five shillings and three pence.