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EARLY DAYS

"Whose that walking down our street, Mrs Simpson's sweaty feet". Anon.

The words of this little ditty being chanted by the children of St. Mary's RC, School, Swinton (Lancs) are among my earliest childhood memories. The Mrs Simpson being referred to somewhat irreverently, was the lady later to become the Duchess of Windsor and soon to bring about the abdication of the then King Edward VIII. Among other memories of the time are the death of King George V, the outbreak of the Second World War on 3rd September 1939 and the air raids that were to follow.
We were, I suppose, lucky in that all we suffered in these raids was having a few windows blown in when a bomb fell about two streets away. This wasn't the only bomb to fall around about but it must have been the largest and demolished about thirty houses completely. This particular 'bomb' lent itself to all sorts of rumours, many which were rife in those days. It was said to be not a bomb at all but a 'Land Mine' that descended on a parachute. The story went on to say that a man saw this descent and, thinking that it was a parachutist, dashed out with a broom to attack the invader. The 'mine' hit the deck, exploded and the poor unfortunate soul was never seen again. Such tales were the meat of the day to youngsters at that time. Another story was that of a man who was caught signalling to the German bombers with a torch from behind Burton's factory on the East Lancashire road. The Air-raid warden, so the story went, beat the unfortunate fifth columnist to death with his torch!
A little closer to home, this time no rumour, was the incendiary bomb that fell through the roof of a neighbour's house just across the road. This small, but deadly, device continued through the bedroom floor and landed on the lid of the piano downstairs where it burst into flames. Prompt action by someone in the household quickly extinguished it by smothering it with sand from a bucket. In those days buckets of sand, water and stirrup pumps were almost part of the household furniture in many homes. The badly burned piano lid remained in place for as long as I can remember.
When I was eventually allowed out of the house after such air raids, in company with others of my age, I used to go around the parks and fields in search of 'shrapnel', and unexploded incendiary bombs. We were of course always warned not to touch such things but 'boys being boys' we did exactly the opposite. These small bombs would be found buried up to their fins in the fields and when dug out provided us with hours of fun. As they were phosphoric, if one was to chip large chunks off them with a knife or axe and throw such chunks in a fire they would burn with an intense white flame. Little thought was ever given to the inherent dangers of such a practice.
One of the first things to disappear in aid of the 'war effort' in the early 1940's, were all, or almost all the iron railings surrounding the public parks. As far as us school kids were concerned, this was wonderful, instead of having to walk to the park gates or to where the gates used to be, we could now take a short cut across the grassed areas en-route to school via the park. At the school end of our particular park, for some reason unknown to us, about half a dozen railings were left intact. On these rails on Mondays were hung two large sacks; one I know was for waste paper. What the other was really intended for I cannot say but all sorts of household items were to be found therein. As this was in one of the so-called better areas of Salford with many large houses, a search of this bag became a treasure hunt.
So, the journey home for lunch on Mondays was always delayed for a short time whilst the contents of these 'treasure chests' were explored. I'm sure that I must have taken many useless items home with me, which were no doubt, quickly recycled into our own rubbish bin by my mother. However, two things liberated from the sack I shall never forget. One because it remained in my mother's kitchen almost until the day she died. This was a small board carved in the shape of a windmill to which two small Dutch style wooden clogs were attached. The clogs were filled with some sort of material to facilitate their use as pincushions. Two small cup hooks adorned the lower part of this item upon which keys could be hung. The second item, much more interesting as far as I was concerned, was a small booklet issued, if I remember rightly, by the Ministry of Information.
According to this booklet, the way to distinguish a friendly Chinaman from a Japanese infiltrator was by the gap between the Japanese person's big toe and the adjacent toe. Apparently these particular digits of the enemy had a wider gap because of the type of footwear worn by them from an early age. Whilst the shoes, or flip-flops (as we now know them), favoured by the Chinese were designed with a flap-over piece across the front of the foot the Japanese ones were of the 'thong' type with a strip of rubber looped between the aforementioned toes. This, according to the booklet, which also warned us to beware of German parachutists dressed as nuns, was how the deformity, if it could be called that, came about.
So here was I, a schoolboy in those war years, eyeing all nuns with suspicion and just waiting for the chance to approach an oriental gentleman to ask him to remove his shoes in order that I may inspect his feet! No doubt, as is possibly the case today, someone sitting in a cosy office in Whitehall was earning a fat salary for dreaming up such gems. I did at one time think I had encountered a German Spy though. I was approached by a stranger early one evening on the main Manchester to Bolton road and asked in which direction Manchester lay. As all the signposts were covered up, removed or blotted out in those days, I would have thought that this was not an unreasonable question for a stranger to ask. However, on reporting the incident to my father, a soldier of the First World War, he immediately became suspicious and declared that this chap was possibly a spy who had lost his way! Maybe he was but he wasn't dressed as a nun so I thought no more of it.

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