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My uncle went out to the farms taking grocery orders and animal feed. He had about a dozen farms that he visited and maybe he would make a call about every two weeks with huge orders and he took me in his van, so that I could out and open and shut all of the farm gates. Arnold came too, sometimes and we had great fun exploring while uncle sat and chatted to his customers. Life was slow and leisurely. The animal feed, mainly proven, oats and cattle cake was kept in a loft back at the shop and my cousin and I moved the sacks houses and dens for our amusement. We played mothers and fathers and Arnold even had a doll but I wasn’t to tell his friends about it. He was gentle and kind and was sorry about the way his mum treated me. When I was really down he would make me laugh by playing horrible sqwarky music on an old “His Masters Voice” type gramophone. Our biggest laugh was a record called “take your finger out of your mouth I want a kiss from you” – it sent us into hysterics. In the same long passage where we played the gramophone, we also played marbles the full length of the hall on the line. It was just the two of us and this felt cosy. Arnolds old granddad was mad about fly fishing and would arrange on the table a rainbow array of feathered hooks and I found out what type of fish each was likely to attract. He and Arnold went shooting rabbits too but that was not for me – somehow killing fish I didn’t see as so gruesome, in fact after the war I went fishing with my brother off Redcar beach. I didn’t mind going off by myself in Hellifield – I used to go up a hill to the country station and wait for the train. There was a stream close by where I picked primroses, violets and watercress. The watercress never got home to the table because I just sat and ate it. I loved to climb those dry stone walls in West Yorkshire and watch the animals grazing – I even collected eggs from Aunties Hens – but even now I’m nervous of feathered creatures.
It was like living in a different world, there at the shop rationing existed but there was always a little bit extra off ration for favourite customers and aunty just used the shop as her pantry! I went to the village school while I was there but the children treated me very much like a foreigner – I didn’t have a Yorkshire accent, I was prim and proper and I could do fractions – my only claim to fame. I found a girlfriend called Peggy Swindlehurst and I loved her to pieces. She had one blue eye and one brown eye, but this was attractive. I found out that her father was a tyrant so she wanted to spend as much time as possible with me and at Arnolds house.

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