Keeping Rabbits.

Tb (The Bast**d) has decided to keep rabbits for breading.

The house we lived in had a large garden with plenty of room for the odd rabbit hutch. The house also had an out-house which actually was in the house, a mad idea of the architects I think. Luckily it also had a door which lead to the out side. It was a dark room with no windows just a few old tea-chests which we used when moving in.

This is where Tb decided to keep the rabbits one in each tea-chest. He put some news paper on the base of each chest and two cereal bowls one for water the other for food, out of the kitchen cupboard. A rabbit was put into each box. After a few days the out house stunk of uncleaned rabbits and so did the adjoining stairs leading to the living room. Dad said he better get them in some hutches out side. Tb said he was waiting for a friend to make some. They never arrived and slowly all the rabbits died one by one. What a total bastard he was! Plus mum and dad should have done something about it.

This is not the only cruelty he has done to animals, I will touch on this in a later blog.

A Day Trip to the Seaside

This is only a short episode in the life and times of me (hazel) just a follow on of what has been said in my earlier blogs. I was just eleven and Sis seventeen.

A trip to the sea side. Every kid love a trip to the sea side and I was no exception.

Tb or as earlier readers know is short for The Bast**d. He has decided to take us all to the coast for the day, Mum will only have to buy the petrol. Tb on the other hand will borrow a car!?

A quite new car with Tb driving turned up out side. We all piled in Sis in front with the baby on her knee, Mum and me in the back.

During the dive some girls were walking on path as we drove past wearing short skirts. Mum said, there skirt are a bit high. Tb replied, I prefer girls around eleven. Don't you think that this would set alarm bells going with most parents, I know it would have me, especially when her eldest daughter got pregnant by him at fifteen!

When we got back home Tb cleaned the car inside and out and took it back, makes you think doesn't it.

Sis & Tb Move In

We have moved house to a three bedroom end terrace. I am ten and a half years old, Sis is sixteen.

I was excited about getting a new big bedroom all to my self. I moved into my new bedroom and enjoyed the space for a whole week before Sis, Tb and baby Jim came to live with us. They had been kicked out of his parents house so needed some where else to live.

I moved into the box room. Great ! The Bast**d is living under the same roof as me!

What was worse Mum no longer worked at the bakery, she now was a nursing auxiliary at a city hospital on nights. Dad also had a new job working shifts at the Coking Plant, across from the coal mine were he previously worked.

Mum and Dad were both on nights.

I sat on the edge of the bed waiting for Sis and Tb to go to bed. In the end room on the top of the landing came a crack and then crying, then quite. O good they have gone to bed. I get undressed and snuggle down to sleep. There's a creak on the landing! good he's just going for a wee. More talking, Sis starts crying again.

Next morning Sis comes down stairs to make Jim's bottle. I ask if she is ok? Yes! I tripped last night and banged my face. She had a black eye and a swollen lip.

The next night followed in a similar manor. talking crying and the nothing.

All quite until I feel a hand over my mouth! He grabs my hair and threatens me, I tell him to go and I'm going to shout Angie. You do he says and I will kill her,and you know I can. After seeing what he had done the night before I had no reason not to believe him. He left me there crying into my pillow.

Dad hadn't see Sis for a couple of days mainly because he would come in form work get his breakfast and go strait to bed.

Sis and Jim stayed in the bedroom nearly all day, only coming down to make the baby a bottle or get him some food. This was the norm they stayed in the bedroom all day when our parent were at home.

It's a school day, when I get home Sis is up set and waiting for me.

Dad has gone to work mum is out at her friends then going strait on to work. The Bast**d had gone to the pub with his mates and doesn't com home until midnight the next day.

Sis told me that dad had tried to throw Tb out and she had not let him. Mum had been on her side and told Dad to leave him. Dad had said no one was going to hit his daughter! Sis told Dad it was an accident and she had fell. Dad gave in and went to work.

I wish Dad had had a bit more back bone. I loved him so much, but he was so easily over powered by my mum and didn't like to upset Sis.

A few days pass may be a week or so, its a week day not sure what day. Tb and Sis come down stairs and give me the baby to hold. We are just nipping across to the shops watch Jim. This was just as I got in from school around 3:30-4: pm. 6:30 no sign of them, mum had got up about an hour earlier and now setting off to work. Dad was at work and wasn't due back until around 10pm. I made Jim a bottle, I never made one before so had to read the label.

8pm no sign of Sis.

I changed the baby's nappy and put him to bed.

10pm Dad rang and said he had to stay at work and to do a double one. In other words, to say and do another shift on top of what he had just done, he would be back around 6:30 the next morning.

I had to get up in the night to change Jim and give him a bottle. Then the alarm went off for school. I had had Jim in bed with me all night as he wouldn't settle. Still no Sis? I was very tired and didn't know what to do. I went in to my parents room Dad had come in unaware that I had been looking after the baby since yesterday tea time. Dad looked bang out there was no way I wanted to wake him. Mum should be in soon, but she was a little late as she stayed in town to buy some new shoes I think or some thing like that.

10/11 am baby had had a big poo and got it every where, no disposables then. YUK.

I was just finishing bathing Jim and getting him dressed when Mum arrived home closely followed by Sis. I can't remember any fuss being made over the situation and I don't think Dad even knew what had happened. I was just pleased Sis was ok, I can remember worrying a great deal about her.

And such was life on Elm Street. I had no self esteem and hated my life, I so much needed some one to talk to badly.

please note the baby above is not Jim but of a child around the same age.

New Motorbike for Tb

This post is very difficult for me to tell. It addresses abuse and blackmail.
We are still living in a two bedroom prefab bungalow built in the mid 1950s. I am ten years old.
A lot of what I am going to talk about is a little hazy in my memory, but some as real as only yesterday.


I can't remember how or why I went for a walk with Tb, ( The Bast**d) I know we went down into the meadows at the bottom of the village. I have always been interested in wild life and I think Tb said there were tadpoles in a little pond? Any way I went for a walk with him. I wish I hadn't, but it would have only delay the inheritable. Yes Tb forced him self on me. I screamed but there was no one to hear me. I fought him off but he was too strong. I cried and asked him to stop, but this made him more excited. How I hated him. I didn't really know what he was doing but I knew it was wrong! Thankfully he was very quick. He said he was only playing. I wanted to go home. He said it was just a game. I can't remember much about the threats, only that there were some. What I can remember, I didn't tell any one. I wish I had told sis, but she was having a bad time walking into doors! if you know what I mean. I don't think she would have done any thing she was just sixteen and to scared of him.


Tb was always looking at me and some times following me, I was getting quite scared of him.
Sis was also scared of Tb, but also loved him very much. What ever he wanted she would go with out so he could have it.

When we were growing up, we was encouraged to save any money and put it in the local bank. Tb had used sises money and now was after mine.
Sis and Tb turned up on a motorbike that he wanted to buy from a friend of his.
Sis had told him I had fifty pounds in my bank account. In 1965 this was a good sum of money for a child to have saved. Every birthday and Christmas money I had put in the bank.

Sis said, can Tb borrow your £50 from the bank? he will pay you back. No I said. Sis said only he want to buy this bike for fifty pounds. Tb: let me talk to her. He corners me! If you lend me the money I will leave you alone. What else could I do! Mum came in from the kitchen: 'where are you going'? I said I have to go to the bank because Tb wants to borrow all my money. Mum : you know you wont get it back. Sis: yes she will, we will give her it back as soon as we can. I was hoping mum would say no she's not, but all she said is well that's up to you. For gods sake woman! I was ten years old and been pushed into giving all my savings away, couldn't she see that!

He got his money and no I didn't get it back and no he didn't leave me alone.

I will continue my story in the next post.

Girl meets boy

Sis is fifteen I am nearly nine.
Sis is fifteen today and going out with her friend to the local picture house, they meet a couple of boys.
Her boyfriend was one year older than her, but much older in his ways. Sis had a sheltered up bringing regarding the way of the world and the wrong kind of fella you can meet.
We lived in a small mining community and him on the out skirts in a rough area of a big city, where the local bobbies go around in twos and threes.
Sis was easily lead, in fact she was easily led around the back of a bus shelter. And so the romance started. I will not use his real name as before, not to protect him but my sister, I will just call him The bas***d or Tb for short.

Tb was not only having sex with an under age girl but also a little light fingered as well.
Needless to say Sis fell pregnant soon after meeting him.

This coursed an uproar in the family. First of all sis got me to tell our mum and dad, I in return got a slap from dad. This was the first and only time dad hit me, I think it was the shock of it all.

Mum went strait to sis asked if it was true and gave her a slap across the face.

What to do next? does she want to keep it or put it up for adoption and ban Tb from seeing her again? Angie decided to keep the baby and all hell was let loose.

Our Uncle and Aunty from North Yorkshire wanted to adopt it, as they was unable to have a child of there own. Mum took umbrage at this and cut them off from seeing us for quite a long time.

Grammar and Granddad (dads parents) wanted her to be put away in a home! I think this was something that happened years ago to unmarried mothers. This was a bit of a laugh, as grammar was pregnant with our dad when she got married. I was there when dad reminded them of that :).

I can't remember much after that until she was about 37 week into her pregnancy. She went out with Tb to his parents house where he lived and she stayed there. Why I don't know, surely my parent wasn't happy with this. Why didn't they go and fetch her back? after all she was only fifteen.

Any way, a couple of weeks later sis and Tb turn up on a motor bike he had borrowed / stole who knows. Mum was panicking that sis was riding on a bike so close to her delivery date. It turned out sis had had the baby nearly a week earlier and had come to tell us all that they had a baby boy!

He was born in early February and sis was sixteen in the following April.

Before supper markets

Supper Markets were in the future, in the late 50s early 60s you did your shopping via an array of small local shops.
Milk was delivered to your door in pint bottles and by the mid 60s you could get eggs and also orange juice (which came in the same kind of bottle as the milk) as well.
Meat from the butcher who also killed the local grown pigs.
Of course the bakers shop.
A small grocers shop run by three spinster sisters, this was for most of the other food stuff and house hold needs.
I hated going there for mum, the counter was level with the top of my head and I might as well be invisible to the shop ladies. It wasn't that they couldn't see me, just not thought to be important enough to be served in turn, no child was. We had to wait until all the adults had been taken care off. Mrs so and so and her bad knees, Mr 60 a day cigarette man with his bad cough, While the old ladies had their butter and cheese weighed to the exact ounce, while discussing all the latest scandal.
I could be there for nearly and hour if they were busy. After all that waiting and wishing they would serve me, I would run home only to get into trouble for taking so long!

Once I went to the shop for some thing I can't remember what now it is to long ago, but what I do remember is waiting a very long time. So long in fact that I came home with a tin of cat food and a tin of peas, not what I was sent for at all. The best thing was, we didn't even have a cat at that point.

Some days the veg van would call. Mr Hill would give me a sweet and stay to drink tea and chat with mum. On occasions he would bring a brace of rabbits and leave them on the door step if we were out, I think  Mr Hill was: veg man come poacher.

Moving on now to the mid 60s. We move from a prefab bungalow which was put up as temporary housing after the war, to a new 3 bedroom house on an council estate at the edge of the village.
The estate had its own shop called Vivo or some thing similar. It was the first supermarket I had ever seen, all be it very small more like an off-license come corner shop today. It had three small isles filled to the brim with all you would need for a basic shop. This is where I first found the start of my love for curry, the Vesta dried curried meals. I loved them as a young child, and was easy enough for me to cook. However, now you would have to pay me to eat them! but we all have to start some where.

The other thing I found was the newly introduced yogurts in four fruit flavors. The first one I tried was from the new shop, it was horrid. I opened the lid to a watery topped sour smelling gunk, I thought I don't know how people can eat such stuff? It was horrid but I thought every one on the adverts on the telly was smiling and saying how good it was, so I better taste it at least.
It made me feel sick, I took it back to the shop and asked if it was supposed to be like that. I don't know was the answer, 'it only been on the shelf a week'.
 On the shelf ,is what they meant in the sixties, not refrigerated like today. In fact milk was kept in 1 pint bottles in a milk-crate on the floor of the shop and cheese and bacon on a counter to be weighed on request, covered but not chilled.
Needless to say I didn't try yogurt again for a couple years until my mid teens. Now in my late 50s I eat it every day, my favorites being the Longley Farm range followed by Activia.

Sis gets to choose a chicken

My sister and my self used to stay with our mothers brother and his wife in north Yorkshire.
Aunty was from a farming family. we used to go to her parents farm every time we stayed with uncle and aunty. we became very close with both of aunties parents calling them grammar and grandad brooks.
During late summer we would go to the fields and help with the harvest, or more like it hinder.

Life was great around the farm especially in the spring. We had lambs to feed and there were nearly always duck eggs next to the fire waiting to hatch. sometimes we would collect eggs to take back for our tea.

Sis was sent to the farm once to collect some-thing for aunt. She ran there happy to be given such an important job.
On arrival grammar was in the yard feeding the chickens.

Gran:  hello my little darling. would you like to pick a chicken?
Sis:    Can I really? can I really have one?
Gran: Which one do you want then?
Sis:   After a long time choosing, she said the black one please. she loved the poem about the black hen dad used to read.
Gran: yes that's a good one. To her horror gran swooped it up in one hand and rang it's neck in one smooth action.
Sis was heart broken she thought she was getting it as a present, a pet to take home alive, not dead, and not for aunty to cook for tea!
Gran was taken aback and felt bad and sorry for this shaking little girl who was crying uncontrollably. She hadn't thought twice about killing the bird in-front of her, it's what you did if you wanted a chicken dinner.
Sis knew farms had chickens for eggs but surely you got a chicken from the butchers if it was for cooking?