Monthly Archives: November 2012

It is a universal human tendency to see meaningful patterns in this life of cruel randomness. If we are lucky enough to spend a winter’s evening sitting in front of an open fire, we see faces in the flames. Most … Continue reading →

No corsets! Bare legs! Short hair! It’s hard to realise from the distance of nine decades just how radical the young women of the post Great War period seemed to their contemporaries when they refused, in a simultaneous and victorious … Continue reading →

I’m very near the edge of the parish of Aldridge, in the November dusk – looking north-east from the rise which is “Lazy Hill”. To the left, out of view, is the bosky mound of an Iron Age Fort. Beyond … Continue reading →

It was “Decorarte” in Hatherton Street, Walsall for bespoke paint and wallpaper, Shenstone Brickworks for bricks, and Mr Hilditch’s shop in our High Street in Aldridge for the odd dozen nails or screws. It was Magnet Joinery in Lichfield for … Continue reading →

We children Jimmy ( my age) Jack and Noah ( his sons) Bill and me hung on the cemetery wall to watch. Until 31st August 1921, almost three years after The Armistice, service personnel received a military funeral, and an … Continue reading →

As the Second World War broke out, changes were afoot in the little hamlet of Lynn in Staffordshire. In 1937, my dad’s eldest sister, Mary Horton, had become Mrs. Alfred Cooper, and married life had begun in the “Lodge” on … Continue reading →