49 Elfrida Crescent - Some Memories

The Box Room off the main bedroom which contained an Aladdin's cave of accumulator wirelesses, a large box of miscellaneous ceramic tiles, gas masks and much else no longer remembered.

The storage cupboard to the left of the fireplace and located, presumably under the staircase, which gradually became more and more congested with our toys, books and junk of one kind or another. Periodically Dad would put his foot down and insist it was tidied but it always proved to be an almost impossible task. As each long forgotten item once again saw the light of day it was scrutinized, read, played with and inevitably the available time ran out and everything was stuffed back in again.

The competitive games of billiards, table tennis and pinball (not the computerised game) but instead the one played on a wooden surface, slightly angled, which contained open-ended corrals made of brass nails and round brass insertions in the table into which one would endeavour to get the small steel balls.

The games of football between Ken and me, in the living room, but only when Dad was not at home.

Playing hide and seek among the runner beans in the back garden.
Bonfire night in the garden followed by a bowl of Peg's bone-marrow soup.

I remember the large walk in larder in the kitchen, and the times that our Titchmarsh family spent with yours at Christmas when we kids slept 2 or
3 in a bed, while the grown ups played cards downstairs.

Yes it brings back memories of not only several in a bed but some with their heads to the top and others with their heads to the bottom of the bed.

Ron playing Monopoly with some friends including one called Derek.

A lilac tree in each of the corners of the far end of the back garden.

After the war Dad's intention to change the shelter into a pond. The earth was removed from over the corrugated iron and the corrugated iron itself removed, however, I think the closest it ever came to becoming a pond was when it filled up with rain water. Eventually, it was just filled in.

The long zinc bath which was used to bath us kids in when we were young. In the winter time when it was too cold to bath in the bathroom the zinc bath was placed in front of the fire in the living room. When not in use it hung on a nail on the wooden garden fence, facing the kitchen window, which separated our garden from the Bicknell's.

Dad used the corrugated iron from the roof of the shelter to make a shed just outside the back door.