I remember he used to take short hand as well.  Well, me being a new boy, I didn’t know the alphabet.  So one day, I said “Please sir, could you write me down the alphabet in short hand for me?”  And he said “What?! Write down shorthand?  The alphabet?” He said “You should know this by now” And he gave me another good hiding.  When we were writing down short hand I used to make all these squiggles and lines and I think it was the clearest short hand anybody had ever seen because he used to look over my shoulder and try and read it and he said he could read a word of it.  He said “It’s nothing like short hand”.  I quite agree with him.  But while he was writing, I used to write it down in long hand and had it under my desk and when he asked me to read back what he’d dictated I used to get it quite right.  He could never understand how it was that I could read it and he said there’s no other person in England who could have read a word of it.  He also used to take us in French.  Well he had a book with the French and the English translation in the back of it.  One day while we were looking in an old cupboard we found some books exactly like the one he as using for our homework.  They had the answers and translations in English at the back.  Well we used to copy this and of course we used to make quite a few mistakes until one stupid boy, he made a perfect translation.  So he thought “This boy doesn’t know French as well as that” so he asked us what we’d been doing so of course we had to own up.  We all got a walloping for that!  He never used to send us to the headmaster if we did anything wrong.  He always used to deal with it himself.  We had a lady teacher.  She used to send us to the headmaster if we misbehaved ourselves.

Well he had a strap, not a cane.  It was fairly thin leather but rather broad, about an inch and a half broad and it was a double strap.  Well, it used to make a terrific ‘crack’ but fortunately it didn’t hurt a bit.  I didn’t mind how many times I got it.  It was only the humiliation of getting the strap in front of all the class.

I remember one day I was on my way to school across The Stray when along came along came a great big butcher’s boy, an errand boy, on his bicycle.  Well he caught me up and I never thought anything of it.  He just put his bike down and ‘thump!’ and gave me the most beautiful black eye I’ve ever seen.  I said “What did you do that for?” He said “Oh, you’ve been cheeking me every day for a long time I’ve been trying to catch you” I said “I’ve never set eyes on you before” I said “You must have got hold of the wrong boy” He said “Oh no I haven’t” He said “I know you” Anyhow by the time I got to school, this eye was really puffed up and I could hardly see out of it.  The headmaster saw me and he said “Now then Riegels, what have you been doing?  Have you been fighting?”  I said “No sir.  I haven’t been fighting” So he said “Where did you get that black eye then?” So I said “A butcher’s boy just give me it on my way to school.  I said I’ve never seen him before and he just got off his bike and thumped me in the eye”  He said “That’s a fine tale to tell anybody” He said “You must have been doing something”  So out I came in front of the class and got six on each hand.  But as I say, it didn’t hurt very much so I didn’t mind.

Another time I had a Sparklets siphon bulb given me.  I didn’t know quite what it was but I took it to school and it went through about six people’s hands, we were always swapping things with each other, and it went through about six people’s hands before the last one.  We were being taught by a lady teacher at the time and he threw it in the fire.  Well of course this thing went off like a bomb.  It blew all the fire grate out.  Hot coals all over the floor.  Nearly freighted the lady teacher to death.  Well the headmaster heard this bang and came rushing in.   He said “What have we been doing?” So the lady teacher said “Somebody’s thrown something in the fire and nearly blown us all up” Well I must admit that we were pretty good at owning up and he said “Which of you boys put that in the fire?” So one of the boys said “I did sir” So he said “Well where did you get it from?” “So-and-so” He said to this next boy “Where did you get it from?” “So-and-so” And so it went on ‘til the six of us were out in front of the class.  Well we all got a good hiding for that.  Although I had nothing to do with it really, I just brought it to school.

I don’t remember us ever having a cricket team at school but we certainly had a pretty good football team and of course I always used to go and watch the boys.  I was one of the younger ones really.  One day I saw my name on the list for the team.  I’d been picked for the first team and I thought “My goodness, I’m not going to play” So I said to the boys, I said “I’m not going to turn up this afternoon”.  It was a Saturday afternoon.  Anyhow, the captain heard about this.  He said “What’s this I hear about you not coming to play this afternoon Riegels?” So I said “No, I’m not coming to play.  I’m not going to play in the first team” So he said to me “Look here.  If you don’t come this afternoon you’ll get the biggest hiding of your life” So I was at school in my football togs.  I was very very nervous of course, playing in my first match but as it happened I did quite well.  I scored two goals.  After that I never missed a match again and I enjoyed it very much indeed.

One day I and another boy decided to play truant. We only did this once. It was a beautiful day so we decided to go for a walk on the moor which was just in front of our house.  Well we just got a nice way on the moor; who should we come to face to face with but our headmaster.  What on Earth he was doing there at that time, I don’t know.  I suppose he wasn’t feeling too well and he just decided to have an afternoon off school.  Of course we’d to report to him the next morning and got another walloping from him.  But we never did it again.

I think I must have stayed at this school until the end of the War.  Well very nearly the end of the War anyhow.  One term I said to my mother “I don’t want to back to school.  I want to go out to work”  Well she argued with me a long time but it was no good, I said “No, I’m not going back” and as I’d no father to make me, she couldn’t make me and I used to stop at home.  I didn’t go back any more.

When I was at school I had a horror of exams.  I refused point blank to go in for them.  We used to be sent down to a hotel in Harrogate and there was a proper examiner there.  But I would never go.  During the time that the exams were on the headmaster used to give me some papers of the previous year to do on my own in the classroom.  Well this I did.  And when he saw the papers he said “If you’d only gone to take these exams, you’d have passed easily” because I’d done pretty well.  I never did go in for an exam.

I remember my brother Ernest at that time; he was working in a bank in Harrogate and so I thought it would be nice if I could get into a bank so I went to another bank.  Not to the one my brother was in and asked if they wanted a Junior and they said that they’d already got one but he couldn’t come for three months so would I come there and work there for three months.  The salary was going to be two pounds a week and I thought this was jolly good.  So off I went to the bank doing the full Junior’s work; getting all the money out of the safe and I remember pulling it up on a lift and handing it to the cashiers and doing all the postages and I used to do the exchanges, sorting out all the cheques from the different banks in Harrogate and I used to have to make a list of them and go to each bank and leave their cheques and bring ours back.  I don’t know they settled up about this but it was called ‘Exchanges’.  Well, I’d been working there for two months and I still hadn’t had any money and one day the inspectors came to the bank and they saw me in the bank there and they said “Who are you?” So I said “I’m the new Junior” So they said “Well this bank hasn’t got a Junior.  They’re not supposed to have one at present.  There’s one coming later on”  Anyhow, they told me not to come any more and I never did get any money from them but my mother advised me not to worry about it and I’d try and get into another bank.  So they sent me to Leeds.  I think it was The Yorkshire Penny Bank. And they sent me to a school there to take this exam on my own.  Well I don’t know, I was absolutely dead nervous there.  I didn’t know what to do and I don’t suppose I wrote have a dozen words down.  I just couldn’t concentrate or think about anything at all.  I just sat there.  Well of course, I knew I had failed but I don’t know what the bank said to my mother but she never said anything to me about it.

Anyway, when we were boys my mother always used to go to very high class outfitters in Harrogate and she was in there buying some clothes for me one day and the boss of the firm said “Would I like to come to work for them as a Junior.  As an apprentice?”  So my mother talked it over with me and I said “Yes, I think I would like it” so off I went there.  The first year I got Ten Shillings a week.  The next year a pound a week.  The third year, Thirty Shillings.  I stayed there about five years and I was still only getting Thirty Shillings a week.

When I was at school I always used to meet my best friend; a chap called Bulveried, near St Mary’s Church which was close to the school and we used to meet there at half past eight and of course we were at school long before nine.  The headmistress, Mrs McGregor, she used to say “Riegels, What time are you supposed to come to school?”  So I said “Nine o’clock, Mrs McGregor” So she said “Well please don’t come ‘til Nine o’clock” and she used to put us out the front door even if it was pouring down.  Well, we got fed up with this so we used to go round the back and climb in the cloak room window and hide there until the boarders had finished their breakfast and used to come into school.

Before we left Hampsthwaite at the top of the stairs leading to the nursery, there was a vertical piece of plaster and one day when my mother was out shopping in Harrogate for the day, my brother cut a hole in this plaster and he made a little ladder and we had a little den in the false roof.  We put a lot of boards on the floor and such like and carpet and made quite a little hiding place for us.  He hung a picture up over this hole in the plaster and when my mother was after him for doing something naughty, he used to grab me and off we used to go and we used to climb into this false roof and put the picture back.  He had a little ladder and we used to draw it up after us. I don’t think she found out until we moved to Harrogate about this hole and when they took the picture down there was this great big hole which of course had to be made good.  At the other end of the house, over the drawing room, I don’t know whether there was a man hole there or not but we had another little hidey hole up there.  He took some slates off the roof and put glass in for windows and he used to spend quite a lot of time up there and my brother used to smoke up there and such like.  I don’t know whether the people who went into the house knew anything about this but I should think that if they went up there now they’d find quite a lot of treasurers!

My mother told me one day that there was an organ grinder in the village.  I think he had a monkey with him and he used to play this barrel organ outside our house and I suppose my brother was tantalising him and it made him very wild anyhow.  Last of all he ran into the garden.  We had a holly tree there.  He took a piece of holly off this bush and whipped it over the wall into the organ grinder’s face.  Well, the organ grinder was furious.  He rushed to the house and met my father.  My father said “Sorry about this” he gave him some money, I don’t how much, and he said “You catch him and give him a jolly good hiding” but he knew that he’d never catch him because he was one of the best runners in Hampsthwaite at the time.  I don’t think anybody ever caught him doing anything.

My grandparents, they had a large house in a very little village in the Pennines called ‘West End’.  It was a deserted village really, I think there’d have been some old lead mines there years ago and this house was about two miles from anywhere.  They used to go up there for the summer with my aunties and my mother and they used to go up there for a holiday.  It was in the Washman Valley.  You crossed over the Washman then up a very high hill to the house.  Well of course, that was before I was born.  My uncle was very eccentric in later years.  He was a brilliant engineer but he was very very funny, in fact when he knew my mother was getting married, I think she must have been his favourite sister, because he said if she got married he wouldn’t speak to her again as long as he lived.  Well my mother had to sneak out of the house on her wedding day and of course she did get married but he kept his word, I don’t think he spoke to her for at least thirty years.  He lived with my maiden aunties, Aunt Ada and Aunt Kate in East Parade in Harrogate.  He had a room to himself and I don’t think I ever saw him without a hat on.  He was very good to us really.  If my mother wanted anything mending, I used to go in and talk to him and my cousin Gertie and Douglas and Bill, they all used to go in to see him and of course, my two maiden aunties.  But when my mother went there, she never went in to see him and he wouldn’t have anything to do with her at all but if I took anything to him and said “Will you mend this for my mother, uncle?” he said “Oh yes” and he used to do it at once and all was well.

Well, he was an inventor.  He invented a gadget on the railway.  It was something fastened to the line and when the engine went over this gadget it used to work a little pump and it used to fill a little perforated bowl with oil and as it filled with oil it made a contact, rang a bell and the signalman at the next station knew just exactly where the train was.  I think they used it in Harrogate, round about Harrogate but I don’t think it was used all over the county.  Anyhow, I don’t think he got very much for it.

After my grandparents died we used to go to this house at West End and he had a room full of machinery, lathes and planning machines and goodness knows what.  There must have been tons of machinery there. He said that he was working on an invention that when he finished it he could ask any price he liked for it and he’d get it.  I don’t know what it was.  He’d never tell anybody what he was doing but I know we used to have to go every week and take him his food and stuff up there.  Well when we first went to Harrogate I was too small and Gertie and Rudy and perhaps Bill or Douglas, they used to go on push bikes and it was fifteen miles from Harrogate, from where we lived.  They used to have to take everything up, all his food.  Sometimes they’d be a couple of gallons of paraffin.  Even sometimes coal, when he’d run out of coal.  He used to get it from Darley but he ran out at times. Loads of cast iron stuff and all manner of materials.  In fact it took two of us all our time to get it on both our bikes and we had haversacks on our backs weighing about fifty pounds, I should think, and you used to have to go across the Yorkshire Moors in all weathers.  I remember I used to cry because I couldn’t go.  I was too small.  But later on I seemed to get the permanent job of going and I used to go every week no matter what the weather was and I don’t know if you know what it’s like on the Yorkshire Moors in mid-winter but it’s very bad indeed.  I remember I only turned back once and that was when I came to a side road and there was about eighteen inches of snow so of course I couldn’t get through at all and I had to turn back. Eventually we got a motor bike.  I used to try and get through on that but it was very difficult.  It was loaded up like a Christmas tree.  If it broke down it was just hopeless to try and push it.  I just couldn’t do anything with it at all.  I could hardly hold it up.  When it as too bad to go on the motor bike we used to go to Darley station and walk from Darley.  It was seven miles from Darley.  Practically all the way up hill and I remember my cousin Douglas, he used to have a pair of scales and he used to weigh his pack and if there was an ounce over, he used to take something out.  Well, this went on for years.  He occasionally used to come back to Harrogate but he would only stay a week or two, and wasn’t that a relief to me!

I remember one time when we had the motorbike.  When I got to his house, I found that the petrol tank was leaking very badly.  It had a crack in it.  Luckily it was near the top of the tank and I hadn’t lost a great deal of petrol but it wasn’t safe to come home.  So of course, my uncle had to take the tank off and solder it.  Well, as you know, he couldn’t do it without first of all emptying the tank and putting boiling water in it and rinse it out thoroughly or else, with him soldering it, it would have exploded.  Well this seemed to take hours for him to do this and by the time he’d finished it was pretty dark and I was very worried about coming all that way in the dark.  Eventually I got home but it was very very eerie coming along the road because the Grouse, they used to make a very funny noise.  It just sounded like they were shouting “Go back. Go back. Go back. Go back!”  I was pretty scared.

This motorbike, it was an Amiga.  A belt driven thing.  Well one day I was coming on my way home and the belt broke and it had a link in it and it shot over a hedge somewhere and I don’t know where is was and I looked for hours for this link.  I couldn’t find it.  The blinking bike had no stand on it so I had to get some bricks off the wall and prop it up with these stones.  Well, I must have pushed it a few miles when, luckily, I saw a car and strange to say it was one of the customers of this tailor’s shop, outfitter’s shop, and I knew him.  So he asked could he help me.  So I said he certainly could”  Luckily I had a clothes line with me and I didn’t want to tie it to the motorbike in case anything was coming and I’d be out of control so I used to hang on to this line and steer with one hand.  Well, going up the hills, it used to pull me right off the saddle and I was learning on the handle bars being towed up this hill.  And I remember it was a very muddy day and I was getting all the mud from the back of this car.  Well, I was just like a nigger when they got me home.  I’ll never forget how grateful I was to him for that because, as I say, pushing a motorbike seven miles is no joke.  He often used to talk about it when he used to come to the shop.

I remember when I was very small, my mother said “You can’t go by yourself” and there was no one else available, so she said she would go to Darley with me and she would walk on to meet my uncle.  He was supposed to meet us half way.  We let him know we were coming.  We saw my uncle come along on his bike so I went on ahead and I said “There’s my mother just down there” and he said “Oh, is there”  I said “Yes” but he wouldn’t talk to her.  He just took the things off my back and went off with them.  So then we’d to tramp back to Darley station and come home by train.

Just before the war, about nineteen thirteen, my brother was working at the Gas ??? in Harrogate and he came home one night with a beautiful red uniform and he said “I’ve joined the Territorials”  Well I was very proud of him to see him in this uniform.  I thought he looked grand.  I don’t know what my cousin Douglas was doing at that time but the day war broke out, of course all the Territorials were called in and my brother and all of them had to go all round the town searching out for other Territorials.  They had to be called in very quickly indeed.  It was one of these times that my brother was in a hotel and he got knocked out by a German waiter.  That was on August the fourth Nineteen Fourteen and he claimed to be the first British causality in the war!  I remember they brought him home in a cab.  He looked pretty bad but he said “Oh, I’m not stopping here.  I’m going on” and out he went again and joined up with his company.  My cousin Douglas went to an Officers’ training school and he was a Second Lieutenant in a different regiment.  I think he was in the York and Lancs and my brother was in the First West Yorkshire Regiment.

My brother, he went to France, in, I think April Nineteen Fifteen and he went all through the war, all through the Somme and was wounded three times.  The last time was pretty badly.  He had a very bad wound in his leg.  He was in charge of a machine gun party and they had eight men in the team and they had three German prisoners carrying ammunition for them and I think they must have advanced further than the artillery had thought they had gone and he thinks they were hit by one of their own shells.  As he was on the trigger of the gun, the others were lying close to him so it gave him a bit of cover.  Anyhow, this shell dropped and when he looked round, there was only one man alive out of the eight plus the three Germans.  They were all dead except one.  So they decided to start walking back to get help and my brother had a very bad wound in his leg.  Suddenly, this other chap, he started coughing blood.  Well, he died.  As my brother was crawling along, he used two rifles as crutches and he was walking along and he was on these crutches and he was shot clean through the other leg so of course, he couldn’t walk at all then.  He saw some stretcher bearers so he shouted out for help.  I suppose he was in such a mess; smothered in blood and flesh of the other men that these stretcher bearers said “Oh, you’ll die.  It’s no good taking you” So they left him.  Anyhow, he wasn’t one for giving up easily so he started to crawl along and at last he was picked up by some stretcher bearers.  I believe they had to go across a marsh, a track across a marsh.  The German’s started shelling again and these stretcher bearers, they dropped him and ran off. Eventually he was picked up and slung into an ambulance full of wounded German prisoners.  They thought he was a German.  Anyhow, when they got him to the field dressing station, there were some very good doctors there and his girlfriend had given him a silk stocking as a mascot and this he had used as a tourniquet. He had put it round his leg and twisted it round with a bayonet and made it very tight and they say that that saved his life because it stopped quite a lot of the bleeding.  They cut this stocking off and he had it for years.  I don’t know where it is now but he kept it for years and the English doctors said it was a marvel they he saved his leg.  It must have been a very good doctor.

My cousin Douglas, he was also wounded once or twice.  I remember he had a tin helmet and a there was a great big hole in the front and a huge hole at the back.  To look at his hat, you’d think the bullet had gone straight through his head but it must have ricochet around the tin hat and it took a grove out of his scalp.  I don’t think it damaged the bone much but I remember they had it on show in a shop window for quite a long time in Harrogate.

One time, before he was wounded, both he and my cousin happened to be on leave together.  Well, as you know, Privates weren’t allowed to wear mufti but Officers were and of course it would never do for a Private and a Second Lieutenant to be seen walking along the streets together.  So my cousin Douglas, he was in mufti. I remember I was walking through the valley gardens with him and there was a band playing.  There was quite a big camp round Harrogate so there were a lot of soldiers there and they suddenly started shouting at my cousin Douglas “Where’s you khaki? Where’s your khaki?  Why don’t you join up?”  This went on for some time and my cousin got fed up with this so he suddenly shouted at the top of his voice, he said “Corporal!  What the devil do you mean by allowing your men to carry on like this?”  And they all jumped to attention and saluted him.  There was no doubt about that.  He was an Officer all right.

The first time my brother was wounded he was sent to Birkenhead near Liverpool.  I remember my mother said we were going to see him and we’d have to go across the river on a ferry.  Well, I thought this ferry would be a little rowing boat and I was amazed when we got there and saw what a huge boat this ferry was.  I think it was The Daffodil which eventually took part in the evacuation of Dunkirk.  The next time he was wounded he went to a little village in Wales near the Severn tunnel junction.  A little place call Portskewett and we went down there to see him there.  He showed us his wounds.  It was terrible leg wound.  You could put a twenty packet of cigarettes inside the hole of the wound.  It was very big.  We stayed with the man who was in charge of the pumps at the Severn tunnel junction.  I remember him taking me down into the tunnel and he was showing me the pumps and he let me stop them just for a second or two.  It was very very interesting. 

When I was in school in Harrogate I took all my friends with me on walks.  We always used to make for Hampsthwaite. We used to go get some sandwiches and go to Killinghall and get a few bottles of lemonade and suchlike and then on to Ripley.  Well, there’s a steep hill going down to Ripley to the river bridge but we didn’t go that way, we crossed the field straight down to the river.  There was an iron bridge which was heavily padlocked and barbed wire all over the gates.  All this bridge seemed to carry was a very large pipe.  About two feet in diameter I should think.  I don’t know what it carried over this bridge but I presumed it was water.  Anyhow, this barbed wire and all these spikes never used to stop us getting over the bridge and I remember we used to take a rope and throw it over a girder and climb up the wall and pull ourselves up.  My brother, when he went, he used to walk along the top of the very highest girder but we didn’t try that!

I remember one day, we’d just got over this iron bridge and we’d got some little fishing nets with us.  Little penny fishing nets and we were going to catch some Minos.  Well just at the side of the river we saw a fairly big fish.  We didn’t know what it was and it was far too big to go into the net and it seemed rather dopey.  It was very sluggish in the water.  Anyhow, my brother, he just put the net to it and half of it went in and he slung it out onto the bank.  Well we didn’t know what this fish was but eventually turned out to be a Grayling.  After we caught this fish we decided to over to Ripley Wood and about 150 yards out of the wood in the middle of the field there was a hollow Oak tree which was always good for an owl’s nest.  So there was Rudy, another boy and myself (I was only very small then) and these two boys went up the tree to look for this nest and climb down inside the hollow Oak tree. Suddenly a great big sheep came towards me and its eyes looked really bloodshot and I was backing away from it and it was following me around this tree.  It followed me round two or three times and I must have just turned my back on it for an instance when it butted me and knocked me unconscious for a few minutes.  Well when I came round I was shouting “Where is it?  Where is it?”  To my horror it was sniffing at my face.  Well, my brother and this other boy, they daren’t come down the tree so they throw their coat at it.  It took this coat and started jumping on it and scratching it and I should think it took it a couple of hundred yards away before they dare come down the tree and I couldn’t get up the tree so there I was, terrified.  Well once we got a fair distance away we decided to run for the wood and I don’t think we’ve ever run so fast in our lives before.  Anyhow, we got there safely, over the railing and into the wood so we were safe.  We’d left my brother’s coat there as we daren’t go for that.  Next day, which was a Sunday, we had a smooth hair fox terrier, an Irish terrier, rather and so we decided to take this dog along with us.  Well we went into the field and this sheep, we saw it again, but with having the dog with us, it didn’t come anywhere near us.  The dog chased it away so we were able to retrieve the coat and take it home.  When we got home we asked what this fish was and nobody seemed to know and so I asked my Uncle Fred, Douglas’s father and he said it was a Grayling and it was spawning.  He said “Did we want it” so we said “No, we didn’t want it” so he had it for his tea and he said it was very nice indeed.

Between Ripley Wood and Hampsthwaite there was a bridle path, about half a mile long I should think.  And hedges at both sides.  You couldn’t get a car down there but we used to walk along there.  I always used to bet my friends that I’d find thirty nests with eggs in them.  We didn’t used to take the eggs but I always used to find well over thirty nests.  There were all description of nests along that half mile.  All kinds of Finches, Sparrows, Hedge Sparrows, Pheasants, Robins, Partridges and nearly any bird you could mention was in that half mile.

I remember we used to walk along the river to Hampsthwaite and I was very proud to show my friends these initials that my brother had cut in the bridge:  WR and DHD.  They were very interested.  We used to look over the bridge and there were some lovely Trout in the river there.  It was one of my biggest ambitions to fish there but I never have fished there yet.  I’ve often tried to get a license but somehow, never managed it.  I remember one chap in Hampsthwaite, he used to do a lot of fishing and he used to take me sometimes to watch him.  Well, he used to use wasp grubs for bait and he opened his tin one day and out flew a wasp and it flew down my neck and stung me.  So I never went out with him again!

I mentioned before that my mother’s doctor in Harrogate said he would keep her supplied with visitors.  Well, this he did.  The house was always full.  Hardly ever any vacancies.  I remember one person who came, a chap and his wife, and we had a picture of Beethoven in the room and she said to him, “Look so-and-so, there’s your uncle!”  I suppose this must have belonged to my father.

During the war there was a large camp at Killinghall and had about thirty thousand men there and there was another large camp at Ripon which was eleven miles away.  Well, when there was a raid on we used to go outside and look outside the front door.  We were very high up in Harrogate and used to overlook the town.  One night we were looking out and we suddenly heard the droning of some engines and then we presumed it must have been a Zeppelin.  Anyhow, it seemed to get fairly close and suddenly down came five bombs.  Well, of course, I ran in the house quickly.  This Zeppelin, it passed right over our house and dropped another five bombs five miles the other side.  These bombs were then miles apart so they must have been trying for these two camps, Ripon and Harrogate but luckily they were dropped in fields and no damage was done.

One of our visitors was a Major Hoy and his wife.  He was a Staff Major. They had a friend who was staying with them, a lady friend, I don’t know whether she was a relative or not but she was there and they were going to have a young officer to dinner one night so this Mrs Hoy and her friend came down and asked my mother if she’d, instead of putting cheese on the toasted cheese, would she put one with soap on it?  And mark it so they’d know which it was.  They were going to give it to this Captain and they said he’d be so polite that he won’t spit it out; he’d have to eat it.  But my mother said “No”, she refused point blank.  She said “I wouldn’t do such a thing” Anyhow, Major Hoy heard about this and he thanked my mother very much for not doing it.

I remember one time, Major Hoy had stopped at the General’s house.  There were two Generals in Harrogate.  One’s General Downe and I forget who the other man was.  He stopped unexpectedly there so the General had to lend him some pyjamas.  Of course he sent them to the laundry and had them washed and Mrs Hoy and this lady friend of hers decided to stuff these pyjamas with paper and they made a face and painted it and made cardboard feet and painted them and got three large boxes and made it about the size of a coffin and they laid this chap in these pyjamas in this box. Well they had an Orderly, Major Hoy had an Orderly who used to come and clean his kit.  He was often sitting with us in the kitchen.  They sent for him up to the room and showed him this parcel, this coffin and the pyjamas and they said “Would you take them to the General?”  So he said “Ooh, I daren’t” he said.  But he said “If it’s an order, I must do it” So they said “Oh, yes, it’s an order” so off he had to go. 

Major Hoy, when he heard about it, he was frantic; he didn’t know what the General would think to this.  Anyhow, luckily the General took it in good heart and they all had a good laugh over it.

One day Major Hoy said to me “Would you like to see my soldiers?” so I said, “Oh, yes I would, very much”  so he said “Alright, come up and sit in my room and I’ll bring them up the hill and march them past”  Well, there seemed to be hundreds of these men.  They all marched past especially for my benefit.  I felt very proud about it.  Of course in those days they used to do very long route marches.  Very different to the Second World War, they didn’t do so much marching then. 

Major Hoy and his wife and quite a few friends, they used to go riding quite a lot.  They all used to meet at our house.  Well, it caused quite a sensation with all these horses coming outside.  He also used to take his dog with him.  It was a very large French Poodle.  Our Irish Terrier always used to fight it the minute it came in the yard.  Well, we used to try and control it but it was hopeless.  Anyhow, the general, he used to be egging our dog on.  He seemed to quite enjoy it every day!

My Aunt Vinnie and Uncle Fred (Douglas’s father and mother) and my mother and myself, we always used to be going down to my maiden aunties who lived in East Parade.  It was very near the station.  Well, during the raid, they had only gas, and they used to turn the gas down, just dim it, two or three times so then of course we used to turn the gas off.  Well with the house being so near the station my Aunt Vinnie would say “Oh, let’s get away from here.  Let’s get away from here.  They’ll be aiming for the station”  So she and Uncle Fred and my mother and myself, we used to go to our house in Harlow Moor Drive and we had the door open at the front and my Aunt Vinnie was looking out and suddenly shouted “What is it?  What is it? Come and look!  What is it?”  And we went outside and we could see a huge blaze in the sky.  It looked like a huge bird cage, a red hot bird cage and then it seemed to break up.  It turned out to be a Zeppelin that had been shot down and was on fire and it turned out, I believe, one that came down in West Hartlepool but I can’t believe how we could see it all that distance away.  But I’m sure it was that one.

During the war, some new neighbours came to live at number fifteen Harlow Moor Drive, just below us.  There were six children.  A boy, older than me and a girl about the same age.  And two other brothers and two very small children.  Well the two elder boys, they went to school with me and we got very friendly but I didn’t seem to get to know their father and mother.  We used to go out and play a lot of course together but I never seemed to meet the father and mother.  Of course, the father was away on business I suppose, all day, and the girl, she used to be sat in the room… they had a sewing room.  She was always busy sewing for the smaller children.  She wasn’t allowed to come out with us.  Of course, parents were very strict in those days.

Anyhow, one day I decide to ask her if she’d go to the pictures with me and she said yes, she would, if she could get out.  So I said “Right, I’ll call for you in the evening”.  Well, of course, I went and knocked at the door and asked for the two boys, I said “Was Douglas and Radcliff coming out” so she said “Oh, they’ve gone out.  I don’t know where they’ve gone but they’re out” So he said, “Won’t you come in and have a game of card with us.  We’re just having a game of cards” Of course, I didn’t want to go and play cards there.  I was worried about this girl.  Anyhow, when I got in there, they had some relatives staying with them and they sat me down and we started playing this game of cards.  Well, I wondered where on Earth this girl had got to, there was no sign of her.  They called her ‘Eve’.  We’d been there about a quarter of an hour I suppose, playing, and she suddenly walked into the room with a hat and coat on.  So her father looked up at her and said “Where are you going Eve?”  so she said “I’m going to the pictures”  So he said “Who are you going with” so she said “Him!” and dashed out of the room!  It happened when I was walking at the outfitter’s shop getting five pounds a week.  Anyhow, her father and mother said “When did you arrange this” so I said “I asked her this afternoon if she’d like to come.  And so he said “Well, you must go in the best seats you know.  You don’t want to go in the sixpennies” I think the best seats were about one and six in those days so we had to go in the best seats.  So I said “May she come with me?” and so he said “Yes, it’ll be alright”.  I don’t know what they said to her afterwards though!

And later on I got very friendly with the father and mother and we used to have a lot of dances, mostly fancy dress dances at The Royal Hall in Harrogate and these tickets were half a Guinea or a Guinea.  Sometimes there was a dinner dance you see.