Thud to the bottom - just a glimpse of the shadows behind me - part 2

After posting yesterday - see yesterday's post here - I decided to share more of my history - just because I can.

I'm going back now to when I was 9 and a bit years old. If you read yesterday's post you will know that dad had been 'forced' to leave for previous indescretions (that's politely put).

Before dad left we lived in a little cottage on a park in a city in the UK. We moved there when I was 6 and it was heavenly for a child. A whole million acre (slightly exaggerated) park of my own...well, to share with my younger brother and a zillion local people. The best time of the day for me was often just at dusk, especially spring and autumn as it arrived early enough before my bedtime to use it. I would (usually with brother in tow) trot down the drive from my front door into the park and it was as good as deserted. The gates were locked at dusk so folk were always on their way out, but there was enough light to see and play on the swings or see-saw or climbing frame or rocking horse. I would have about half an hour (ages in a 6 year old's life) to play without other kids pushing me about.
(These were the days when child abduction was little heard of and kids went out until they were cold, hungry or both).

I enjoyed this freedom until I was 9 when dad got locked up. The cottage was tied to his job so, as he couldn't work any more we had to leave, and quickly too.

I said in my last post that social benefits were as good as non-existent. The same was to be said for social care. My mother and us three young'uns were unceremoniously dumped in a damp, mouldy, rotting terrace in the red light/ drug/ slum district of the city.

It was like walking into hell. In all my few years I'd been on this world I had never seen anywhere so awful and we were expected to live in it.

The house was almost smack in the middle of a whole terrace street. Some of the terraces had crumbled and were in the process of being knocked down.
As one approached the front door there was a grill under the front window which I learned quickly enough was the cellar opening under the house. I never went actually in to the cellar but I did bravely go down the stairs once when mum was out on one of her usual escapism outings. It smelled of urine and mould, mice (I presume - maybe rats) squeaked in the gloom, litter finding its way from the street through the grill had created a small hillock underneath which I guess was about 3 feet high. I squealed and ran back up to daylight - much to the amusement of my younger brother (who I may add never went down at all).

The rest of the house when we arrived was cold, stark, dank, damp, cobwebby and altogether miserable. It pretty much stayed that way.
Within a week we found that the roof above what should have been my brother's bedroom leaked - hence the wet wallpaper and black mould slowly conquering the planet from it's corner stronghold. Mum told the council. They didn't care. (In the 2 years we were there no one ever came to look, let alone fix it).

We had truly hit the bottom of the heap with a big thud.

My brother in the meantime spent two years sleeping in the same room as mum on a small camp bed beside her big double bed.

I, on the other hand, had to share an old, slightly lumpy, recently acquired from a charity shop, double bed with my annoying, five years my junior, sister in the other room that remained relatively dry. There was no room for separate beds and to be honest in some of the bitter winter nights we were both glad to snuggle up, even though we 'hated' each other. It was always cold, even in the summer, as the back of the house faced north.
There was an old, empty fireplace which was one of the many run-around routes for the mice and I would often lay awake listening to them scurrying as I wrapped myself tightly under my stark white (well grey) sheet, scratchy old blanket and a coat.

The rest of the house was equally as bad ... but I'll write about that soon.

The cottage on the park. Every kid should have one.

This was actually taken across the road and 6 'doors' down from our 'new' home - Report by the Daily Mirror about slum areas of the city.

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