Family Memories Birmingham Childhood

Entertainment

Initially we had a Crystal set with an outside aerial consisting of a wire going out of the middle room, up the side of the house and then along at roof height to a tall pole at the end of the garden. Later we had a radio and I used to regularly listen to "Listen with Mother" at quarter to two in the afternoons.

When TV started, we were one of the first in the street to buy one. My favourite programmes were Andy Pandy, Muffin and Flower Pot Men. The TV only broadcast at certain times a day at the beginning and then gradually the hours increased.

We had several pets, cats, kittens, tortoises and tadpoles. My granny had a black cat who had two kittens and one day the cat carried the kittens one by one in her mouth over the fences to see us at our house. The tortoises used to burrow under the hedge and it was a game of hunt the tortoise to find them at night to put them to bed in their special "Torty House" which my father had made and filled with straw. If they had stayed out a night and it had been frosty it would not have been good for them.

Ginger the Cat and Tim the Tortoise beside the "Torty House"