My father used to bike from New Barnetby to Kirton-in-Lindsey every day to go to work. It seems a long way even in a car today.

When I was about 7 years old, I would walk, alone, all the way to Elsham to see my grandparents.  It was completely safe and not considered anything unusual.  What a different world we live in now!.  When I was small, I used to ride on a special seat at the back of my father's bicycle.  I would hold on to his big powerful shoulders.  He was a giant of a man.  As I grew older and bigger, he eventually became about 5 ft 6 Inches tall and was very thin and wiry without an ounce of fat on him.  When he was over the age of 60, I have seen him shovelling malt barley alongside men half his age.  It was extremely hard work. The men were very tough then.

He told me that it was easier to carry 16 stone (224 lbs) bags of corn on your back than to carry 12 stone (168 lbs) bags, as they balanced on the back better.  If I carry a four stone bag, I find it heavy.  Most men were similar in size and strength.  As I grew older, I looked down on nearly all of them from my lofty height of nearly 5 ft 10 ins, but I will never be big enough to look down on their strength or quality.

I have seen my grandmother at over the age of 60 working on top of a haystack and she was less than 5 ft tall.  Some people of course think they are tough even today.  I have heard people boast that they have completed the forty-two mile "Lyke Wake Walk" across the North Yorkshire Moors in twenty-four hours and they think that is something special.  It isn't special.  A sixteen-year-old schoolgirl from Keelby, where I now live, completed that walk in twenty-four hours and said she had a pain in her leg from start to finish.  She went to see her doctor after the walk and he informed her that she had done the complete walk with a broken leg.  Now that is special.

People were considered quite ancient when they reached the age of 60.  They were stooped and old and their hands often gnarled and knotted with arthritis.  Country life was wonderful for the young but it could be very cruel to the old, and yet the gravestones show that many lived to a ripe old age.  One in the churchyard – Harry Robinson - lived to be 102.  My mother was 92.

On his first day at school, my brother refused to close his eyes to say prayers.  The teacher hit him and he kicked her hard on the shins causing great pain.  Things could only get better after that.  The teacher's name was Miss Whittam , and she used to cycle to Melton and back every day from Ulceby, often in atrocious weather conditions for many years.  She was a tough lady, who I understand lived into her nineties.

My father, like other parents, would say to people "If you find them doing anything wrong, give them a good hiding, and tell me, and I will give them another good hiding when they get home." I cannot recall a single occasion when either my mother or father hit me or hurt me in any way.

There was one public telephone box in the village, whose number was Barnetby 218.  There was a slot into which you put your money and two buttons marked A and B. To make a call you first put in your money and then, dialled a local number, or dialled 0 to call the operator.  If your call was successful you pressed button A and your money disappeared into the bowels of the earth, but if you failed you pressed button B and got your money back.

We used to sit outside the blacksmith's forge and watch him shoe the big farm horses.  The smell of the burning hooves is still in my memory as well as the warm glow of the fire on cold winter days.  The blacksmith and farm workers sometimes controlled stubborn horses by using a lot of force.  People in general were crueler to animals then, than people today imagine.  Cruelty always upset me, but I kept my opinion to myself as I could not take on the whole world.

On the sixth of April, every year, we saw horse drawn wagons piled high with household furniture passing through the village in both directions. It was the date when people who lived in tied houses "flitted" or moved house.

Early on New Year's day I would go round the houses with a bundle of firewood, knock on people's doors, hand them a piece of wood and say something like. "I’ve brought you a piece of wood, I hope it'll do you good, If you haven't got a penny, a ha'penny will do, If you haven’'t got a ha'penny God bless you." They would take the wood and give me money in return.  It was simply a form of begging and I would return home quite rich.  They not only expected it, they would have been upset if it had not happened as they considered it would bring them good luck for the whole of the year.

People were very superstitious then.  When lightning was about my mother would cover all the mirrors in the house with old bed sheets and if anyone broke a mirror, they would be severely depressed as it meant 7 years of bad luck.  If a pigeon landed on your roof it meant there would be a death in the family.  Even today, people insist that you must leave the house by the door through which you entered it.

Although I am definitely not superstitious and deliberately walk under ladders to prove it, I am deeply affected by a certain sound.  It is the strange howling noise made by dogs on extremely rare occasions.  I have only heard it about three times in my entire life.  It is so hard to describe, but it is eerie, spooky and makes the blood run cold.  We were told that the dog only made that sound when it saw its dead master's spirit rising up from his body.  I was once walking past a wood in north Lincolnshire, when I heard that sound, and I get the creeps every time I go near that wood now, and am reluctant to go into it.  I have spent many hours, completely alone in a large forest, in pitch-blackness after enjoying deer watching or badger watching, so loneliness and darkness do not bother me, but the supernatural does. Yet I positively do not believe in such rubbish.  I suppose that when you have been brought up in, what I think of as, the dark ages, some of it stays with you for life.  [Continued]