Chalk Hill was our playground.  It had many old disused workings with deep holes and steep cliffs.  The commandos trained there during the war.  In the winter, many of the pits flooded to great depths and we would build rafts out of forty- five gallon oil drums and sail on them.  Others stood on the shore, threw stones and tried to knock us off.  None of us could swim.  When the father of one of us found out about it, he went mad and, with other men, put holes in every oil drum in the quarry.  We would always find Sand Martin and Jackdaw nests in the cliffs and we would risk our lives to reach them.

I was the eldest child in my family followed two years later by my brother and two years later still by my sister.  When my sister was five years old, she tragically died from a form of leukaemia.  It was an awful shock and my parents never recovered from it.  The whole village was shaken and upset and people still talk to me about it.  It was felt that we, who had virtually nothing, were cruelly robbed of the little treasure that we had.  The coffin was taken to the church, as was the custom, on a horse drawn cart and as we made our way through the village, an RAF lorry, driven by a WAAF stopped and she saluted.  She must have seen by the tiny coffin and the large number of people walking behind it, that it was an awful tragedy.  Gordon Willerton, Les Smith, Denis Capp and Bill Barber, who were all teenagers and still at school, carried the coffin.

When she heard of this sad news, a lady in the village immediately sent my mother ten shillings (fifty pence).  It was a large amount of money and was probably a very big percentage of her life savings . She brought up a large family and was the most feared woman in the village.  All children were afraid of her and did not linger outside her house and even grown-ups were wary of her strong temper and forceful personality.  Underneath she was clearly a kind and generous lady with a heart of pure gold, which I have found so often in people with an unpopular reputation.  People who are full of charm, are the centre of attention and are popular with everyone often have nothing to offer the world except their charm.  They base their whole life on their own popularity and are often the first to disappear when anything more is required of them.  The rough-cut diamonds are often the only true friends on whom you can totally rely.

My father broke his leg on the railway and his income stopped immediately, so as there were no social security payments then, he applied to what was known as the "Parish," for financial help.  When they discovered that he had life savings of seven pounds, they told him that he was too rich and to come back again when he was penniless.  When he was penniless and returned, they gave him two pounds-fifty and told him that he would have to pay it all back when he returned to work.  My parents told me, although I wasn’t aware of it at the time, that my grandparents and other kind people in the village gave us food or we would have had nothing to eat.

My mother’s best and only coat was made from an old army blanket but it looked fine to me. I'm not a moaning person and I suppose that could be the reason why.  I cannot possibly complain after seeing how difficult life has been for others.  Most people around us led similar lives, so we weren't special.  I have never been obsessed with the pursuit of money either.  You can live well on very little.

When my brother left school, before joining the Royal Navy, he worked on a farm, but his heart was not in it.  One of his jobs was to drive the horse drawn rake, raking up the left over corn.  He did this during hot summer days.  People would nudge each other with a broad grin on their face and say, "Look, he's at it again." The horse would be contentedly chewing the hedge at the end of the field and my brother would be fast asleep.

I once went to join some friends and had to cross a field with a bull in it.  The bull was a long way off in the field to my right but when it saw me, it charged at me. Although I was a fast runner, it felt as if I was in a nightmare as I tried to reach the edge of the field before the bull reached me.  Bulls can run like lightning and my legs felt so heavy and sluggish.  I was terrified, as bulls often killed people, in those days.  Suddenly I found myself safely on the other side of the hedge, but I could not remember getting there.  I looked at the hedge and saw that it was a solid Hawthorn hedge about twelve feet tall.  It was so solid that it seemed impossible for anyone to pass through it.  Either I broke the world high jump record or a miracle happened.  It is still one of the great mysteries of my life.

One year the Lincolnshire Show was held at Brocklesby Park, which is just down the road from Melton Ross, so a friend (also called Bill, but a different Bill) and I went along to see it.  Bill worked for a crop spraying company and seemed to know everyone there, and whenever we passed a company hospitality tent, Bill and I were invited in for an excellent lunch and a lot of drinks.  We left the first tent and had not walked very far, when we were invited in for a second lunch and more drinks.  Being young and fit, we accepted their kind offer with delight.  As we were now quite full and slightly inebriated we tottered out into the sunshine and weren’t in the least bit surprised to find ourselves sitting down to a third lunch and more drinks.  We refused all further offers of food after that, but being the friendly sort, we could not watch people drink alone.  I think it was the happiest day of my life, but I can’t quite remember.  No newts in England were happier that day.

My father worked on the railway.  In the winter when there was dense fog at night the train drivers could not see the signals, so had to be warned of the position of the signals by detonators which, when placed on the railway line, would be set off by the wheels of the railway engine.  My father used to place those detonators on the line and it was my job to take him his supper late in the evening. He would have sandwiches and hot tea in a lemonade bottle wrapped in two old socks to keep the tea warm.  He sat in a night-watchman's hut in the middle of the railway track with a hot fire in a metal container in front of him.  I was quite young and sat with him, with his arm around me, and stared contentedly at the red-hot coals in the fire, sometimes sharing his sandwiches and tea. It was about as near as I have been to paradise.

One of the advantages of working on the railway was that your family could travel free or almost free anywhere in the country.  One of our annual trips was to Belle Vue at Manchester, mainly to see the zoo and pleasure rides.  We also, at different times saw wrestling and speedway racing, which I found very exciting.  I told all my friends about the wonderful things I had seen and done. I don't think they believed me when I told them about the Tigon, which was a cross between a lion and a tiger.  I was also impressed by the mighty mountains, called the Pennine Range that we had to travel through on the way there.  The highest point was probably no more than one thousand seven hundred feet, but when you lived in Lincolnshire that was colossal.  Travelling through Woodhead tunnel, beneath those mighty mountains was a thrilling experience that none of my friends had ever had.

Because of the free travel, we often went to stay with my aunty in the village of Iden, near Rye in Sussex.  We visited Camber Sands which was an empty beach then, but which, I understand is a thriving seaside resort now.  I saw my first and only county cricket match in Rye, when Sussex played Kent.  I have never seen anything less interesting or more boring in my life, and still believe that if you want to go somewhere quiet, where nothing ever happens, you should go to a cricket match.  It could cure your insomnia.  Bill Bryson’s views on cricket are well worth reading. [Continued]