our old clothes and Wellingtons to
start work at half past four until half past six. It made us feel
very important to have a job and on Fridays, pay days, we were
very well off, receiving four pounds per week, including a Saturday
morning's pay. Our work consisted of various tasks; planting seeds,
cutting lettuce, packing it and weeding. On rainy days, we would
work inside the greenhouses. These occasions were enjoyable as
sometimes the boss would leave us to get on with our work — a
grave mistake, for we would immediately down tools and fool around,
having peat fights (throwing clumps of peat at each other) — great
fun but rather nasty if one caught you in the mouth. On Saturdays,
we started at seven o'clock in the morning, working until half
past one in the afternoon. We took a piece with us and I remember
we used to be so hungry at the time break came, that we would
happily munch our way through crisps and sandwiches washed down
by lemonade, sitting next to a heap of manure and with dirty hands.
When I think of it now, I feel quite sick, but these were happy
days and ! have lots of memories too numerous to recall.
Winter in Prestonpans brought new
and exciting games to us children. We would beg, borrow or steal
from our mothers' kitchens trays to sledge down the steep hill
which is now a flight of stairs between Summerlee and Burnside
leading to the Wee Shop. We would haul our sledges to the top
of the hill and go speeding down the slope (which was by this
time as slippery as glass), shooting right off the kerb and on
to a road which was used quite often. My house looked over on
to the slope and if my mother caught sight of us, we would be
ordered into the house and skelped, then told not to go and play
there again but to go to the Pennypit Park where it was safe.
However, we took no heed of her warning — what good was it playing
in an area that did not carry the slightest bit of a risk? Until
one day a friend of ours took her turn on the slope and sledged
right under a lorry as it came full speed along the road. We were
thunderstruck, the lorry driver slammed on his brakes and jumped
out of the cab. He was a deathly white colour as we all were,
but our friend had escaped unhurt and had run away. Well, that
was the last we ever played there as the lorry driver reported
the incident and the council workmen came and gritted the icy
slope whenever it snowed.
Where the houses are built now at Summerlee used to be a slope and
we would often play there. We discovered the soil had a lot of clay
in it and we would dig it with our spoons, then make models as we
would have done with plasticine. If we left the models out for a
day, the sun would bake them hard. On top of the slope was a wilderness
of long grass and weeds which every so often the council workmen
would come and cut, and we would then collect armfuls of the stuff
and form dens, playing for
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