Neighbours When We Were Kids

[lavery549@yahoo]

Got me thinking recently , about our neighbours back when we were kids . What a right pair we had living next door to us . They once got a petition up to stop me & my Brother playing marbles. They called the Police when some of us were playing football in the street , one of the lads sat on the ball while Police drove past & they just grinned . Mums neighbour now went into his loft & found hundreds of balls , Mum said most of them belonged to our kids , because everytime one went over theirs we never got it back . What a complete pair of pains they were .

[hackey lad]

When we were kids , we called our neighbours Mr or Mrs . Never Jack or Mavis . It was always  Mr Kirk  , Mrs Ramsden etc . 

[Cody's Granddad]

Different era and very different people.

I was brought up on the newly built Woodside estate in Pitsmoor where all the adults knew each other as it housed the old neighbours from the slum clearance on Fowler Street.

Yes we also got the neighbours shouting at us playing ball but we had a rec and Stanley field to kick a ball.

We played out all day then and came back at dusk for our tea.

The people who shouted at us for playing footy on the road are now mostly long gone and it was a time never to be repeated in this disrespectful era we are in now.

[Dreb48]

Our immediate neighbours were all Aunties and Uncles 

The others were all Mr and Mrs 

I would never have dreamt of calling an adult by their first name 

Like Cody’s Grandad says , they were far different times and attitudes 

[cressida]

We had the King family on one side and the Booths on the other - pensioners,  they used to keep our cricket and footballs ( it was said he used to keep his lights on during an air raid siren.

[trastrick]

On the Arbourthorne our Granma had a neighbor who was a miserable sod. We never got our balls back, even though we asked him politely, Please Mr. Case.

 

To be fair, he took great pride in his garden and was always working on it.

 

Granma always referred to him as Silam Case, and it wasn't until much later we found out his real name was Mr. Allen. That explained a lot. She meant asylum case.

 

She didn't have much of an education, but with a few simple ingredients, and stuff from the garden, she could spend every Saturday baking up a storm, bread, scones, apple and rhubarb pies, all on the old yorkshire range. We would help her with the shopping, a turn on the posher and the mangle, but we got a little resentful when every Sunday the relations would show up with their kids, and eat all the stuff.

 

She always referred to her recipes as "receipts", bless her!

 

 

[Slighty batty]

We had some lovely neighbours who we called auntie Rosalie and uncle David. I have vivid memories of David giving me and mum a lift in his mini. It was the first time I’d been in his car and when we got in he suddenly pulled out this knob (Boy on the back row! Stop sniggering!) His wrists were very hairy and looked a bit sinister, and I noticed the knob had writing on it. It said “choke.” I had no idea what a choke was, but it sounded like it would be used to choke people. I was convinced that a glass panel would suddenly emerge to seal off the rear of the car which would get filled up with clouds of white gas, like something out of Thunderbirds. You know the bit, where Lady Penelope faints whilst murmuring the words “Parker! Help me!” Must say it was a relief to get out of that mini.

Another neighbour was called Mr Cross. Not sure if it was his real name or a nickname, because he was always cross. Hated children playing outside his house and would confiscate balls even if they didn’t go into his garden. His house was newly built and unbeknown to him the frosted glass in his bathroom window didn’t work. Someone said it had been fitted back to front?? Anyway it was see through, and our house had a grandstand view of him wiping his bum, something he always did standing up. If he’d been a nice person we’d have told him about the glass right away, but as he was a sod we kept quiet….

[echo beach]

7 hours ago, cressida said:

We had the King family on one side and the Booths on the other - pensioners,  they used to keep our cricket and footballs ( it was said he used to keep his lights on during an air raid siren.

A Princess like you Cressida should have had the Kings on one side, the Queens on the other and the Princes across the road.

Instead it sounds like you lived next to a couple of collaborators.😆

 

I can’t remember the names of any direct neighbours only those of the kids I used to play with who lived nearby.

 

echo.

[Mkapaka]

On 17/07/2024 at 08:28, Dreb48 said:

Our immediate neighbours were all Aunties and Uncles 

The others were all Mr and Mrs 

I would never have dreamt of calling an adult by their first name 

Like Cody’s Grandad says , they were far different times and attitudes 

i might have been at the back end of that fading out when I was a kid in the 80s - we referred to the older people on the street as “mr and mrs wall” for example, but people around our parents age / other kids mums and dads - we normally called them by their first name or if they were friends of our family maybe “auntie Maureen” even tho she wasn’t our actual auntie. 

[mad-dad]

On 17/07/2024 at 16:37, echo beach said:

 

 

I can’t remember the names of any direct neighbours only those of the kids I used to play with who lived nearby.

 

echo.

Same here. Some of the kids' parents, I don't even know what they looked like. Never went in their houses and they never came in ours