This is Derbyshire --Harold Richardson , above, recalls some of the fascinating characters from his formative years growing up in Derby's old West End.
ACROSS from our house in Leaper Street and on a corner lived Mrs Howard. Her front door faced the street and her back opened into a passage. This led into a yard of eight houses and, as if trying to pretend was not a court at all, had two of its houses fronting the street.
The only grass to grow in the communal yard was between sunken paving bricks.
Serving the eight houses was one water pump in a wooden jacket that required much clanking of its iron handle before water from its iron snout splashed into a stone trough.
At the top of the yard, under a roof with missing slates, were the four shared lavatories and, near to them, a sunken ash pit filled up with rubbish.
Mrs Howard was a widow with a war pension who lived alone with her two cats and bad legs. I would run errands for her.
She wasn't a demanding employer. Twice a week, I would go to the Co-op, in Nuns Street, for her margarine, lard, bread, cheese, bacon bits, tea and cocoa.
There was also the three pennyworth of pot herbs to make broth, two packs of Robin cigarettes, as well as any other treat she might fancy.
From the Co-op butcher I would ask for stewing meat, any bits and cuts to turn into cat food and that would see her through until next time.
Mrs Howard would read the Racing Times because she liked to have a bet on the horses. She would write the name of her favoured nag on a piece of paper and wrap it around a sixpence or a shilling. This I would take to a house in William Street, whose front window blind was never raised but had in the corner of one of its panes "Harry Hotter. Strictly Cash".
It was a stuffy and shadowed room I had to go into and, if the weather was cold, an oil burner would warm up the smells of old tobacco and beery breaths.
A hissing gas mantel on a ceiling bracket gave a yellow light to fall on a blanket-covered table and on a fat man in a bowler hat who sat there and who did no more than grunt when I handed over Mrs Howard's bet. He'd then write something into a book before handing over another slip of paper in exchange.
Either it was that Mrs Howard never properly understood her Racing Times, or it was a case of Lady Luck being in league with Harry Hotter – whatever the reason, my penny for collecting any winnings was indeed a rare reward.
One day, while neighbours watched from doorsteps, a motor ambulance stopped outside the passage and Mrs Howard's back door. I never thought much about it until I was later told they had taken Mrs Howard away. I never saw her again.
Across the street, Jed and Blanche Fenwick were responsible, it could be said, for filling number five to over-capacity. Nine all told, if I'm remembering correctly.
There was nothing bad about any of this ginger-haired tribe. They could, however, be a noisy lot. Jed and Blanche's Saturday night rows could be spectacular and matched anything that my mam and dad could put on for street entertainment.
Blanche with her ginger hair and nose flattened to something like a boxer's was formidable at any time.
In any argument, few in the street would take her on and that went for Sam Latter, in charge of Pickering's pawn shop on Brook Street and who had to face her every week.
Sam must have been in dread of Monday mornings to see Blanche hump through his doorway a pram filled with "bundles". These she had collected from her "customers", the less assertive of her neighbours, those no match for Sam, who willingly paid Blanche tuppence out of every shilling she wheedled out of him.
I have many a time heard it said we all of us are due our hour of fame and I have never doubted the truth of this. Jed and Blanche's came one Saturday evening after the football results for that day became known.
The street was quickly afire with the news of Jed getting "a line up" on Littlewood's penny point pool.
Neighbours came out to gaze across at number five as if expecting to see it transform into a palace and, to this day, I can also swear to the truth of Jed more than once appearing on his doorstep as if to display to the interested that he was not letting things "go to his head".
Even so, one of the times he came to his door it was to throw some ha'pennies at we staring kids.
That night at the Seven Stars you would have thought everybody was on a winning streak. Charlie had to call in extra help at his beer pumps.
For the first time ever, Jed and Blanche's credit was limitless and this excitement spread into the next day.
Early Monday morning saw Jed and Blanche on their way to town and it became known, in their favour, that the whole of their gingery brood would soon be seen in new "rig-outs".
Wednesday morning and many eyes marked the postman's progress along the street and, from behind many a twitching curtain, he was seen to tap on the door of number five.
An envelope was handed over and the door closed again. The street had to hold its breath a while longer before it came out there had been a cheque in the envelope – for all of £13.
For sure, a tidy sum in those days but not tidy enough to cover the cost of fame. Charlie at the Seven Stars – all hope evaporated of any returns from his rash outlay – made it clear they would not be welcomed back – not for a while anyway.
This went for Winnie's corner shop and the fish and chip shop with an end to all credit.
Monday morning again and the indomitable Blanche, with her loaded pram squeaking its way along Brook Street, would be heading towards the hapless Sam behind his high counter.
Annie Arkle lived at number 11. This was next to the Seven Stars and close to what had once been a rear entrance to the pub's smoke room, until being bricked up. Whether this was on account of Annie or not, I couldn't say.
Annie was thin and would have been tall if not so bent and she was certainly past her best, whenever that might have been.
Hesitant in manner, yet quick in movement, she would forever be casting around with worried eyes.
Besides the black apron and shawl of the same sombre hue, two artificial flowers on her bonnet made Annie, when seen in the street, easily recognisable – yet she stays in my mind's eye as a grey figure flitting like some apparition through the dusk and into the off-sales of the Seven Stars.
I guessed her to be about my mam's age but never sure what that was, forty-something would be about right.
She was given to muttering, mainly telling herself, "It's not right the way he puts on me, the idle sod," meaning, as we all knew, Mr Arkle, or Jake, who was rarely to be seen except as if on the look-out from his doorstep.
Annie's hour of fame, different from the Fenwicks', was on the day she came to our door to ask Mam if she had left her snuff box. She'd looked high and low without it coming to light.
Mam asked: "When did you last have it?"
Annie replied: "I remember taking me last pinch and that was when I was stirring the broth for when that swine comes back and I could swear to putting me box back on the shelf over the stove. Now it's gone."
Mam said to her: "Go and have another look, me duck."
She was quickly back. "Elsie, what am I going to do? I've found it. How the hell did it get in the broth pot? And there's him back any minute."
Mam told her to load the broth with salt, give it a good stir and, as he would have had a pint or two, there was a chance he would never notice.
The commotion that came from number 11 that dinner time could not be mistaken for anything other than Jake chasing Annie all over the house.
Further and more spectacular entertainment for onlookers in the street was provided by Annie's leap from her bedroom window, black shawl flapping like an old crow to land on the pavement with a broken ankle.
While they spread Annie over Mrs Bonnington's pram ready for the hospital, she kept up her complaining that it wasn't right him turning on her like that.
She'd got through hers, hadn't she? And he'd got through most of his before throwing what was left over her.
His role in the little drama ended, Jake spat twice more into the gutter before returning to his doorstep, the door closing behind him.
"Whacker" Miller did not live in our street and I'm not sure whether anybody could say where he did live. He was said by police to be of "no fixed abode".
In his younger days he had been a professional pugilist. That is, he earned a sort of living in fairground boxing booths by throwing out challenges to any who fancied their chances of lasting three rounds against him for a prize of five pounds.
If Whacker won praise at all, it would have been for his performances in the boxing ring. Not often was it that his employers had to hand over five pounds to a contender.
When I grew old enough to take notice of him, although sagging at the shoulders, he could still be picked out above the rest. I recall him with a split cap pushed to the back of uncut and greying hair, a tatty jacket straining to cover him and unwashed shirt open to the waist. The lining of his worn coat would bulge with mysterious loads and his corded trousers he tied "navvy-style" below his knees.
He had stayed too long in the prize-fighting game had Whacker, taking too much punishment, a human punch-bag to be kept on his feet while money could be made out of him.
A few drinks would return him to his halcyon years – and to many a rigged contest. More of a victim than an offender in those harsh times, eruptions of his fist-softened brain got him ejected from every pub in town.
Sometimes the police would take him in on a charge of creating public disorder and find him a bed in a warm cell. Other times, the Church Army hostel on Agard Street would put him up if they had room and after getting his promise to behave.
But, when turned away, kind-hearted West Enders, coming across his large, pathetic figure in the street, would many a time see to it that he had the shilling cost of a bed at Bates's Model Lodging House in Brook Street.
Just another of the many once knew from those pitiless years of economic depression caught up in conditions of deprivation and ignorance and having no expectations of better days to come.
They have since evolved into the tragic-comic figures from my childhood who I now look back upon with something like affection and compassion.
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