I'LL START AT THE VERY BEGINNING: PART 48

 

 

Just sign here …and your name is?

 There was a time when a blank sheet of paper really scared me. I honestly believed I’d never be able to fill a sheet of A4 with words. But I had to try. In actually fact it took me a whole afternoon to write two hundred and fifty words on my old Underwood typewriter and not one sentence came from my imagination. Even so it gave me a terrible headache. What I had written was what I’ve heard so many beginners say when they’ve read their masterpieces out at our writers’ club in Crosby. “It was all true!” It’s as if they thought that what they had written was so incredible that those listening might believe it was rubbish.

 It took a while for me to draw on my imagination and at first I only did so because I seemed to have been given permission by the editor of the magazine I was writing articles for at the time. It gave me an overwhelming sense of freedom not only to discover I could make things up and embroider factual events but that fiction has a heck of a lot of factual events weaved into a novel.  Which is good because although my eldest son does some of my research, I used to do all of it myself in the beginning and even now I enjoy doing some as well.

 It seems a long time ago now since I did my very first talk. I remember standing in front of a group of people with my heart beating like a drum and feeling weak at the knees. I had never talked much about myself and my writing and I was worried about boring those gazing up at me waiting to hear what I had to say. These days I’ve done enough talking to enjoy sharing my love of writing and how I came to write my books not to worry about my listeners getting fed up of the sound of my voice. Even when some fall asleep before my very eyes.

My very first signing session had a similar effect on me except my fear was that no one would turn up. I would be left sitting there at a table in a bookshop and the bookseller and the publisher’s rep would decide it was a waste of time to promote me as no one wanted to meet me or read my book. I do remember being absolutely thrilled when the rep picked me up at my front door to take me on a tour of several Liverpool bookshops and stores. Some booklovers of a similar age to myself or even those in their forties will remember Wilson’s bookshop on Renshaw Street and Philip, Son and Nephew’s in Whitechapel. Today’s supermarkets had nothing on those booklovers’ havens. They had such character and I grief their demise. Having said that when W.H. SMITH’S took over the old Cooper’s building on Church Street it was a great place to visit for any dedicated booklover. How I miss that building!

 Although sometimes I would just go and sign stock in a back room, there were occasions when I also sat at a table near the entrance. Just before  Mother’s Day one year. I’ll never forget a man coming and buying a book for his mother. He returned twenty minutes later and bought another for his mother-in-law, saying to me, “I’m making you rich.” If only he knew what percentage an author gets of the published price he would have done a double-take and realised I’d have to sell a heck of a lot of books to become rich.

 I remember the arrival of Dillon’s on Bold Street, I recall sitting in a corner by the staircase waiting for someone to notice me and buy one of my books, not ask me where they would find Maps. Not long after Waterstone’s made an appearance further up Bold Street, except it had pillars either side of the entrance.

 In those days I remember even signing books in newsagents, one being in Central station’s precinct and another in Crosby village.

 My nearest bookshop is in Crosby, for those that don’t know the village it is about 5 miles from Liverpool to the north. I have spent many a happy hour in Steve Pritchard’s bookshop there. In the beginning way back in the 1990s the Crosby Herald used to print a BOOKSHELF compiling the top ten best selling books in Crosby. I still have the cuttings when my earlier books were at number one.

 Steve also had another shop and that was in Formby village a bit further north, nearer the coast. I remember my first visit to that Pritchard’s where Tony Higginson was the manager and how warmly I was welcomed. I have a photograph of me sitting outside in front of a window display of FLOWERS ON THE MERSEY.  Tony still gives me a warm welcome, although Pritchard’s in Formby has gone and Tony is now the owner of Formby Books situated in The Cloisters, near Marks & Spencer’s.

 This Saturday I will be visiting both Pritchard’s, Crosby, and Formby Books.  Between 11-12 I will be at Formby Books signing copies of A MOTHER’S DUTY  and at 1-2pm I will be at Pritchard’s in Crosby. Do come and say hello if you can. Love June.

 

 

 

I'M JUST AN OLD-FASHIONED GIRL: PART 47

I was watching The Great British Sewing Bee the other evening and they were having a special fifties edition which meant the contestants had to use the sewing machines of the day as well as make a dress fashionable at the time. I can honestly say I can’t remember the style of the garment that was the first challenge but I put it down to the likelihood of it being popular at the start of the fifties when I hadn’t even reached my teens and was not fascinated by fashion.

My interest came later with waspie belts, net underskirts, crochet tops and tartan trews which were purchased from various shops in Liverpool. I was never much of a one for sewing, although for the first two years at Grove Street girls only grammar school sewing was on the curriculum. I made a pair of pyjamas, a skirt and an apron all by hand and never touched a sewing machine until years later when I was married. I did like embroidery and I became a great knitter when my boyfriend was at night school in Colquitt Street three evenings a week doing his City & Guilds for Printing. Knitting helped pass the time whilst watching programmes such as Emergency Ward 10 and Dixon of Dock Green on Mam and Dad’s black and white telly.

On the other hand, my sister’s first job was as a sewing machinist, not that I ever remember her sewing much at home but maybe that was because it was too much like work. When the subject of the Sewing Bee came up the other day at a family gathering in the Jubilee Arms, she admitted to never watching it. I was stunned as I find it similar to people watching when on holiday, great entertainment. My sister-in-law who is a brilliant dressmaker as well as maker of fantastic wedding cakes, said she enjoyed it as much as I did.

Knowing something about the fashions of different eras is part of my job as a novelist. Last night I couldn’t prevent my mind from drifting to those evenings when window-shopping in Liverpool city centre was such a pleasure during the fifties and sixties. Many a courting couple saving up to get married would pass the time, gazing in dress shops and furniture shops, book shops and photography shops, not to mention having a gander at what was showing at the six cinemas all within walking distance for that Saturday night out at the pictures.

One of my favourite dress shops was Nanette’s on London Road which in spring always displayed a wedding dress, as well as a couple of bridesmaid frocks in their window. Although I didn’t buy my wedding gown from there, I did purchase two frocks for my trousseau. Do brides bother with a trousseau these days? One frock was made from midnight blue chiffon and had three quarter sleeves ending in frills and there was also a frill around the scooped neckline. I could never have made that myself in a month of Sundays. The material was so sheer and would slip all over the place when it came to sewing it - just like the material in the third challenge in the fifties Sewing Bee.

Other shops popular with the female sex were Du Barry’s, Etam’s, Dorothy Perkins, as well as the posher dress shops along Bold Street where you went if you had a few bob so I can't remember their names. Then there were the departmental stores, such as T J Hughes, C&A Modes, Lewis’s, Littlewood’s, Henderson’s, Blackler’s, Marks & Spencer, Owen-Owen, the Bon Marche and George Henry Lees - the later two shops were to amalgamate and when they moved more recently to Liverpool One became John Lewis.

I did do some sewing, of course. As the saying goes A stitch in time saves nine and I would sew up a hem when my heel caught it and I could sew on a button and my mother did teach me how to darn, using one of those wooden mushroom shaped thingies. When I did eventually buy a second-hand Singer sewing machine and tried my hand at dressmaking, my favourite shop for materials was George Henry Lees. It was a magical place taking up part of the basement, it was filled with such variety and colour it was like wandering into Aladdin’s cave. As for their haberdashery department with its buttons, cottons, zips, hooks and eyes and lengths of bice binding and fancy edgings that was a fascinating place as well and I loved wandering through it.

For men there were several shops trying to attract their trade, such as Jackson’s and Burton’s who offered made-to-measure suits as well as the ready made sort, shirts, jumpers, overcoats and the like. My husband’s wedding suit was made-to-measure in black mohair from Burton’s. The jacket was lined in scarlet satin and it looked the gear. He wore it with winkle picker shoes and a dazzling white shirt and a beautifully knotted tie. No one I knew in those days would have dreamed of wearing a morning suit with a topper as so many do today.

I can’t finish without mentioned catalogues, we might not have had the internet and credit cards but we could peruse pictures of the latest fashions and purchase clothes for so much a week. Neither were there any charity shops. Most likely because most of us possessed fewer clothes and only got rid of them when they were suitable for the ragman.
         How times change! So thank you Great British Sewing Bee for bringing back so many happy memories.      




　

I DIDN'T KNOW THAT! : PART 46

One of the things I love about being a novelist is discovering snippets of information about the places and times my stories are set. I remember publisher, Judy Piatkus, saying something along the lines that I have to create a world that readers enjoy escaping into. It is only by researching and using one’s imagination and feelings that bring the characters and a particular era alive. A MOTHER’S DUTY is a book I really enjoyed writing because it not only involved a storyline that was close to my heart but it was set in the Thirties and into the beginning of WW2 when so much was happening in Liverpool and the world in general.

Writing about one place in particular means that coming up with fresh storylines demands quite a bit of thinking about. Those involved in publishing and writing often advise Newbies to write about what they know. I always used to say and if you think you don’t know anything then find out as much as you can about what interests you. I write family sagas, so naturally I write mainly about situations involving families. For this book I wanted a mother with sons to be at the centre of the story. But I wanted their situation to be slightly different to the norm, so I decided that the mother, Kitty, would be the proprietor of a hotel. Where? Where else but Mount Pleasant which is not far from Lime Street railway station. I knew a fair amount about being a mother of sons but scarcely anything about running a hotel. So I plucked up my courage, took a walk along that thoroughfare, which before the arrival of the railway was called Martindale Hill and was set in countryside and I chose a place I liked the look of and rang the bell.

I was fortunate enough to be welcomed inside when I explained to the son of the proprietor my mission and flourished one of my books as my credential. Although his mother was too busy at the time to discuss the subject with me, we arranged a time convenient to both of us when we could meet. The information she gave me was invaluable in stirring my imagination and making not only my fictitious hotel real to me but also my character, Kitty. For instance I had never given much thought to how important the Grand National was to hoteliers and guest houses in my hometown. The same with Liverpool theatres, not only did people come into the city from Wales, Lancashire and from across the Irish Sea to see shows but the theatricals needed digs. Just as did travelling salesmen and those stopping off in Liverpool before taking ship to the U.S.A. Ireland, as well as Canada and other parts of the British Empire.

To help me visualise Mount Pleasant in the Thirties, I visited the Central Library and perused copies of Kelly’s Street Directories and so was able to pepper the Mount with a wigmaker, the YMCA, a dentist, and some nuns from the Convent of Notre Dame. Not far away was Georgian built Rodney Street with its doctors’ houses, as well as the workhouse on Brownlow Hill. Earlier that decade the maternity hospital on Oxford Street had been opened by a royal personage at a time when most mothers still had their babies at home.

Kitty is a widow so she pretty well has her hands full with running the hotel after her mother dies and then her brother-in-law decides to quit. She is left also doing her best to bring up her sons to be respectable and responsible. What she needs is a strong man to help her as well as to love while her sons are growing up.

Enter John McLeod wearing a kilt and carrying a violin case at a needy moment. He’s a bit of a wanderer without a steady job, who had been a medical orderly in the Great War. I provided him with a violin because I remembered how after WW2 there were those musicians who entertained the cinema and theatre queues and my mother told me it was the same in the Thirties. I also provided him with a monkey who also helped entertain the crowds. The monkey was on hire from a pet shop across the city near Netherfield Road. I had that information from my mother-in-law. It was a place she remembered well and loved, just as Kitty’s third son, Ben, did. It was my mother-in-law who told me the story about the white mice.

The reading of Liverpool Echos of the times, provided me with news about crime waves and protection rackets so there are moments of violence in the book. Some of the characters also travel further afield. I had the information about motorbikes and the incident with the pig in Wales from my dear Uncle Bill, who sadly is now deceased. For that about Oxford during the earlier part of WW2, I owe my son Iain who was a student there a few years back and was happy to return and do the research.

Most Liverpudlians of my generation know that Lewis’s and Blackler’s were almost destroyed during the Blitz but I never knew that there was a magnificent domed Customs House overlooking Canning Dock that was set alight with fire bombs during the May blitz until I began my research. It is there that Kitty’s eldest son, Mick, works before being called up and joining the navy. Sadly like many an erstwhile beautiful building in Liverpool, it was the city leaders who later completely destroyed the old Customs House. http://liverpoolremembrance.weebly.com/the-custom-house.html 

I could go on and on but for my readers in the South of England, I must add something I found out for myself on a visit to Brighton with my nephew, erstwhile professional football player, Garry Nelson, who inherited his love for the beautiful game from his Everton supporter grandfather and dad. I never knew that the lovely Oriental pavilion there built on the orders of George IV was to provide shelter and care for wounded Indian soldiers during the Great War. It is in Brighton that big John McLeod met his first wife.

And finally for those who have read FLOWERS ON THE MERSEY and remember Daniel and Rebekah, and the Quaker maid Hannah, they make a reappearance in A MOTHER’S DUTY which will be available in paperback and e-book the 26th February 2015.  

 

         

 

RING OUT THE OLD, RING IN THE NEW: PART 45

I love the sound of bells and for me church bells in particular. Their chimes used to be a familiar part of Sunday mornings years ago, not only in my part of Liverpool but throughout the British Isles. Church bells and their ringers have played important roles in books and films. Those who have seen THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME will never forget Charles Laughton in the title role as the bell ringer who saved the gypsy girl, Esmeralda’s life, played by the lovely Maureen O’Hara. I also remember reading Dorothy Sayers’ THE NINE TAILORS set in the Fen countryside, featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. The nine tailors, of course, referred to bells. More recently bell ringers fell victim to the killer in “Midsummer Murders” when one of their member was determined to win a coveted cup in a yearly competition.

The joyful sound of church bells, just like the ships’ hooters on the Mersey, were very much part of the celebrations that saw the passing of the old year and the arrival of the new over the years. So not surprisingly in my latest book, my thirty-fifth, LOVE LETTERS IN THE SAND, set in the fifties, both bells and ships’ hooters get a mention as part of it takes place around that time of year.

These days I generally welcome New Year in the warmth of my living room with my family, watching the countdown in London and other capitals throughout the UK, listening to the bongs of Big Ben and gazing in delight at the fantastic fireworks displays. Once Andy Stewart and all things Scottish were popular and Clive James’s take on the old year was a must in our house for years and we still miss his humour.
And after watching THE KING’S SPEECH I am reminded of George V1 quoting from Minnie Haskins’ poem “The Gate of the Year” (1908) : I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year, ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be better than light, and safer than a known way.’


When I was less nesh (a dialect word taken from the Old English word hnesce and now in the wordbank at the British Library) I would be out celebrating, despite the cold weather. Crowds would gather at the conjunction of four main roads, Breck, Lower Breck, Belmont and Oakfield, the latter leading to Liverpool’s football ground and not that far from Everton’s Goodison. It was exciting being part of that lively group of Scousers welcoming in the New Year. First footing also played its part and my dad and later John and I would make sure we had a coin, a small lump of coal and a piece of bread in a pocket to take into the house with us to hand over to Mam or Dad as we passed over the threshold and brought in the New Year, hopefully bringing good fortune with us.

I wonder what you are hoping for in 2015. As I get older keeping healthy figures a lot. I also long for world peace and tolerance between people of faith and none. As well as food, warmth and shelter for all those without such essentials. But mostly at the moment I’m hoping that my youngest son will turn up on my doorstep. Not only is it a while since he took off for Eastern Europe and I miss watching old black and white films with him, but I need him to update my website, hear of his adventures and see his smiling face.
As it is I’ll have to make do with blogging about my books for now that will be published in 2015. They are as follows: A MOTHER’S DUTY will be released 26^th February in paperback and as an e-book, previously published as KITTY AND HER BOYS. LOVE LETTERS IN THE SAND out in hardback 31^st March. A DAUGHTER’S CHOICE out in paperback and e-book 16^th July, previously SOMEBODY’S GIRL. I’ll tell you more about the books and where I got my ideas from nearer the time. For now hopefully I can put up a cover or two on my Google + page.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!

LET THERE BE LIGHT: PART 44

It’s that time of year when lit up reindeers, snowmen and Father Christmases climbing ladders appear on walls of houses. Very different from when I was a lot younger living in Liverpool. The most I would expect to see would be lit up Christmas trees in front parlours in the gap between open curtains. Mind you they never appeared until the week before Christmas, whereas these days, such decorations arrive at the beginning of December. I’m all in favour of such lights because they make me smile and brighten the dark nights. I can even understand the sense of Father Christmas needing a ladder if he’s parked his sleigh on the roofs of the new houses at the bottom of our street as they have no chimneys. But it’s the bright lights that I really go for and maybe it’s because I was born when I was that I love them so much.
 
When I was a very little girl in WW2 the streets were very dark in the winter evenings and even when I went to infants school in Whitefield Road, Everton, in the mid Forties, our house was lit by gas. Going upstairs to bed could be quite scary because the stairs were unlit and so was the landing and I don’t remember the gas ever being lit in the bedroom. Even downstairs in the kitchen (these days it would be called the living room) if the gas ran out, the room would be plunged into darkness and Mam’s fingers scrabbled for a penny beneath the runner on the sideboard to put in the meter in the parlour. I remember the sense of relief when the penny dropped and one of my brothers would get on a chair and light the gas mantle.

Of course, often there was some light from the fire in the grate but that could send shadows dancing around the walls which could be spooky if I was on my own, especially if I had been to the flicks with Mam and my sister the evening before. I’ll never forget watching a Flash Gordon film in which the walls were closing in on our hero, threatening to squash the life out of him. For days I was a nervous wreck. A certain Laurel and Hardy film on the telly with a flying sheet representing a ghost frightened the life out of my own son Tim when he was little. So it’s best never to under-estimate what a child’s imagination can do.

Going down the backyard to the lavatory during dark winter evenings was scary, too. Fortunately our house was the end one of a row of terraced houses, it was next to a jigger (entry) that led to the next street and was divided into two more narrow entries onto which the backdoors of yards opened. No doubt it was because of the entries that on the corner of our yard wall was fixed a street gas lamp. I loved that gas lamp and I’m glad that my husband thought of photographing it before it vanished forever when our street and neighbouring ones were demolished in the seventies. ( See my google+ page of this blog for the photo).

I’ll never forget the day the men came to put electricity into the houses in our street. Us kids would come home from school and there would be a cocky watchman with an arched covered shelter and a brassiere that burned coke which glowed brightly in the dark, guarding the equipment. It was probably from seeing that brassiere that my brothers and my future boyfriend had the idea of putting holes in tin cans and setting stuff alight inside. With string attached to the cans, they would swing them around as they ran. What was more magical than those cans glowing in the dark was being able with the press of a switch to light up the four main rooms in our house. They did not include mine and my sister’s bedroom or that of my brothers’. Dad who was a plasterer but worked with electricians in the building trade, connected our bedrooms, the landing and lobby to the power. I can’t say that rooms were no longer plunged into sudden darkness because they did when the money ran out in the electric meter.

As it was the street lamps in Liverpool were to be lit by gas for many years and as a teenager, I would gather with friends around the lamp post after dark. It’s only since I became a novelist that I gave a lot more thought to what it would be like in earlier times. I read about mutton fat being burnt in small homemade bowls to provide light in hovels in the 13 century and when researching my ancestry I discovered that on my grandfather William Nelson’s marriage certificate, his occupation is listed as lamplighter in 1896. I well remember the lamplighters coming around when I was a girl, so I can picture him in that role.

In our church and many others during Advent there will be Christingle services.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christingle  Now they are really magical! Happy Christmas!

WHAT'S IN A NAME AGAIN? PART 43

Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while will know that my maiden name is Nelson. The same can be said for readers of my novel IT HAD TO BE YOU as that nugget of information gets a mention at the back of the book in connection with my tracing my ancestry.

It was the latter that led to a reader emailing me, wondering if we could possibly be related in some way as his name was Rodney Nelson and he had traced his Nelson ancestry to the Scottish and English border country. Just like my Nelson great grandfather, Martin, some of his ancestors were mariners and Rodney’s father had gone to sea for a while, having set sail from Liverpool.

I haven’t been able to get far with my Nelson ancestry as the only information I have found is that on my great-grandfather’s marriage certificate in 1865 and children’s baptismal records. On the marriage certificate I discovered that Martin’s father’s name was Hance Nelson. I had long known that there was Scandinavian blood in the family and have found that there was quite a number of Nelsons who had settled in the Toxteth area in Victorian times. But alas I haven’t been able to link them positively with my great-grandfather, due to my great-grandmother Mary Nelson being widowed within a few years of their wedding. She remarried in 1874 and so the trail went cold on me.

Having received more information about Rodney’s Nelson ancestry it seems unlikely that we’re closely related because while he has managed to trace his Nelsons to Scotland in the time of Robert the Bruce and discovered that the original Nelson, or son of Neill, had come from Scandinavia, I like to think that somewhere in the distant past all us Nelsons are linked.

As far as I know Rodney’s mariner Nelsons have achieved more fame than I can claim to for mine. One of his has had a book written about him called MASTER OF CAPE HORN, the story of a Square-rigger Captain and his world, name of W.A. Nelson, 1839-1929. The author is Hugh Falkus who was a wartime Spitfire pilot, with a love of sailing and an acquaintance with the Nelsons. His book was published in 1982 and although it is now out of print I have managed to purchase a second hand copy.

Interestingly Rodney Nelson was brought up in Carlisle in the English border country. As I was due to go on a week’s holiday to Keswick in the northern Lake District just after we got in touch, I mentioned to him that on a previous November holiday, I had visited my maternal Milburn roots in Culgaith and the hamlet of Milburn up that way. He knew the area well and of course, recognised the Milburn name. The Milburns were one of those Border Reivers families who raided over the border into Scotland way back in the Middle Ages. These days the most famous Milburn I know is known for his skill on the football field and that is all I know.

I enjoyed my visit up in the beautiful Lake District and the weather was kind to us with scarcely any rain. Whilst there we visited Grasmere, famous not only because the poet William Wordsworth lived there for a while but because of its special kind of gingerbread. The recipe of which is the same as that made by - wait for it - a Sarah Nelson in Victorian times. Her maiden name was Kemp and she married a Wilfrid Nelson after a whirlwind romance.
http://www.grasmeregingerbread.co.uk/history/

 Perhaps we’re related somewhere along the line because I had an uncle Wilfrid, who was born during the Great War!

On a different note when I arrived back from holiday it was to discover an email from my editor who had sent me a copy of the cover for my next book LOVE LETTERS IN THE SAND that will be out in hardback at the end of March 2015. But before then I have a paperback out in February, a reissue of KITTY AND HER BOYS called A MOTHER’S DUTY. More about these books when I blog in the New Year but before then I’ll hopefully be blogging in December.

　

　

　

　

REMEMBER, REMEMBER THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER : PART 42.

The other afternoon I was watching a heated argument on the telly about Health and Safety in connection with Bonfire Night. Apparently some bright spark wants children banned from having sparklers. The words Nanny State were bandied around and I had to agree with those who said it’s about time the government accepted that most parents had some commonsense when it came to overseeing younger children and knew to teach their older children to abide by certain safety rules.

While both views on the subject continued to be voiced, my mind drifted back to the cold dark autumn days of my youth and the build up to Guy Fawkes Night. Not for us children growing up in the late forties and fifties organised firework displays, the great thing was collecting wood for the Bommie on which to burn an effigy of the man in charge of the gunpowder intended to blow up King James and his Parliament.

We had to find somewhere safe from the thieving hands of kids from neighbouring streets who were hell-bent on having a bigger bonfire than us. It was a time when even a decrepit backyard door could be nicked or even part of your wooden fence. The gift of any old furniture when someone was buying new was met with effusive thanksgiving.

Then there was the Guy to make and I remember one particular year that my dad drew and painted us a brilliant mask depicting a man of the appropriate historical period (1605). It was attached to a drumhead cabbage head which was fixed to a body made from stuffed with paper men’s clothes.

Our parents could not afford money to burn so we only ever had about two or three fireworks, such as Golden Showers or Roman Candle and a Catherine Wheel, as well as a packet of sparklers each. Any extra fireworks involved lugging our Guy to the nearest shops and hanging around outside, pleading A PENNY FOR THE GUY, PLEASE! Us girls didn’t do none too badly. Of course, times have changed and the notion of burning an effigy of poor ol’ Guy Fawkes these days wouldn’t go down well. Besides he suffered a completely nasty fate altogether. 

In my early teens I remember sitting on an old sofa intended for the bonfire with some other girls, gazing dreamily into the flames, little suspecting that any minute the lads would toss several bangers beneath the sofa in an attempt to frighten the life out of us.

Naturally us girls ran, screaming when the bangers went off but we had seen them coming. The only time I ever did get hurt on Bonfire Night was when I was sixteen and walking with my boyfriend to have a look at the various street bonfires to see which was the best. A wandering spark found its way inside my school scarf and burn my neck slightly.

There were always adults present to keep an eye on things. Besides living in the backstreets of Liverpool where houses were heated mainly by a single fire in the kitchen, there was something mesmerising about those bonfires. And towards the end of the evening one could guarantee finding a baked potato in the dying embers of the fire. The spuds might have been blackened but that didn’t stop us enjoying them with a bit of salt and a knob of melting butter on them and none of us suffered upset tummies.

I, like many another from that era, accepted there was risk involved where there was fire and fireworks working their magic. Some people do act stupid and so there will always be accidents but as long as the majority show commonsense and stick to certain general rules, then is there really any need for laws to be passed as if we’re all idiots?