Not much to do with the question ........... but there is mention of a Dudley in there somewhere.
Remember any of this Ray?
Reared in Barnsley.


Rusty and battered old snap tin

Corduroy trousers wearing thin

Sparking clogs

Bull terrier dogs

Whitsuntide clothes, Sunday school walks

Pea shooters made from Hogweed stalks

Copper boilers and peggy tubs

Hide and seek in the vicarage shrubs

Minty Beechnut chewing gum

Dainty toffee tin as a drum

Coconut matting and hand pegged rugs

Little old ladies fetching beer in jugs

Pawn-broker's shop

Home made ginger pop

Tin baths hanging on a nail outside

Curtains closed when someone died

Hobnailed boots

Liquorice roots

Capstan cigs for fuller strength

Bonfire sparkler at full arms length

Scraping segs

Gipsy pegs

Swooshing sound of tipped home coal

Old people talking of the Dole

Black gas meter at the cellar head

Grandma's supper, cheese and bread

Dad's Sunday night's Oxford bags

His Monday morning old pit rags

Spic and Span hidden in dad's sock drawer

Two layers of lino on the cold stone floor

The Coronation Union Jack

Cowboys and Indians on the stack

Dolly blues

Bobbies in twos

Tweed flat caps

Narrow ginnel gaps

Greedy moths and camphor balls

Big black pinnies and crocheted shawls

Camphorated oil rubbed on my chest

Sticky rubber buttons on my vest

Conveyor belt sledging down the stack

Six old pipes in grandad's rack

Cigarette cards

Black fire guards

Grandma's shoes with buttons on

Back door left open, budgie gone

Children's matinee at the flicks

Weekend chore of chopping sticks

Lentil soup made with two penarth of bones

Next door family name of Jones

Philip's rubber stick on soles

Woollen socks with compulsory holes

Big brass fenders

Nasty money lenders

Clatter of clogs on pavement flags

Tatters collecting bones and rags

Yorkshire pudding

Cellars flooding

Dammed up streams for swimming pools

Hard backed chairs and three legged stools

Playing Hopscotch in the street

Sherbet dips and humbug sweets

Remembering mam's Coop divi number

Vinegar soaked onions and sliced cucumber

Old tin Dudleys

Penny Jubblys

Cobbled road and ginnel entry

Backs unmade for half a century

Wet through weight of Duffel coats

Granddad making fishing floats

Homemade jam

Special Sunday ham

Schoolyard games and snowball fights

Roaring fires on winter nights

TB jelly test and codliver oil

Barnsley dooers, booits, coit and coil

Dad coming home with panda-eyes

Baby sisters non stop cries

Age of four saw my first banana

Casablanca Sam playing a black "piarna"

Woodbine cigs

Syrup of figs

Terraced rows from here to ever

A cousin at grammar school, oh so clever

Green gas lampposts to play around

Seaside days in "Lost and Found"

Potties allies and shiny mabs

Fishing off the pier for greedy crabs

Carbolic soap

Just living in hope !

Monday morning steam, soap and bleach

Drying sheets as far as the eye could reach

Party sandwiches always potted meat

Jelly trifle a special treat

Checking seams were straight for my mam

My sister in MY Silver Cross pram

Sunday tea

Dad's beet-knee

Treacle sandwiches with margarine

Grandma's picture of the Queen

Wooden pens with scratchy nibs

Sooted chimney cleaning squibs

Looming headgear, whirring wheels

Clackaty click of Segs in heels

Early morning Knockers up

My very own terrier pup

Penny ducks

Coal leader's trucks

Colliery fire fighting competitions

Catapult armed hunting expeditions

Short back and sides

Magic lantern slides

White five pound notes as big as sheets

Butcher's van with flies and meat

Warm creamy milk

Collier's scarves made of silk

Pit buzzer blasting in the morning

All bikes had bells for pedestrian warning

Playing cricket with a home made bat

Panic in the street, Gladys has seen a rat

Pit Lane puddles with blackened crust

September winds and swirling dust

Fennings Little Healers and Beecham's Pills

Donkey stoned steps and window sills

Fish and chips

Pit club trips

Broken biscuits at half price

Beetle Drive with real bone dice

Cheating conkers pickled and baked

New potatoes boiled when scraped

Kettle always on the boil

Granddad using words like "toil"

Sacred allotments with pigeons and banties

Every kid had a hundred aunties

Eagle comic with Dan that dared

Glass bowl alien made me scared

A single Oxo from the corner shop

Sat on a board in the barbers for a crop

Cig machines with packets of two

Tea in brown teapots left to brew

Always the acrid smell of burning wood

The sloosh of feet in thick black mud

Green and black old Morris eight

Dad's overloaded dinner plate

Money saving hobbing foot

Unexpected fall of soot

First sliced bread at the Coop shop

Bristly yard brush and raggy mop

Coal cellar lids

Street skipping kids

Grandad's pigtail bacca with extra jockey

World's best boxer, the proper Rocky

Roughened hands holding tight to mine

Thee and Thar, theirn and thine

Canaries and linnets in wooden cages

Frequent strikes for better wages

Corned beef hash

Nettle rash

Proper pork sausages made with meat

Indian tepee with mam's clean sheet

Two ounces of ham for five of us

Penny fare to Barnsley on a bus

Fog and smog most winter days

Great granddad still having Victorian ways

Salt and pepper on dripping cakes

Special wash with Lux soap flakes

Marching miners' demonstration

Standing frozen in a dark bus station

Scrumping apples

Choice of chapels

Burning slag heaps at every pit

Gas mantles ever so gently lit

Waistcoat pockets with droopy chains

The special smell of old steam trains

Dad's pit socks like curly board

Dustbin lid and wooden sword

Saggy knitted swimming trunks

Laid in bed wakened by some noisy drunks

Albert Hurst's black pudding sarnie

Street entertainment with Sally's Army

Streets named Charity, Faith and Hope

Lifebuoy, Fairy and Sunlight soap

Knocking on doors and running off

Frightened by grandad's gasping cough

Inch thick toast on bell-wire fork

Sent outside whilst Mam and Aunty Mary talk

Pink pig brawn in basin shapes

Daily pit stories of narrow escapes

Tanners, bobs and half a dollars

Education missed by clever scholars

Snow flakes falling white but landing grey

Po-gun and draughts for Christmas day

Pigeon lofts in black and white

Sticks and paper a dad made kite

A ton of home coal delivered in twenty lumps

Chicken-pox, scarlet fever, lurgy as well as mumps

Myxomatosis and blinded rabbits

Picking your nose and other habits

Gabardine macs and Wellington boots

Searching ponds for frogs and newts

Bull roar fires up cast iron pipes

Knitted tank tops with coloured stripes

His Master's Voice and Josef Locke

Aunt Mary's noisy antique clock

Maypole deliveries on a bike

Stalking the canal for small Jack pike

A Barnsley lad another Tyke !!