It was the closed shops – only the local Coop, the butcher or the fish and chip shop trading – and then only at restricted opening hours. It was the Saturdays, throughout July and early August when New Hall Lane became, for that one day each week, a one way main artery. New Hall Lane was the main road at the end of Caroline Street, my childhood and teenage home, and it was the main road from Preston and Lancashire's west coast to east Lancashire and west Yorkshire. Along New Hall Lane each and every summer Saturday morning coach load after coach load of happy and expectant holiday makers passed down the Lane from the east Lancashire towns – Blackburn, Accrington, Burnley – and the west Yorkshire towns – Bradford, Leeds, Halifax, Huddersfield, Sheffield – all on their way to Blackpool, Southport of Morecambe for a week’s fun, rest and recuperation from their daily grind. And, later each Saturday afternoon, those same coaches returning, now filled with other holiday makers returning to their Lancashire or Yorkshire mill town homes, their week of building sand castles and eating candy floss or sweet, sticky, sand encrusted pink rock on Blackpool sands done. Their dancing the waltz or the quickstep, or the Gay Gordons in Blackpool Tower’s ballroom to the music of Reginald Dixon playing the Tower’s mighty Wurlitzer organ, or riding the Big Dipper on Blackpool’s Pleasure Beach now over for another year. The “Wish you were here” saucy postcards had been sent to friends and neighbours back at home, the last bed breakfast and evening meal enjoyed at the chosen guest house, the last pint drunk in the Devonshire Arms, the last fish and chip lunch at Bellamy’s Fish and Chip Restaurant consumed and the last stroll along the Golden Mile taken. It was the Lancashire and Yorkshire holiday weeks.
And each year, throughout much of the 50s (until, in 1961 when my Mother and Dad purchased a third hand Morris Oxford – TTC 472 - of their own) for one of those two Preston holiday weeks a car sat outside our little terraced house in Caroline Street. It was nearly always a ancient pre-war Standard 8 borrowed from one of my Dad’s many dubious work contacts. It would be nice to say that we hired a car in the way we might do today – a shining, valeted, top of the range modern model from Herz or Avis, but it was not. A few pounds would have changed hands for the use of the vehicle while its owner didn’t need it, and it was always – even to my young eyes – well past its sell by date – creaking, noisy, often belching smoke. But all of that was inconsequential, it was our magic carpet as my Dad ferried us like lords and ladies around Lancashire and sometimes beyond for days out. Looking back, it was no holiday for my Dad – as a lorry driver he spent his every working day on the road so to spend his holiday doing the same must have been a busman’s holiday – but he never complained, never once needed a map, never got lost, never allowed the car to break down. He was up early every morning checking the oil, the water, the tyres, adjusting the points, the tappets and the spark plugs – all the things that we rarely, if ever, have to do with today’s cars and day after day for a whole week, year after year he took us safely to places both well known and new.
He would pick the car up early on Saturday morning and by shortly after 10 o’clock we would be on our way – five of us, Mum and Dad, me and my Auntie Edna and Uncle Joe - me squashed on the back seat between Edna and Joe. The Saturday trip was always, every year, to Blackpool for the day and this was no coincidence. Saturday was change over day in Blackpool for the thousands of visitors who were coming to stay for the week or going home their holiday done so the town itself was a little less crowded. We would chug along the 17 miles or so to Blackpool and by late morning had parked up on the roof of Talbot Road Bus Station car park. Then the walk to the “front”, coming out opposite North Pier, the sea spread before us, the green and cream Blackpool trams plying their trade rattling along through the crowds of holiday makers. One year – it would have been in the late 50s – as we got to the end of Talbot Road and stood at the zebra crossing waiting to cross over to the North Pier and the sea there was a great commotion and we suddenly realised that we were standing next to Ken Dodd the great comedian as he made his way to the theatre on the Pier for the matinee performance where he was the top of the bill star. People were asking for his autograph and Dodd, the consummate entertainer, didn’t stint, he stood in the middle of the zebra crossing, signing hundreds of bits of paper, newspapers, anything to hand while I stood, open mouthed, and the great man patted the heads of children, smiled and wished their parents well and, of course, cracked a few jokes as only he could – while cars and trams backed up along the sea front unable to get past the throng.
And so, our day in Blackpool progressed. By late afternoon I would have had a ride on a beach donkey, enjoyed candy floss or ice cream and we would have taken in the many pleasures of the Pleasure Beach – played the slot machines, ridden on the waltzer or been frightened on the ghost train. And we would all stand – as we did every year – and laugh until it hurt as Auntie Edna laughed, tears running down her cheeks as she stood before the mechanical model of a manically laughing clown in the entrance way to the Pleasure Beach. All the fun of the fair! - and by mid evening, as the July sun set over the flat Fylde countryside, I would be nodding off between Auntie Edna and Uncle Joe as we made our way homewards. The holidays were here and as my eyes closed I would hear the adults discussing where we would go tomorrow, should we pack up some sandwiches, is the forecast good?……….and then I was asleep.
For the following six days we would travel the length and breadth of the northwest: Chester Zoo, the Lake District, North Wales, Morecambe, Southport, the Trough of Bowland, the moors of West Yorkshire, Ingleton Falls……. I can still smell the bottle of meths bought from the local chemist as Dad poured it into the little primus stove, bought so that we could stop on the roadside to have a “proper cuppa char”. He and Joe would hover over the little tin stove until the whistling kettle signalled its job done and then pour the boiling water into the china tea pot and then into the china cups (with saucers!). We would eat our picnics off china plates complete with all the trimmings – cotton serviettes each with plastic serviette rings, salt and pepper, brown sauce, milk from a china jug with a little crocheted cover made by my Mother “to keep them damn flies away” – this was a 1950s version of glamping! No short cuts, everyone turned out immaculately – Joe and my Dad with stiff collars and ties, shoes shining, trousers with knife edge creases, my Mother and Edna turned out in their best frocks – all very 1950s. But, we weren’t alone. In those long-gone days people didn’t dress down; being on holiday was an excuse to look your best – no shorts or skimpy shirts exposing yards of bare flesh or tasteless tattoos. Look back at old photographs of places like Blackpool in the 50s and the crowds all looked well turned out and taking a pride in their appearance – even when on the beach sitting on their deck chairs. For working folk like my Mother, Dad and Auntie and Uncle who spent their lives in the cotton mills and heavy industry dressed in their overalls, like thousands of worker ants, surrounded by grime and heavy, energy sapping, graft, and at the beck and call of the clocking on and clocking off hooter, their annual holiday was a time to be different, to have a little dignity, to take a pride in their appearance, to be seen at their best. A feeling of personal self-worth which simply made them feel good. Maybe I’m wrong but I know that’s how I would have felt that!
And there are other wonderful memories when I think of those far off days. As we rolled along through the Lancashire countryside Edna and Joe would sing, me squashed between them – songs which today would be frowned upon as being non-PC: “My brother Sylvest, he had a row of 40 medals on his chest, big chest……”, or “We are Fred Carno’s army, no bloody good are we”, or “I’ve never seen a straight banana”, or “The two Preston mashers from down our street”, “The laughing policemen”, and “Oh it’s a windy night tonight, tonight, tonight….”; war time songs, music hall songs, songs of the pubs and clubs; risqué (although that word or its implications meant nothing to me, they were just silly songs which made me laugh), often racist or sexist. They would definitely not be broadcast on TV or radio today and if they were then there would be a trigger warning prior to the the programme telling listeners that they will hear “discriminatory, using language which some viewers might find upsetting or offensive”. Like the Chamber of Horrors no longer part of the Madam Tussaud’s “experience” and the saucy seaside postcards of big bosomed ladies and sexist suggestive comment, they are of a bygone era, now too often erased from our shared history but for me, leaving us the poorer for it. Maybe I’m wrong.
As I write this, the sun streaming through the slats on my office window venetian blind, I am reminded of Auntie Edna and her calamine lotion; the sweet pungent smell still in my throat even after all these years. Edna could reasonably claim to be bitten by every insect that has ever lived, they sought her out like Exocet missiles. So peer into her voluminous handbag and one could not fail to be impressed by the range of creams, potions, dressings, pills and other aids. If we stopped in some country layby for our picnic or afternoon cuppa before she emerged from the car she would encase herself in calamine lotion – and usually insist that I was similarly treated!
next day’s outing already planned. The day, however, was not over. Most nights Dad would park the little car in Mercer Street at the side of the New Hall Tavern – Edna and Joe’s favourite local pub and they, plus Dad, would disappear inside for a drink – Joe and Dad having half of mild while Edna had her usual bottle of OBJ (O Be Joyful) light ale. I would remain in the car with Mum who rarely, if ever, drank. Dad would bring us crisps and lemonade and for the next half hour I would sit behind the steering wheel of the car pretending to drive, being Dad, putting on the handbrake, moving the gear stick as I had watched my Dad doing, stretching my legs to reach the pedals, making engine noises as we swept down make believe roads to Blackpool or Chester or Ingleton Falls – wherever we had been that day. And half an hour later they would emerge from the Tavern, their breath and clothes smelling of beer and cigarettes and the little car would trundle the last few yards up New Hall Lane to Caroline Street; the end to a perfect day.
A few years later, when we had our own car – TTC 472 – the Preston holidays would continue much as before – but with a more reliable and slightly larger car we often went a little further afield. Early starts and late night returns to Gretna Green, to York and Harrogate, to Coventry to see the newly opened Cathedral in 1962, across to the other side of England to Bridlington, to Stratford on Avon to see Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, and to Scarborough. How my Dad kept this up I will never know, no motorways to sweep along at speed and gobble up the miles and a car full of chattering, singing people. I am always in awe when I think of him; I know with absolute certainty that much as I love driving I couldn’t do it! But he never once complained or let us down.
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