Do You Remember?

I was born in a house on Lime Pit Lane in 1967, next door to the mother and father of the great Jockey George Duffield (Charlie and Elsie Duffield). Although I can not remember the early years there I can remember my mother telling me all about "them days". My earliest memories are of growing up on Chapel Street (off Long Causeway) There were two streets down either side of the Chapel that stood on the junction with Long Causeway and down these streets were about four or five rows of houses, some facing onto the playing fields and some looking out over towards the railway lines (now Gainsbourgh Way). Between the houses was a public yard that all us kids used to play in along with the fields of course and every year all our parents used to chip in and make bonfire night a night to remember, someone would do the pie and peas another would make toffee and parkin, another would be responsible for the jacket potatoes been put into the bonfire and collected the morning after from the still warm ashes. I can remember many family names that used to live down Chapel Street such as the Philip's, Asquith's, Homes, Green's, Standish, Field, Burton, Jubb, Bollon, Speak, Evans, Austin and of course my own, Hargreaves. There were many, many happy warm days spent running around playing games that kids of today will never have heard of such as kick out can and making "dens" from anything we could, I remember getting up in the long school holidays and a group of us just playing out and making our own fun till either the sun went down OR we were hungry and then we went home, not like today at all. We were not intent on causing bother or been disrespectful to our elders, all we wanted was to have fun and "lake arrt" as long as we could. Is it just me that remembers the early 70's as a child been like this or can anyone else recall the warm hazy distant days of youth?