Location: Newcastle-Under-Lyme
Interviewer: Hilary Hughes
Permission given to use interview for website, exhibition and Staffordshire archive: YES
Question asked “What do you remember about bread or bread baking”.
My Mum made bread years ago, of course, she's gone now, naturally when I 'm ninety you can't expect her to be alive. There was only four of us, she did have more children but they didn't live. She had have more children but they didn't live. She had twins after me when I was six, I can just about remember it, being stuck in the kitchen instead of being in the front room, when it was all going on. Me father got a job in Holmes Chapel, he was cycling there from Hassell Moss, where we lived, out in the wilds. It was the only place he coud find a house so that was it. It was four rooms downstairs and three up, but we'd no bathroom so we had to manage as best we could. He came one night and said we're moving house, got a van coming tomorrow to take you and of course we all gathered our things together, we hadn't got a lot, in them days you hadn't had you. I used to Wheelock to school that was quite away, so now I think I'm ninety and still walking. When I'm looking at people who are sixty and can't walk so I'm putting it down to be able to walk when I was very young. Sounds right to be. She used to make it now and again but not all the time. She used to send me up to the village to get a loaf, never sent me sister because me sister would have been half an hour and I was ten minutes. I was on me feet all the while, being very active. I worked in the wallpaper mill, my Dad had a staff job and I was the kiddie.
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