The war was over and we were all now back home again. Our Bill was demobbed and went back to work at Lister's Mill. I was still at Hepworth's and our Edie was now at Whetley Lane School. Mum liked the council house and our Edie had only to cross the road to go to school. We got some new furniture, and made the place nice. Mum crocheted all the curtains, and I helped her. I wasn't much good at crochet or knitting, but I was good at embroidery. I was more of a 'bookworm' spending a lot of my free time in the Girlington Library.

Even though the war was over it was still a time of great austerity and we still had to use ration books and clothing coupons. The country still had to pick up from where it had left off in 1939. We were now working on tractor pistons at Hepworth's. I now had a good friend, who lived next door. We went everywhere together. Her name was Laura, and she worked in the mill. She had two brothers and a sister, Edie. Edie was a keen dancer, and was out dancing at every available opportunity ... at Gledhill's and the Textile Hall. Laura however liked the pictures and the theatre like me. We used to go to Bridlington on holiday - for a whole week! We also used to stay with a friend of Laura's family, who lived at Skelton-on-Sea. On other occasions I took her down to Unstone, to stay at Grandma Dann's. We had some good times together! I haven't seen her for years now ... when she married I lost touch with her. It's a funny old world! People make friends and then they go their own separate ways. They don't disappear from your thoughts though!

We still visited Darton now and again to see Uncle Jack and Aunt Laura. Our Celia and Joyce were now married. I was a bridesmaid for Joyce ... it was a lovely wedding! We were dressed in yellow crepe de chine dresses and carried posies of daffodils. It was the first time I had ever been a bridesmaid. (Later I was bridesmaid at our Bill's Wedding). Our Celia worked in Bradford for a time in service, at a doctor's house. She wasn't too happy in the job though, and soon went back to Barnsley.

Grandad Hirst was still living in Featherstone. His second wife had died at the age of about eighty, and he was now living on his own. He would come to stay with us for a few weeks and then would go to Aunt Laura's at Darton and stay there a while. From there he would go to Uncle Nathan's at York! In the end he gave his house up and went to live with Uncle Nathan. He gave me a set of drawers, which I still have.

Mum was still very poorly. It took her all her time to walk around the house. I could see her failing a bit more each day. In the end I decided to stay off work to look after her. They weren't too pleased about it at Hepworth's but I didn't care so much about them! To my mind my mum came first.

Poor mum! In the end she became bedfast and the doctor told us that it was only a matter of time. He said her heart was very weak. My cousins at Girlington came down to give us a hand, but they couldn't do much. I sent down to Unstone to tell them, and mum's youngest brother's wife, Doris, came up to Bradford to sit with us. Mum asked to see Jim, her youngest brother, but he was still stationed with the Guards in Germany, and they wouldn't let him come home! Mum went into a coma and never came out of it. My cousin May was with her when she died. I was downstairs at the time. I was really shattered.

It's strange, but from then on, things started to go wrong for me. I do believe that when my brother got married mum lost all her will to live. The doctor said that she had put seventy years into forty six. Her body was worn out. She had worked and slaved all her life and had got precious little help from anyone. I am not painting myself as an angel..... I can see now, years later, that I could have done far more than I did. I got sacked from Hepworth's because I broke so much time being off with mum. I was a bit saddened by that, because I'd never been sacked before from any job!

I went back to my old job and my old friends at Baileys. It was like going home after a long abscence! I was put back on my old machines and I settled in right away. My old overlooker was now working in another room, in the twisting. The overlooker we had, however, was a good one. He would mind my sides while I went out for the dinners. We had a nice canteen by now, and we would go down there some days; Mondays and Tuesdays weren't so good though, and we would have our dinners on the doffing form. I used to do a bit of shopping while I was out getting the dinners, because I had meals to see to at home.

Our Edie was now working at Holden's Mill. We did all the housework between us now that mum had passed away. We still had our Peggy, but she was getting rather old and grey now. Like us, she missed mum a lot. For a while things went very nice, and I thought we were doing rather too well! Dad was going up to the cemetery regularly with flowers. Then one Sunday he informed us that he had met this woman up at the cemetery and was going to bring her home for tea! I was most upset, as my mum had only been dead about a month and was barely cold in her grave! I couldn't do much about it, as it was his home, but I did tell him what I thought! Anyway, I was very surprised when she came home for tea. I had worked with her at one time! It went on for a few weeks and then he came home one day and said it was finished. I never found out the reason. I can see now that dad must have been very lonely on his own.

My brother Bill had married a girl from where he worked, at Listers. He went to live at her house in Manningham. He was never happy. Her parents upset everything! She went into the hospital with a miscarriage, and ever after that she refused to live with him! Poor Bill was so unhappy that he decided to get away from it all and go back into the Army! He joined up again for a few years. In the end his divorce came through and he remarried.

Now there was only our Edie, Dad, and me. Our Edie now worked in the woolcombing. She minded boxes, and it was fairly heavy work. She wasn't deterred though, she was a big strong lass! Dad was now friendly with another woman, and in the end he decided to get married again. Daisy, Dad's new lady friend, had a house in Manningham, where she lived with her son and daughter. Her daughter Betty worked at Lund Humphries the Printer's. Her son, Billy, was still at school. They were all redheads - not the 'carrot top' type but more auburn. Daisy and Betty had lovely wavy hair. When Dad and Daisy got married they all came to live at Blythe Avenue.

For a while things went OK. We were all working, so Daisy wasn't too badly off. As far as the culinary arts were concerned Daisy was pretty awful! She hadn't a clue at preparing meals! She started doing some burling and mending at home, as a result of which she didn't have time to do anything else!

By this time an old workmate of mine had come back to the mill. She had been demobbed from the A.T.S. and we started going out together again. Laura, my friend from next door, had gone away to live with her aunt at Undercliffe, and I missed her a lot. One night I was standing in the cinema queue on my own when I met Alf. He came from Keighley, and I went out with him a few times, he was a nice enough lad. One night he brought his friend Bill along, for our Edie! She liked him right away! She went to live in digs in Keighley and got a good job there. It wasn't long before she was saving up to get married to him! Meanwhile Alf had asked me if we could get engaged, but I said no. I just didn't have enough feeling for him. The last time I saw him was at our Edie's wedding. He was going off to Australia that very night! I wished him lots of luck, and that was the last I ever saw of him. I believe he did well out there, he kept in touch with our Edie and Bill, but apparently he died quite young. Our Edie and Bill emigrated too, to Bill's aunties' in Canada, but they only stayed there a year. She had a daughter, our Kathleen, while they were over there, but Edie couldn't settle in Canada. So they came back home, and bought a house in Girlington.

Grandad Hirst had died just a week after spending a weeks holiday with us in Blackpool. We had thought then that he didn't seem well. I wasn't happy at home, so I went to live with my cousin for a while.

I was still working up at Bailey's Mill. I would go out some nights with a workmate. One night we decided to have a change and arranged to go up to a pub called the Victoria at Keelham near Thornton (its nickname was the 'Copper Kettle'). She said that her brother, Frank, who had just been demobbed, was a regular there. It so happened that he was in there on this particular night, and she introduced him to me. We played dominoes all night, and we arranged to meet later on in the week and go to the pictures. We had some happy nights in the Victoria. There was a big roaring fire and the tables were old butcher's blocks. It was the taproom you see. All the old farmers would sit in there, telling yarns. Beer was about ninepence a pint then!

Frank lived in Thornton with his mum and three sisters in a small flat. The other sister, my workmate Annie, had married and was living down in London. She had married a soldier but it didn't work out for her. In the end she came back to Bradford to live with her mum. Her mum had very little room as it was, and to have Annie and Frank back home made things overcrowded to say the least!

Frank and I decided to go out together. We courted for about four months, and then I went to live with his brother George and his wife, who had a house in Thornton. Lucy, George's wife, worked in the top mill in Allerton, and we got on fine! Her mum lived in the back half of the house. She worked at Dawsons, which was on the opposite side of the road from where we lived. She wanted me to go and work with her there, but no fear! I went over there to see her one day, and what a place THAT was! She never stopped piecing ends up all day! Two of us couldn't manage it! It was a very dirty place. They were so busy piecing ends up and sorting waste that they had no time to clean the machines. I wouldn't have worked there at any price!

Mrs Woodhead (Lucy's mum), had a friend who worked there with her. When she died (quite suddenly) they found her house packed solid with wool which she had taken home in her pockets! They had to send a van round from Dawson's to collect it all! It was in all the cupboards and the cellar was full! I cannot understand to this day why she didn't burn it. We had coal fires then, so it would have been no problem.

I invited Mrs Woodhead to come and work with me. It would have been twice as easy for her, because she was such a good spinner; but no, she preferred to stay at Mark Dawson's (or 'Mucky Dick's' as we chose to call it!). It was aptly named.

George and Lucy worked at the top mill. Lucy was in the canteen and George was a combing overlooker. George was a nice, quiet lad, rather too quiet for Lucy's taste! He let her get away with everything. I shall have more to say about that later in my story.

Meanwhile, I was still going out with Frank, whom I was destined to marry. His mum had got a house in Buttershaw, a three bedroomed council house. Now she had the room she so desperately needed, but not much in the way of furniture. She had to start from scratch all over again.

Mollie, the eldest of Frank's sisters, worked at Woodroyd Laundry, and did not have too far to travel to work from Buttershaw. She was the only person I ever knew who could get wedding dresses up like new ones! When the ballet came to the Bradford Alhambra they sent all their costumes up to Woodroyd for her to do up. She had her own special way of doing these dresses and was very well thought of at Woodroyd. It was a pity that the laundry eventually had to close. Mollie then went to Westwood Hospital Laundry, and eventually she became manageress there. My friend Annie, Frank's other sister, got a job at Bottomley's Mill, Buttershaw, so she could be near home. Frank's younger sister Joan, also went to work there, in the spinning.

I must make some mention of Frank's dad. He had not lived with them for a number of years. He was a clever enough chap, but he had two failings in life ... drink and gambling, in that order! It seemed to me that he was easily led. Some years earlier Frank's mum had had two lots of money left to her by her family. She was the granddaughter of James Midgley Hattersley of Keighley, who was the youngest son of George Hattersley, the textile machinery manufacturer. Her father invented a wire drawing machine, and had mills at Rawdon and Brighouse. The money came to Frank's mum in the days when money was money! She put some of it into a grocers and greengrocery shop. She looked after the shop while he took care of the greengrocery round. And 'take care of it' he did! They did well for a time until she found out that he was not paying the bills at Leeds Market! She gave him the money to pay, but he drank it all, along with his pub mates! As you can probably guess, the money didn't last very long!

Consequently some of the money was taken away and put into trust. (Later in life 'grandma' always said that when she got the money she would have a good holiday with it, but she never did live to see it.) In the end her husband became such a boozer that his own family practically disowned him. It was sad, if he had used his brains (and he had them!) he could have owned two or three businesses! He was a good scholar and a good businessman, but he had that 'weak streak' in him. He had a good wife and family to back him up, but he couldn't seem to see that at all. It always seemed to me that gran must have married beneath her class. We didn't always see eye to eye on many things, but I did realise that she must have had a hard time of it, bringing up a family of four girls and two boys on her own. (Frank had another sister, Sadie, who went down to Staffordshire working on munitions, married and settled down there. She lives there still.) My dad didn't drink or bet! If he had had all that money he would have made it work for him.. But that's the way of the world I'm afraid, money always goes to those who least deserve it!

By now Frank and I were going steady and saving up to get married. It happened though, that we had to get married a bit sooner than we expected! We had a quiet wedding at the Registry Office, just after I discovered that I was two months pregnant! ...................................................................................

copyright © Annie.E.Jarratt 2002