our lives 1970,1971

it is 1970 and grandad Greene had just died he had become very thin and died at home of cancer i remember going to peace haven for the funeral and eats afterwards yet i don't remember being at the funeral mummy was expecting some inheritance as in his lifetime he had owned 3 houses the will left everything to his wife my nan and his 3 children mummy Rosalind and Ronnie we even went round the shops choosing things we would buy we was all really existed yet no one ever got a penny apparently Mary O'Brien took the lot and vanished and we never saw her again hers was always a name hated in our family .because my dad was a dustman he knew a man at work who's dog had just had puppy's daddy came home one day and said did we want a new puppy mummy said definitely no the next day there was the cute little puppy sitting in our living room a border collie cross black a girl but she acquired the name laddie as she had to be named after my mums dog when she was a girl who was a boy,confusing,anyhow laddie was quite wild ,she would growl and chase us and wed scream we made up a lovely game called rah which we played in the garden where we would run ,scream,jump on stalls and shout rah and laddie would respond by chasing us growling and jumping up trying to bite us we would fall about laughing this rah game went on for quite a while over weeks and even months so it was quite popular with us until a mo any neighbour shouted over the fence for us to be quite my mum was up in arms cause she was always for us kids and told us to carry on .we played it here and there .me and Laura used to play houses were one of us would have the square cloths horse with a blanket over and the other one had the Wendy house i always made out to Laura how nice the cloths horse was and how i wished i had it so then Laura wanted the clothes horse and i had what i wanted the Wendy house he he we had a lovely garden mummy used to grow hundreds of cornflowers i think they seeded them selves at the end of the garden near the crazy paving was a wondrous display of blues,pinks,mauve's etc she had lovely roses too ,deep reds,whites,pale pinks the scent was beautiful that led up the path to the alley .mummy had 3 very spiky gooseberry bushes sometimes she done a desert with them me and Laura hated gooseberry's so we never eat it,she never moaned we hadn't eat it she just took it away and we didn't get anything else we got a good meal and afters every day we had our meal at 40clock and always sat at the table because laddie was always allowed in the house shed often get a potato or tit bit plonked on the floor the telly was always on and we had to put up with boring programs while we eat our dinner such as the politics show on Sunday or the football results i remember eating most of my dinners to this Sheffield Wednesday 1 tottenhan 0,arsenal 3 crystal palace 1 etc etc daddy always done the pools so he had to check the results .by now we had come to realise that we as a family were not alone in the house as strange occurrences often happened things would disappear most reappeared after a few days but some things were never seen again like a poem my mum wrote when she was a girl at the George Raine school i became a bit scared of the house and never wanted to be alone in it if my mum was out and id walked home from school on my own id been told to go round the back alley and that was one fear as i had to pass the back of other gardens and was absolutely terrified of other dogs i would creep down the alley with my heart in my mouth only to jump out of my skin when a dog would charge at one of the fences growling whimpering scared id run to our gate which was right at the end of the alley then my next hurdle was to somehow get over the very high gate with wooden spikes on i think i climbed on the dustbins then very un lady like climbed over and more times than not to get the back of my dress stuck on the spikes and showing all my draws i still remember my annoyed feelings of such hassle sometimes id walk in the next door neighbours and climb over there fence as it was easier anyhow when no one was in even though the back door had been left open for me i wouldn't go in the house until some one came home instead id sit on the large coal bunker polishing stones rather than face what ever was lingering in our house.