The Lune

Do you know what this number (E22b) is on the corner of a tablecloth? I suspect many folk of the younger generations do not. It is a laundry mark. Each week the laundry would be collected from the house by a laundry firm like The Lune and every household had its own laundry mark so that the items could be identified when they came out of the wash. Some of the laundry marks were on tags whilst others were written in indelible ink in the corner of the item. Both Mum and Nana used The Lune.


Stan Kelly’s Liverpool Lullaby – as sung by The Spinners - celebrates The Lune in this verse –

"Although you have no silver spoon,
Better days are coming soon,
Our Nelly's working at the Lune,
And she gets paid on Friday."


The Lune Laundry was on the north side of Lawrence Road, Wavertree, beside the railway embankment. It was demolished in 1987 to make way for the Rose Court housing development.
 

I Did It

When I was very little Mum read me a story about Trotty the pony who succeeded in jumping a fence. Forever after, the words “I did it,” (said as a sense of achievement rather than an admission of guilt!) would be marked by another member of the household saying '“I did it, I jumped the fence,” cried Trotty'.


A few years ago – after much searching – I found the book on the Internet and bought it. It turned out the story of Trotty was in a book called Farm Babies and was not an isolated story. That had made my search that much harder but persistence paid off. Once I saw the other stories I recalled most of them as well: stories like Woolly Lamb’s white wool, Dan Duck learns to swim; and Pooky gets a curly tail.


I tried to get hold of a copy of Farm Babies and eventually I did it. “I did it, I jumped the fence,” cried Trotty.

Wash Day

 
When I was young Wash Day was traditionally Monday. At that time the laundry was not done by shoving the lot in a machine and pressing a button. It was a lengthy process involving a lot of hard work.

There was no need to nip down to the gym to get fit – by the time the housewife had swilled a few wet sheets around the tub and wrung them out she had biceps like a Chippendale.

Then the wash went through the mangle and had to be hung out to dry. Rain at this time was a darned nuisance and resulted in items hanging by the fire on a wooden drier or over the bath. In larger kitchens a contraption of wooden rails and ropes that lowered on pulleys from the ceiling helped to some extent. Nana had one of those.

Then there was the pressing and ironing and airing – virtually everything seemed to need ironing in those days.

Leaving the washing until later in the week was said to be the sign of a sloppy housewife and
“They that wash on Monday, have all the week to dry
They that wash on Tuesday, are not so much awry
They that wash on Wednesday, are not so much to blame
They that wash on Thursday, wash for shame
They that wash on Friday, wash in need
They that wash on Saturday, Oh! They're sluts indeed.”
 

A Present

 
Dad once bought me a present. That may seem a strange statement but presents, other than at birthdays and Christmas, were very unusual. Sending us to private school took a lot of Dad’s salary. Having money left over for an extra ounce of tobacco (for him) or an ice cream in Calderstones Park (for GB and I) was about the limit of the financial largesse for some years.


One time when Dad and I were going down Holt Road (I don’t recall why) we passed a sweet shop with a wagon in the window. I was about eight years old and I stopped to admire it . Totally out of the blue Dad asked if I would like it and almost without waiting for an answer he went in and bought it. Even at that age I knew money was tight and for ever afterwards that wagon was one of my favourite toys – not just because it fitted in so well with my cowboys and indians (no Native Americans in those days) – but because I appreciated the generosity of his purchase. (The one illustrated above looks just like the one Dad bought me except that the wagon body was brown not green.)

Sadly (in a way) because of the increased disposable income in the household nowadays my son has never had such an experience.
 

To the woods to pick Bluebells

My father was not a great drinker but he did like his occasional pint and a game of darts. Traditionally, Thursday night was his dart’s night and he and a friend would head out to one of the local pubs or the RNA Club and have a game of darts and a pint or two. When I was tiny, if Dad was going out and I didn’t know where I would ask. The answer, on a Thursday night would be ‘Off to the woods to pick Bluebells’. Even at that age I knew I was being given the brush off but what a super way of doing it! Definitely beats ‘Mind your own business you nosy child!’