So much housing stock, both public and private, had been destroyed or rendered unsafe during the War that it often took years for people to be re-housed, in spite of the huge building sites that appeared around the City in the late 'forties and early 'fifties.  Their first effort at house-sharing didn't last long because Dad's family thought Mom was not good enough (she came from Great Colmore Street in Town, while they lived in leafy Harborne!). 

So after a while, they moved out and into a smaller house in Baker Street, Sparkhill, with one of Mom's sisters, Auntie Olive and her husband, Uncle Harry.  Although this was a happier partnership, it still wasn't ideal.  Dad didn't earn much as a driving instructor and they couldn't afford to buy their own house. So in 1956 my parents made the decision to apply to become pub managers, and thus get jobs and a place to live in one fell swoop.

Their first application was to Atkinson's Brewery and, after several interviews and a good, long wait, we moved into a pub in Lodge Road, Hockley, where Dad held the licence, and Mom was 'the Manager's Spouse.'  She served in the bar for an hour or so each morning, and every evening from about seven o'clock, seven days a week, and she was expected to look glamorous, at least in the evenings.  And Mom did.  Although she never had expensive clothes, they were always the best she could afford and she had to have smart shoes which, in those days, meant winkle pickers with stiletto heels: imagine clomping around the bar every night in those.  It ruined her feet. 

The  Missus  couldn’t appear without a decent hairstyle, either, but not being able to afford to go to the hairdresser often meant that she had to spend a good deal of time curling her hair every day, usually with curlers, but sometimes with a hot poker straight out of the fire, something which always terrified me.  As well as serving, she cleared up the mess in the public rooms every night, catered for functions in the 'Club Room' upstairs, changed the behind-the-bar displays, washed the staff's white coats and often covered for absent cleaners. 

On mornings when a cleaner didn’t turn up (some of them were a tad unreliable), my mother would have to turn her hand to sweeping, mopping, dusting, lavatory cleaning and all the other duties that the cleaner was supposed to fulfil, but it was the cleaner that got the money at the end of the week, not Mom.  When staff are scarce, you don’t dare not to pay them in case they never turn up again.  For this dedication the brewery, from the goodness of its heart, paid Mom a 'retainer', which was, I think, ten shillings a week: less than the part-time barmaid earned.  Ah!  The Good Old Days!

I was soon to find out that people regarded pub bosses as rich and privileged: but from our side of the counter, it was a very different story!  Oh, yes, we got all our housing, coal, lighting and gas as  part of the package , as we d say in the twenty-first century, but Dad's actual wages were much less than those of men who worked in the local factories, so it evened out in the long run and there was very little actual money knocking around.  Just like everyone else in Hockley in those days, we didn’t have a lot to spare.  Some people thought that pub landlords always had 'drinks on the House', but my parents had to pay for their drinks, and if they treated someone to half a pint, it all had to be paid for out of their own money.  If they didn't pay for everything they had, when Mr Bolton, the Area Manager (I think that was his title) came to check the Books - as he did regularly - they wouldn't balance, and my parents would have lost their livelihood and their home.

The day we moved in to the pub, it was half-term; this meant a long weekend, rather than a week off school in those days.  I went out to find my way around: there were few worries about a six-year-old out in a strange street on her own in those days, because there was little traffic and people watched out for one another's children, even when they were strangers.  I discovered we'd come to live right opposite a Bakery, and while I was digesting this fact, two boys and a girl of about my own age came along and started to speak to me.  When they learned I lived at the pub, they tried to get me to go in and get them pop and bags of crisps, because 'Yo' do' 'aff to pay for 'em.'  Fortunately for me, I knew better, or I'd have been in very hot water indeed.

I decided that the safest thing was to play indoors, as the Natives were a bit demanding, so I went upstairs and looked into the cupboard on the landing.  It was full of all kinds of stuff, and I took everything in my stride, not realising that it wasn't quite normal to have tin helmets and guns in a cubby hole.  Mom was a bit distracted because she was trying to get the removal men to put stuff in the right rooms, so she didn't take much notice when I mentioned the 'guns in the cupboard'.  A couple of days later, though, when I talked about the same thing over the breakfast table, my father dropped his Apostle spoon with a 'clonk' on the plate, went pale and rushed upstairs, to discover to his chagrin that I was right and that there were several air rifles and an air pistol in there, along with about six ARP Warden's hats: the pub had evidently been used as an ARP station during the War.  I was strictly forbidden to go to the cupboard until the police could come to take the guns away, but I didn't mind: I'd played with the pistol several times before Dad got wind of it, and I was a bit bored with it by that time.

I went to the local church school, All Saints', and soon made friends with many of the children.  One girl, Pamela, lived with her parents and her sister, Sandra, in one of the back-to-backs.  They were a lovely family, generous and well-liked locally, and I remember them with fondness, especially because they provided me and my family with a catchphrase that I use even to this day. 
 
They rented their television, as people did in those days, from a local company called Clydesdales.  In the fifties, women still had to do their shopping every day. Most of us didn't have fancy things like fridges, and supermarkets were only a tiny dot on the horizon.  One day, Pamela's Mom had been waiting in all day for a repairman to come from the company but the time had come when she couldn't wait any longer as she needed to go to the shops for the evening's 'tea'.  When we got home from school, I was allowed to go to Pamela's to play with her lovely dolls' house and as we approached, her mother came out into the front garden to greet us.  'What d'you think?' she asked.  'Guess who come while I was down at the greengrocer's?  Flippin' Clydesdales!'  This expression Flippin  Clydesdales became a byword when little things went wrong in my family, and served both for swearword and exclamation of frustration, and was also a trigger for hysterical laughter when we were a little down.  And people did get down, sometimes.  Life was tougher than people can imagine today   and we had it easy compared to previous generations!  One thing's for certain   we used to laugh more in those days, and we laughed at such innocent things, too:  most of what we found funny was shared by young and old alike, without any fear of offending Aunty Bessie or corrupting the kids.  I often hear folk looking back and saying: Oh, happy days!  And, indeed, they were, but life wasn't easy, all the same.

I remember groups of women standing about on street corners, wearing headscarf 'turbans' over their tin curlers and bemoaning the vagaries of Modern Life: 'Young people today   they don't know they'm born, what with the telly and everything.'  'It's not PROPER beef, like what we used to have, is it?'  'Give me the old songs any day, not this rock 'n' roll tripe!'  'What do all these young kids want to get motor cars for?  We done without motors and it never done us no harm!'   Thinking about life in 'fifties Birmingham, I wonder if we were really happier, or was it just that we were young?  I'm admitting nothing, but I know which era I prefer.

Submitted by: BizzieBear
Location: Birmingham