My Childhood Family

My parents came from very different backgrounds. They met in 1946 in Milanino, a suburb of Milan, where my mother and her family had settled with the ending of the war after their return from Albania, and where my father was stil on active service with the  British army. In the early 1950s they made their home together in Manchester, marrying at St Margaret's church, Whalley Range on 29th June, 1946 in a simple ceremony attended by my father's parents, brothers and sister. Their first child, Valerie Liliana, was born on 4th October, 1946. Their second child, Stella Grace, was born on 6th December, 1947. Initially a healthy child, she was affected by a congenital heart condition, and died on 10th October, 1948. I was born just over nine months later on 24th July, 1949. My sister Rina's birth two years later on 7th November, 1951, I do not remember, but I do remember my early years with them. I also grew up close to my paternal grandparents, and my uncles and aunts who lived with them at the house in Whalley Range. Also part of my childhood memories was my great grandmother, my paternal grandmother's mother, whom we all knew as Mother, and who lived alone at Sharston Farm in Northenden, of which I have clear memories even now, though I must have been six or seven the last time I went there.
I saw little of my father in my early years. He would leave home in Woodhouse Park at 6am every day except Sunday to cycle to my grandparents' home in Whalley Range six miles away, which was also the base for the decorating business: there was a large paint and tools store below the house in an extra cellar excavated by my grandfather, and also a room in the attic with racks around the walls where rolls of wallpaper were stacked and paint brushes kept. My father usually got home quite late in the evening after we had gone to bed and gone to sleep, though I remember once being woken up as he had small gifts for all of us after receiving a bonus. I think he also went on a Sunday to his parents to help his father with the business paperwork, returning in the afternoon, when he and my mother would have time together alone in their bedroom, and later he would light the living room fire so that there would be hot water, and I would have a bath with my sisters and he would tease us with the towel. I also remember being affected around that time with scabies, allegedly transmitted by a young woman who lived a few doors away who occasionally babysit for my parents, and who asked us to scratch her feet. The treatment entailed being naked and being painted head to toe by my father with a liquid treatment applied using one of his paint brushes. I also recall the terror of poliomyelitis which descended like a plague on Egypt leaving children damaged. There were always children at school who wore calipers on their leg.
I have a recollection when three or four years old of being taken by my auntie Lynn with her to the nursery where she worked, I think at Chorlton Park. I remember we would lie down for a sleep after lunch each day, and that my blanket was marked with my particular symbol, a pipe. I have no idea why I must have been staying with my grandparents and going with Lyn to the nursery, but I do remember her in the kitchen at Manley Road, sitting me on her knee and reading me stories, something I did not experience at home.
Six weeks after my fifth birthday I started school at Oldwood Primary School, perhaps half a mile from my home on the other side of Portway. This was a desperately unhappy time. Classes were huge because of the postwar baby boom, and Miss Hallam was not the kindest of teachers. I was so terrified of her that I would not ask to go to the toilet, and most days I would end up wetting my trousers, which increased my isolation. On my first day when told to go and wash for dinner, I washed both my hands and my face, which caused huge ridicule. I would try to find my older sister Valerie for support, but she would spend her lunch hour hiding with friends in the school toilets to avoid me. I was subject to bullying, and this led to me being taught some self defence by George Musgrove, but when I retaliated and hit the boy who was bullying me I was punished by the school. Once I was allowed to be outside again I would go each lunchtime to an area at the end of the school playing field where there were trees and bushes and enjoy my own company. On summer days I can remember lying on the grass looking for four-leaved clovers, or gazing at the sky and discovering floaters.
My mother must have been working at this time at Fairey Aviation at Ringway Airport, as after school we did not walk home but I went to a childminder near the school who had many children. I remember not wanting to play with the girls and as a punishment being made to sit on the ground in the dark in an outbuilding with other naughty chidren. At some stage I and my sister went instead to a lady who lived near Franca behind Portway, but there we were required to sit on a bench in the hall until my mother arrived, while her son and only child David played with his toy cars. We were never included.
When I was seven years old my sister Dana was born at our home, in the front room of our council house. I do have memories of this, in particular of me vacuuming the carpet in the living room where my mother was in bed, but of her getting angry with me that I wasn't doing it correctly, so that she took it off me and vacuumed the carpet sitting on the edge of the bed. I was mortified.