Karen Wright: Childhood memories recalled at Red Shed

One of the first was an afternoon with local legend Ian Clayton, author and storyteller, who is a friend of the club and who was a good friend of my late brother John.

I went along to listen and I was spellbound, hanging on every word. As we both grew up in the same town, it was very special; the stories were both hilarious and poignant.

When I got home afterwards, I started thinking about the last sixty years. I was eight sixty years ago so I have some vivid memories from that time growing up in Featherstone. I lived in a part of the town we fondly called ‘the top of the knob,’ which was the crossroads at north Featherstone. Our house was owned at that time by the coal board, but it was very unique being an Elizabethan building.

My parents were very competent in DIY; my dad was a joiner, and he did the house up, and my mum was incredible with needle and thread and was great at home styling. I loved the look of our living room with the cottage suite and Welsh dresser and bureau; I thought we were ‘posh’ which of course we most definitely were not.

The food in the 1960s was very much dependent on your lifestyle and income. I know that dinner parties and so forth were popular elsewhere, but we never had a dinner party at our house.

Parties yes, but the snacks would be the proverbial cheese cubes

on sticks stuck into a potato covered in tinfoil and some ritz crackers! Our everyday meals largely consisted of potatoes, usually mashed, occasionally chipped, with meat, often a pork chop or a couple of sausages and plenty of vegetables.

Fish and chips eaten outdoors from vinegar-soaked newspapers were a real delicacy too! Mum always baked on Sunday afternoons, and she would typically make a couple of loaves of cake, an egg custard, a batch of scones and possibly an apple pie. This would keep us going all week, and this is probably where I started my baking journey. Happy days!