……it was a different landscape back in the 1950s in the big cities of the UK… Docklands Govan in Glasgow, where Master Gallacher spent his infancy, had more than its share of rented tenement housing… up to three-storeys-high, grey, austere, stone buildings, sum’times red, depending on the material available when the corporation developed them in the latter part of the 1800s…
…by the time I poked my nose into the WURLD, much of the fabric of the municipal edifices in Govan had fallen into slum condition… that didn’t stop us children from enjoying playing in the them… no hint of the modern kids’ panoply of mobile gizmos to entertain ourselves… there was no money for such luxuries, even if they had been available… these handheld indulgences were for an age some sixty years in the future… gangs of thirty or forty street-boys and girls mixed easily to flail long skipping ropes, usually ‘cawed’ by the biggest lads, one or more at either end, while a snake-line of us jumped in and out to skipping rhymes… this was on the main street, where vehicles of any kind were a rarity, other than the coalmen’s carthorses… but the real magic treasure-land existed in the back courts… the areas inside the huge, oblong, joined-up length of the houses…
…there were the brick ‘middens’ (the communal garbage areas)… additionally, usually down the middle of the back court, brick walls… and iron poles here and there served as the stanchions for the drying of the family laundry, with ropes spread in a way that made it dangerous to run through there on a dark evening, with the threat of having your neck caught on a clothesline… happened to me once, and it almost tore my throat out… endless to say, I never ran there again in the dark… on top of the stone-dyke walls, sum’ times there were slanted slates, the ‘sharpies’, which we intrepid junior explorers would traverse with ease in our rubber-soled plimsoll sandshoes…
…jumping from the top of one brick ‘midden’ to a nearby wall and back again had varying degrees of difficulty (and the danger of injury), but hey, we played adventure roles there, doubling as Captain Kidd or sum’such other hero from the Saturday matinee movies… we played ‘kick-the-can‘… we played ‘peever’ with used Cherry Blossom polish tins filled with wee stones, and chalk marks on the roadway… we played singing games with one or two rubber balls bounced up against the tenement walls… and when the rain came, which was often, the dirt in the back courts transformed into glorious mud, fabulous oozing ‘glabber’, that great sculpting material for wee boys and girls to create castles and stuff… at the same time changing clean clothes into laundry nightmares for our mothers…
…sum’people often misguidedly refer to those times as the ‘bad old days’… they were NUTHIN of the sort… to me they were, and always will be remembered as, among the best days of my life… see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!
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wonderful photographs. Enjoyed reading this x
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…mwaaaah 🙂
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Hello there, I was brought up in Govan, from 1948 to 1951 when we moved to Arden. I am a published author, my novel The Incorrigible Johnny Buchan, available in print or digital from Amazon.uk is a story of two halves, my childhood days in Glasgow, My life in Arden and my move to London. The early chapters of the book are all true. Some of the stuff on your blog just brings it all back to me. We lived in Elder Park Street. My twitter name is @rockyboy2
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And nobody felt poor, because there was nothing else to compare to.
That back court looks very much like the one I played in behind Greenfield Street about 1960.
Very evocative photos.
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…we lived in # 60 Greenfield street, closer to the Langlands Road end than Crossloan Road at the top end… were you in Elder Park Street, which was the back to back ‘back courts’?
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Yes I was number 34, did you ever do the Big Spikey leap
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Grew up in similar surroundings in Yorkshire and yes, innocent, dangerous (a bit) but precious memories.
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…LUV IT, m’Lady, Diane! 🙂
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I’m still learning about this area and I enjoyed this Seumas. Thanks.
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…cheers, Allan 🙂
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Where I live, in a rurual village and away from the traffic, the kids play out in the street and up towards a playground. Fabulous. Great start for a happy life.
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…just the best, that man! 🙂
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Seamus is the last photo of Shannon Street or the one up from it there was a cafe on the corner
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…I’m not sure, Chic… I lifted the photos from the Web… but the photos are highly reminiscent of my memories of Govan, for sure ! … 🙂 I lived in Greenfield Street…
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Seumas, great lasting memories of the good ol’days! I’ve got my own in a small town, rural Maine back in the 40s. Freedom to play, and everyone had enough to live on! (sigh) Miss all of that! 😞 Christine
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…LUV IT, m’Lady, Christine! 🙂
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🎃🍁🧡
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Reblogged this on Viv Drewa – The Owl Lady.
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🙂 🙂 🙂
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@v@ ❤
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Great photos showing life in a different way. It is great to hear the
account of life there from a child’s point of view. You were loved and had just about enough to eat and your imagination built a haven.
The oozing ‘glabber’ makes me smile. Your mothers were probably less enchanted when you returned in this coating. 😊 .
Miriam
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…1,000,000 % correct!
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Great photos to remember by, Seumas. I’ve read many children today are not left to just play outside with others, especially in the U.S. One of my greatest joys was going outside to play with my friends. Today there’s a fear of children being stolen. It’s so sad. —- Suzanne
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…so called ‘advanced’ world 😦
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Ahhhh what fun we had as children..no phones and scary peeps just open fields, muddy streams and trees to climb…Different from yours but no less fun and love and always a hot meal 🙂
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…. really, the very best of times… 🙂
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