#rowland kitchen

[thefamoustownofyeadon]

I will carry on telling stories until someone stops me Cackhandedness

I think the ability to fix stuff is something we are born with. Its carried in the genes. The reason I say that is my dad was hopeless at anything useful or practical and the army gave his dad a job digging trenches all the way across France and Belgium in the First World War because he was really badly deaf and had a stammer and it was not working out anywhere else for him in the military.

We had no stair carpets until 1969 when my paternal grandmother died. She left my dad a little bit of money and my mum decided it should go on carpets. So he started at the top of the stairs with a roll of carpet and some nails. And the very first nail he hammered in went through a water pipe. And water started filling the space between the upstairs floor and the downstairs ceiling and started leaking through the hole where the light socket was. 

Dad panicked and I do not know why he did not turn off the water. But he didn't. Instead, he told me to run to the newsagents on the parade in the Shaw Leys estate. I was 12 but not very good at running. I bought the chewing gum (Beach Nut Brand) and walk-ran back. Dad asked why I had not chewed gum on the way back as this would have saved time and ceiling damage. So I chewed the gum very fast and then gave it to him .By this time he had lifted a couple of floorboards on the landing and we could see where the water was coming from. He tried pushing the gum onto the hole but of course, it instantly cooled and fell off into the floor space. So I chewed some more but the same thing happened. 

I cannot remember how the problem was finally resolved. Mum would have asked a neighbour to come and help. That is what normally happened. A chiropodist lived two doors down and he was very good at stuff. He later became a headmaster. I do not know why dad did not look under the sink and turn the water off but he did not do that. And I think that typifies the male DNA in my family.

[thefamoustownofyeadon]

Odd ways my dad made money. Day 5- Durham Town.

Prior knowledge required1-Strong sturdy boxes2-Pedlars3-Flags, balloons, windmills, inflatable animals4- Coining it in (making lots of money at great speed) 5-The impact of lots of beer on twenty-year-old miners on a very hot day6- Public humiliation of 11-year-olds!

My dad claimed we were descended from Irish Travellers. We were not. I have checked it out, but there was Irish Eddie who flogged sewing machines and life assurance. He was so convinced of this ancestry that he named our house Romany Rye after the classic novel by George Borrow. In any event, he liked the idea of being a traveller. He also liked to combine going to events which linked up to other parts of his life. So for example in July 1968, when I was almost 11 we went to the Durham Miners Gala. That was because he was a union steward and a very political chap…but he liked to combine that interest with making money

It’s part of the incredible ignorance of people in the south of England that most there have never heard of this event which is something like a mass picnic of 150,000 miners and their families on Durham Race Course in July of each year. Mining communities from across the country were represented, and they each brought their brass band and crucially a colourful banner. They marched through the winding streets of medieval Durham. Many scores of them. And crowds lined the streets five deep to watch. I have been twice in the last six years, including with my eldest grandson when he was eleven. Some of the photos are his. 

Now, of course, there is a political element to all this but I am going to skip over all that and concentrate on how we sold a £140 worth of Union Flags, as well maybe another £60 worth of balloons and inflatables. In 1968 that was a fortune. Dad and I travelled up by train on the Friday evening bring potted meat and dripping sandwiches with us wrapped in greaseproof paper. We slept out on benches on the station platform with our sturdy boxes tied to our legs. Dad was convinced somebody would try and run off with our stock. 

Breakfast would have been a bacon sandwich then we set off up and down streets of terraced houses selling balloons to the kids. I remember it was raining heavily. I could then blow up 200 balloons one after another and conduct trade at the same time. We walked miles, selling all the way as we went. His aim was to cover all our expenses by mid-morning so after that, every minute of the day was pure profit. That’s how he explained it. 

Then at around 12.00, we headed for where the colliery bands formed up and then sold flags all along the two-mile route. We had to keep ahead of the procession so we walked and sold at pace. Flags only now.At the County Hotel, which is the mid-point on the route each band would perform a few seconds of its speciality to the politicians on the balcony. That year it was Prime Minister Harold Wilson, Barbara Castle and TUC leader Vic Feather. I remember seeing them which must mean I can boast that Harold Wilson once saw me selling flags. Ditto our Barbara as we called her. 

There is always a bit of show biz in street trading. Dad covered one side of the road and I the other. We both had our sturdy boxes but of course, he carried the greater weight. As I ran out he would throw a great bundle of four dozen flags up into the air and I was would try and catch it. I never did and the crowd would laugh and cheer… which got them more in the mood for spending. 

At the gate, to the racecourse, there is the remnant of a stone farm gate and a great boulder next to it. We stood there and sold inflatable ducks and windmills to the 150,000 people who walked past us. By then the sun was out and dad sent me to have a look at all the colliery banners and to get myself some dinner.

 We worked till early evening to catch all the people coming out again, but we stayed too long. A lot of the young men were very drunk. One group walked towards us. Dad sad something like “get outa road, David these lads a full of ale are looking for trouble”. Dad was a Pacifist and a Boxer. That’s a hard concept to explain but by this stage in his life, he was not keen on getting into fights. The lads asked for five of everything we had, laughing all the time thinking it a big joke. The daftest of them announced they wanted to go double or quits on the toss of a coin. So we stood to lose the value of all that stock or get double the amount. Dad wisely chose to go with that, and he won. The lads paid up, but as they were doing so one of them dropped burning paper into dads box which was full of plastic stuff, and of course, it ignited immediately and burnt fiercely. In truth, there was very little there and the loss was not much. We just had one less box to carry home. 

Writing this it has struck me that just about everything we did over that weekend would be illegal now or in other ways not allowed. None of it caused any harm to anybody but we do not tolerate things so much now. That feels very sad. And of course, trying to explain this kind of life to my 11-year-old grandson was impossible…I might as well have been talking about Martians.

[thefamoustownofyeadon]

Odd ways my father had of making money. Number 4: Santa gets rid of the year’s bad buys

We would catch the 55 or 35 Bus to Leeds some Sunday mornings to stock up from Mr Greenbaum’s Toys and Fancy Goods warehouse near the market. It was under underground, below a busy road. and we had to enter by stone flag steps and a low door. The room opened out into a poorly lit cave-like room about a third of the length of a football pitch. Mr Greenbaum had been there working in his suit and brown overalls, six days a week since 1935. I remember his bald head and National Health Service specs. He looked a little like Alf Garnett but was quietly spoken, pleasant and always gave me something as a gift when I was very young. 

He had a plan to try and get us to move upmarket, but dad would always say he was a ‘stack em high, sell em cheap’ kind of man. We almost always bought the same things. Flags, Balloons, windmills, inflatable animals, jumping frogs on springs, and everyone’s favourite returning balls (a silver paper covered ball on an elastic string).But now and again dad would feel inspired. He once bought 6,000 tiny snowmen of the type you put on Christmas cakes, but nobody would buy them as they were from China and had Chinese faces (British expectation that snowmen should look English. Not very rational I know). Another time we bought thousands of handmade felt Gonks from an old lady in Frizinghall which had an unpleasant smell. They were poorly sewn, looked nothing like most people’s ideas what a Gonk was, and they stunk and that got worse over time

 .My mum would object. Dad's stock for street selling was distributed around all three bedrooms in our house and stacked to the ceilings. I went to sleep each night looking at boxes with Made in Hong Kong stamped on the side. Mum got fitted wardrobes in their bedroom, but he soon filled them with bundles of flags and balloons…and the rank gonks.

 By November dad would have accumulated a lot of bad buys, but he had developed a way of getting rid of this normally unshiftable stuff. It was our festive event. Dressing up as Santa Clause and putting a sturdy cardboard box in a hessian sack. I would sometimes go along as Mr Elf, Santa’s Little Helper. Even by my mid-teens, I was almost 6 feet tall. It was shaming. 

Each night the dining room table became a production line. We took two small items we could not get rid of, added a balloon and then wrapped it up in a white paper sweet bag. So an excited child might get one of the snowmen, an unrecognizable smelly none-gonk and a balloon. But the deal only cost 10p so it was rare to get complaints. If the kid burst the balloon straight away in the ice and freezing wind then dad would give them another little package for free. We could not travel down into town on the bus in costume so we would get changed in an alley alongside the pub at the top of the hill. We broke for dinner in the pub and he thought it pointless to get changed. The beard would come off but otherwise, we were in full kit alongside the Saturday Dinner time throng. Women would shout “What are you giving me for Christmas Santa?”, or” ring your bell for me”. Stuff like that. Being 15 and trying to be invisible is what I remember best. ;-)

Tomorrow, selling flags to The Vanguard of the Proletariat This is not the pub. I cannot find a picture but its another favourite nearby

[thefamoustownofyeadon]

Odd ways my dad had of making money. Day 3: Working down Darley Street

Easter to October we did the Gala’s and other big events across the north, but then from the middle of October through to March we worked down Darley Street, standing just outside Marks and Spencer’s which had very tolerant management. 

We would work from about 9am till the time of the bus before the Bradford City football fans came out.  So at about 4pm.How did we sell? - Remember officially our stock could not touch the ground so, we had to give the appearance of complying with the law. My dad pioneered the sturdy cardboard box approach. A broad strap was threaded end to end across the box and that went over our heads. If a policeman approached (and it was part of my job to keep watch) we would dip forward with our heads, lift the box across our shoulder and get legal. Quick.

What is the Flash? A flash was something we created to get passers-by’s attention. It had to be big and colourful. We would take a tight, thick bundle of 18” gardening canes. This, in turn, would be strapped firmly top and bottom into the corner of the thick, sturdy box. We then drew three canes out of the bundle and stuck them into the underside of a very large potato or turnip, tripod style. Then we would attach elastic to the items we were selling and hang then from other canes which were stuck into the top of the vegetable so they looked a little like the spines of an umbrella. 

What did we sell? Items between 10-50p such as flags, plastic ducks, returning balls, frogs on springs (etc)What is a pitch or spiel? The only time I did not stammer as a kid was when I was doing a pitch or a spiel. That is a mixture of calling out ones wears and then getting eying contact with customers and doing a chat with them. Selling talk. "Nice kids, the little girls a smarty like her mum hey?" It was never just “10p your Union Jacks" or “Best inflatable ducks in Bradford")

The bunce is what we called our takings. This was a thing to be distributed around one’s body. The coins went into the deep pockets of our woodworker aprons but the notes went in hidden pockets. When we got home it was my job to count the money and to put it into plastic bags ready to go into a large metal trunk with a padlock on the front. Notes were hidden in other places. Decimalisation caused havoc because we had trouble finding all the money Stopping for dinner. Was heaven. We would be wet or cold or both. There were days I was so cold I could not form words and my fingers were so stiff I could not take the coins. We would get to a pub at the top of the hill and at the corner to the road the towns market was on. The last of the cities great idle boozers and borderline criminals used to go in there. Heavy drinkers and smokers, lots of fighting and the men as well. One of the hardest things I've ever done is go in there dressed as one of Santa’s helpers. From age 10 my dad would buy me a rum to thaw me out and a plate of steaming pork pie and peas. I would thaw from the inside out. For some reason, the afternoon always seemed easier after that.

Getting paid. Normally it was ten per cent of whatever I took. My maths should have been better I think

[thefamoustownofyeadon]

Odd ways in which my dad made a living: Day 2. With or without a beast of burden

You might not know this, but there is are two important difference between a hawker and a pedlar. The former sells one thing and the latter sells lots.  But the crucial differentiator is the beast of burden usually an ass. If you were a Pedlar you had to have a beast of burden, and sometimes police officers would approach one and say "Show me your beast of burden or I'm nicking. The law is very old (originally back to Tudor times). If you were a pedlar you had to have a beast of burden and your 'salables' must never touch the ground. We did not have a such a thing but instead carried everything in a cardboard box over our shoulders. But we still had a Pedlars Licence. Mine is still in the house somewhere. I will try and find one off the internet to show you. 

This subject is so massive that the story will take days to tell. We will talk about the role of turnips and large potatoes tomorrow and then move onto Santa impersonation down Darley Street in Bradford after that. Then the Durham Miners Gala on Saturday. Today it's about union flags. If you watch the official film of Queen Elizabeth's Coronation in 1953 you will see a man in a flat cap walking well ahead of Elizabeth's gilded carriage. The man is selling Union Flags to the crowds. That's my dad and he made a fortune doing it then and over the next forty-five years. 

In 1977 The Queens Silver Jubilee made us enough to live like kings. But then there were the hundreds of other official occasions, royal visits and of course the scores of summer Galas and Carnivals that went on all over the north of England and attracted five deep crowds at the roadside. And every one of those people wanted something to wave, so we sold them a 10p Union Flag. There was competition, most of all the Manchester Lads. Harold Jacobson, the future novelist was amongst them and his dad was in charge. The Harold was on Desert Island Discs a few years ago talking about all the things I recognised. Flag selling, even for Communists like my dad, had very simple economics.

 A flag cost a penny from the Mr Greenbaum’s underground warehouse next to Leeds Market. We sold it for 10p. Taking our "Xs and out of pockets" out as my dad called them, that was 8p+ profit on every flag. And we would take and sell 5 gross each. A gross is 144. That's £57.50when my weekly wage nursing in 1976 was £40 a week. But it was also glorious fun. The police were mostly benign so long as you kept well ahead of the Queen or the carnival procession. And we felt like the bee's knees. Felt a lot like show biz shouting out to the crowds and the banter back and forth. We wore carpenters aprons with deep pockets at the front to drop the coins in. By the end of the day, we could barely walk for the weight.

 We would sleep in the car and get spruced up at swimming baths. And we smoked Benson and Hedges without restraint and drank shorts In 77 we went with the queen everywhere(okay I missed some because of my regular job. My two brothers and me, and sometimes dad drove all round the north with an old clapped out car selling thousands of flags to eager crowds at 15p each (Royal Jubilee Premium). I made many hundreds of pounds but of course, spent more as always. Photo of dad. He never sold at Yeadon carnival but this was an exception. Alongside is a Pedlars cert we had to carry at all times. Mine is somewhere 

[thefamoustownofyeadon]

Odd ways my dad made money Day 1- A day at the races

If ever I want to have a laugh I just sit back and think of the stuff my dad got away with

Mill worker 6.30 to 5pm weekdays, my dad always had something else going on in the evenings and at weekends. Ways of making money. A favourite was our trips to the racecourses when he would get on a step ladder and sell tips to the crowds. As a kid, I used to go as well. Carry the ladder and hand out the tips. It was usually York or Wetherby races we would go to, so that meant a very early start as he could not drive, and we would have to get a bus into Leeds and at least one more onwards.

 He would send me to the newsagents on the parade to buy a copy of the Daily Mirror. He would then chose the top race of the day and note the tipster's predictions. These would be copied onto embossed business cards (no contacts details) using an old John Bull printing set. Once dry the cards would be placed in the best Basildon Bond white or pale blue envelopes. Presentation is everything. Then off we would jog off to the races. I would have to carry the short step ladder. Dad would have a rum or two and then about forty-five minutes ahead of our race he would set up the ladder and then do his spiel. He called himself Deaf Boy and claimed that he was Lord So and So's stable boy and that he got access to information only the pro's had, and if they would give him 2/6 he would give them the winner of the next race. And people would stand in line and pay their money. Maybe up to 40 people. We did not make a fortune but it paid for the day out. 

This was around 1966 so £5 was a decent amount of money can see how the sill behind the success of this was a kind of showbiz approach. Get peoples attention, hook then, make it visual, tell a little story, make them warm to you and then do the money pitch....and leave them smiling

Fifteen minutes before the race start time dad would say its time to be off and we would do a dash for the buses. He was doing something which was part of racecourse life for decades and it could be a false memory of mine but I think we saw the mast of the art, a man who claimed to be an African Chief who did the same as my dad but at all the top races and often featured in newsreels A similar scene is featured in Graham Greene's Brighton Rock which was our book of the month in a Book Group I run. Dad gave the act some ring of authenticity by wearing  Jodhpur's (skin-tight horse riding trousers) and a Deer Stalker hat. You had to stand out!