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Because everyone needs some tender loving care at one time or another

Poldark Series 4 Episode 2.

Jimmys’ field 1960

an open greenish plot created over an ancient midden with a brackish pool barely a foot deep at one end lay a row of 1860’s red brick terraces that were slowly coming into the 20th century out went the tin baths & in came the plumbing an end to outdoor toilets back of the grey brick yard tin baths for the family on a Saturday night the old tin baths would be flung out on to jimmys’ field & we’d punt them in our own races across jimmys’ pit patching the holes with mud & bits of lino which would let go & we’d feel the cold water seep into our backsides just before we sank which we knew meant ‘big trouble’ when we got home so we avoided that for as long as possible jimmys’ field was where we held our bonfire nights three or four bonfires each to a corner of the field & we’d raid each others in devout competition for the biggest ‘bonny’ the thin thread throughout all of this was our poverty few had bicycles homes that welcomed strangers kids for fear they’d need to be fed need something more than the family had & we knew nothing of this then this was just how ‘things were’ & as I go back to visit Jimmys’ field is now but a bit of rough ground the pond has gone as are the kids they have the luxury of warm indoors & know the cold outside only to be a dangerous place

neil benbow