50 today

My name is Beverley and i am one of five children. My parents had 5 children under the age of 7, i am the second eldest. I have three brothers and one sister. My father was in the Hampshire Constabulary until he retired. He started in the force as a Police Constable and worked his way up to the rank of Chief Inspector. How he managed to study for each promotion exam with five young children in the house i really don't know. My mother was kept so busy at home with us she never went out to work. There was never much money to spare although they were lucky that the police provided a house for most of his working life until they purchased a house in the new forest just before he retired. As their family grew so did the size of the house they provided until we had a 4 bedroom house though there still never seemed enough room, we still had to share a bedroom, so never any peace. Each time my father got promotion we had to move so found ourselves moving around hampshire almost every 2 - 3 years.It was hard starting new schools but we soon got use to it and being so close in age we all had a brother or sister to start a new school with which helped.
Understandibly there was never any money to spare and i can only remember going on two holidays, once in a caravan to Milford on sea and the other to Butlins Holiday camp.I can see now that my parents must have gone without so much just for us. Christmas was my favourite time. we all had a huge sack of presents, one main present something we really wanted and lots of small gifts, annuals colouring books and pencils etc. Each week we all had our own choice of comic, mine was the Bunty comic but it was great because once i'd read mine i could then read my brothers comics aswell, the Dandy, Beano. as i was an avid reader i loved this.I use to buy a paperback book every week go straight home to my room and lay on my bed and read it in one hit then have to wait until the following saturday to purchase another. I read The Chalet school books, Famous Five, all the E Nesbit books anything really. I still read 1 or 2 books a week now.
How different things are for my two boys ( one is 18 the other 22,still living at home).At christmas there would be a tin of Rover biscuits on the side but we were not allowed to help ourselves to them, we had to wait until we were offered one. For tea on christmas day we would have tinned salmon and salad with bread and butter! Normal tea any other day would be bread and jam. My boys laugh when i tell them but i realise you can't expect them to appreciate how lucky they are when they can go to the fridge and help themselves, the fact that there are always cake and biscuits to hand and not just on special occasions, they have never known any different.We use to have a bath only once a week on Sundays, the girls went in first then the boys, all using the same water( boys were always dirtier). We use to have my dad's police overcoat and mum's coat put over our beds at night in the wintertime because our rooms were so cold, ice on the insides of the windows!
We use to have to go to Sunday school and then were not allowed to play out or have friends in on sundays. Must have been hell for mum as we moaned all day about how our friends were allowed out to play, why couldn't we, but sundays to her meant all being together. I actually really enjoyed sunday school. I loved the songs we sang, the stamp we were given each week to put in a book and especially the sunday school teachers who invited me to tea. I would have coconut madeleines, meat sandwiches, biscuits, it was areal treat. i probably endured the teacher banging away at her piano and singing along with her knowing the laden table was waiting for me afterwards, probably not quite the right attitude but i was young and hungry. My brothers and sister all agree that one lasting memory is that we were always hungry.There was never any seconds and our plates were always empty. We had set menus thoughout the week, roast on sunday, bubble and squeakwith brawn on Monday, fish on Friday, mince on saturday. I will always remember my brother morgan thinking i had finished my meal one day when we had half a boiled egg with our salad, i turned to talk to my mum and on looking back at my plate my egg was gone! He'd pinched it. I was most upset.
We all had our chores to do. My father made a rota out and it was taped to the kitchen cupboard. One of us would fill the coal bucket another would have to clean all the shoes for school, washing up, wiping up, cleaning the grate out. There were so many chores and they had to be done to get our pocket money.
I have so many happy memories of my childhood and can now fully appreciate what our parents did for us. They must have saved all year for christmas and they made sure we got what we wanted and had wonderful times playing games and cards as we didn't have a television for many years after alot of people had one.Does anyone else remember the thrill of eating your Christmas pud and hoping you would bite on a sixpenny bit. But mum still managed to make sure they we all got one each. We couldn't afford to be fussy about what we ate, because if you didn't like it there was nothing else. My boys can be fussy eaters but food is more varied now and i know it's my fault for having so much choice in the house, if they don't like one thing there is always something else to choose from.So i don't think you are born fussy eaters it's the way you are brought up - i hold my hands up to spoiling them.