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Hello Sandyford and Goldenhill folks, look who’s back with more memories of days gone by.

As you probably know, I have written a few articles reminiscing about earlier times in and around Goldenhill and Sandyford. Tom Simpson tells me that hundreds of people read these articles, this is very rewarding and also flattering to think that my personal ramblings could be of interest to so many. The good thing is, quite a few old friends have been in touch because of these ramblings.

I don’t know about other people, but now that I am retired I seem to ponder my past quite a lot and fortunately, most of the memories are good ones. You may find that you have read some items previously, no, it is not old age creeping in, it is because one thing leads to another, some memories overlap and fresh memories pop up all the time. Well, that is my excuse anyway.

Recently an old friend got in touch and we have swapped photos and memories about living in Alice Street and the bike rides we used to go on when we were teenagers. His dad had the cobblers shop in Alice Street and our grandmothers were cousins, how are you Tom?

Who can remember when the wakes used to arrive and set up shop on the banks by Jeffrey’s garage. The annual Catholic procession was another milestone as were the charity walks around the village by the Methodist children, all dressed up in their new clothes on the first Sunday in June.

The Co-op delivered its bread by horse and cart and Artie Bollington in Brakespeare Street used the same method for his coal deliveries. Artie’s yard is still there but the horse has long since gone. The delivery horses always left a deposit on the street and I used get sixpence a bucket from my uncle. He used to put it on his rhubarb, personally I preferred custard, sorry, old joke.

It seemed that back when I was a boy, everybody knew everybody, it was difficult to misbehave because there was always someone there to threaten to tell your dad.

The previous paragraph by David is something that we all need to take on board, is this the way how today’s society should deal with 21st century antisocial behaviour. Website comments on antisocial issues are more than welcome “let’s not forget how we dealt with it in the last century”