This is a photograph of the council houses in Findon showing them with white timber cladding.   They are hardly recognisable because this cladding has since been replaced with tiles.

At Findon school in the late 1930s I believe we were the only one-parent family.  Compared with today's statistics we were rare.  Even the meaning was different as my mother was a widow at 28 years old in 1933 with two small children.  Help was more help-yourself than State given. 

Her pension was ten shillings for herself, five shillings for the first child and three shillings for the second child — this never increased.  So families were the only other help. 

We lived with our grandparents who could only help with childcare, not finance.  From the day after my father's funeral my mother took any work that came along, night or day;  from taking in laundry, housework, early morning cleaning at the local public house and washing milk bottles at the farm dairy, to laying out the dead in the parish.  A relative would knock on our door at any time for her services.  Bereavement for a family often meant new shoes for my brother or myself, if they could afford the ten shillings fee themselves.

There was no bathroom, flush toilet or water on tap in our house and gas lights only on the ground floor.   I don't think any of these factors were responsible for my falling for every yearly epidemic that came along, as I was really well fed and cared for.

Starting with chickenpox at 18 months, I followed on with mumps, German measles, diphtheria, measles, whooping cough and ending with scarlet fever on my tenth birthday in 1939.

I was lucky to miss polio in summer 1938.  This caused the death of my nine year old school friend; I remember going to the shop with my mother to buy flowers for her funeral.  I chose gladioli as her name was Gladys. As her father worked as gardener at Muntham Court, she was buried in their private cemetery at Muntham Clump, near Tolmare Farm.  For the rest of that summer's school holidays we were confined to our back yard and forced to gargle and sniff salt water up our noses every day in the hope of prevention.

Our treatment when we caught whooping cough was to be taken round the village wherever the workmen were tarring the roads to breathe in the fumes.

Another weekly ritual after our bath in front of the fire was a dose of syrup of figs.  My grandmother thought we should be clean inside and out.  I rebelled so often that my mother gave in to me, but got the bottle out each week so Granny never knew.  I can't remember if she ever made a comment about the bottle lasting so long. 

I loved wearing my cotton wool jacket next to my skin when I had pneumonia; as I regained health it was taken off not at once time but bits were pulled away daily until none remained.

My mother tried her best to keep us healthy, from does of cod liver oil and malt to wearing what was called an iodine locket round my neck on a thin piece of string.  This was a round of bakelite (early plastic) material with small holes in it, which smelt of iodine.  My favourite medicine from my Granny was for what she called "the runs" — a spoonful of raw arrowroot powder mixed with port and sugar.  When the cold on my chest needed the tallow spread on a piece of brown paper treatment, I was not too keen to go to school as the smell lingered.  I preferred the smell of camphorated oil.  Our family had remedies for most ailment of the time.   So when people remarked how pale my brother often looked, Mum cured that by touching his cheeks with the rouge puff before taking him out. Commends then were on how well he looked.

Having diphtheria at the age of five I was taken up to Swandean isolation hospital for an eight week stay.  My mother had been ill for some time before but was not diagnosed until I had the symptoms.  My brother was carrying the germs in his nose, so to stop the doctor putting swabs up his nose he put a bead up his nose which did him no good at all.

While I was in hospital my Gran and Grandad would walk from Findon to visit me on Sunday afternoons.  By standing outside the window near my bed, they brought me eggs and sweets from my mother which she could ill afford.  Even so these were shared in the ward so we only had half a boiled egg each and one sweet a day after our afternoon rest.  When I was fit enough to return home I cried as I didn't want to leave my new home.

When I had scarlet fever I was then taken to the isolation hospital at Portslade.  There one poor man was in a ward all on his own so on non-visiting days when we were recovering we pushed younger patients around the grounds in a big old pram.  My Mum kept in touch by sending me Mabel Lucie Attwell postcards two or three times each of the five weeks I was in hospital.  I can't remember ever  , but only enjoying my time.  I guess it was a sort o holiday which I didn't have normally.  I felt more privileged than hard done by as most of my school friends had never been to hospital like me.

Everyday tumbles meant cut knees.  This my Gran said was only gravel rash.  To heal the cuts she would pick a cut leaf from a plant in the garden, wash it and place it over the wound, securing it with a strip of clean old sheet.  One side of the leaf was for healing, the other for inflammation.  If by chance the cut turned septic then the good old poultice was applied, which wasn't so nice when it dried crispy or stuck to the wound.

In spite of all our childhood setbacks I think we turned out to be pretty healthy adults.