Next to Rose Cottage was the stables for Shorts Farm cart horses.  We often heard them stamping in their stalls as we lay in bed.  

It must have been their food that encouraged the rats that came into our back yard.   Mum set wire traps for them and as they were still alive when they were caught she had to kill them.   this was done by drowning them in a tub of water.   We would watch them struggling and fighting for life.   Looking back we were quite horrors but it was just the way of life.

Toys were few so he used to wrap all kinds of things up in a nappy or piece of blanket for me to take to bed with me.   So my dolls were a marrow or a large parsnip — one time it was even a dead rabbit with a bandage round the part where it had been paunched!  I did have a teddy bear, be it somewhat bald, so I don't think I was its first owner.

There was plenty of room to play in Rose Cottage.  There were two attic rooms which were not habitable as the wattle and daub plaster was falling off the ceiling and one had to climb ladder-like stairs to reach them.  

We had a bird's eye view of the village street from the little windows.   There were four bedrooms with only small oil lamps or candles for lighting.   On the floor were lino and mats.   In one room was a step-in cupboard.   On a hot summers day we would have a tin bath of water outside to paddle in.  

On one such day I remembered that there was an old woollen swimming costume in the cupboard so we took a lighted candle into the cupboard to look for it.   As we came out of the cupboard we put the candle on the window-sill where it caught the lace curtain alight and some of the peeling wallpaper.  

We fled across the farm to where mum was washing the milk bottles shouting that the house was on fire.   Luckily she was able to run home and put out the fire without too much damage being done.   No more lighted candles for me after that!

On the ground floor there was a kitchen, a front room, a scullery and a cellar.  There was a patch of white metal covering a hole on the stairs.   I was told that it had come from a crashed air ship.  If that was true or not I will never know now.  

A passage lead to the front door and the red tiles on the floor were always polished with red tile polish.  

The letter box and door knocker were polished with Brasso but most of the paint was peeling off the door. 

The windows were of the sash type and when the sash cord broke the window wouldn't stay open.   This seemed to happen quite often.   In the front room we had a couple of upholstered chairs and a round polished table.  I remember having to lean over it while mum combed through my hair with a fine toothed comb.  Any headlice that may have been present showed up when they fell onto the table and were dealt with.   Paraffin was then rubbed onto the hair, followed later with a washing in carbolic soap.   I only had to have one course of treatment as mum went up to the school and asked that I did not sit next to a certain person.   The combing went on weekly however,  just to make sure I had no more head visitors".

Fleas were common place and from time to time I would get bitten.   I had some bites on my stomach at one time and went to see the school doctor.   When he saw the spots he told mum that she was giving me too much cabbage and said that was the cause of them.   Mum said nothing and let him think that.

Yet another gruesome event we loved to watch was the arrival of the dog biscuit cart.   When a cow died on the farm opposite Rose Cottage a lorry with a winch would come to collect it.   We would watch the poor beast slowly being pulled up on to the lorry from the upstairs window.    Mum told us it would be made into dog biscuits, hence our name for the lorry.