Nostalgia - a novel [SSM24]

Abstract

This story, "NOSTALGIA" is based on life in the north of England from the 1920's to 1936. The way of life as it used to be. Every terraced house with one cold water tap, a tin bath that was hung up in the back yard. The toilet at the bottom of the yard, a candle for the bedroom light, a stone hot water bottle, filled from the kettle that was heated on a coal fire in the kitchen, carbide lamps for pedal cycles, and the lamp lighter going round the streets lighting the gas lamps. The knocker up tapping on upstairs windows to awaken the sleeping factory -workers, the sound of clogs pounding the pavement, tramcars rumbling through the town, street vendors selling most goods from a horse and cart, policemen wearing cloaks, the dawn of the wireless with the accumulator, the wrist watch, cement for building and chamber pots. All these things I have included and formed into a story of three lads growing up in the north and eventually getting married.

The main character, a Peter Nelson, bricklayer by trade, inseparable from his mates, whom the Gods smiled on, and who was given riches beyond his wildest dreams, and his parents, who survived the strikes and poverty to become nearly middle class. All the names in this story are fictitious, and the whole story is just "nostalgia".

*Copyright to digitise provided by descendants of Raymond Turner.