MORRIS'S FISH & CHIP TREAT ENJOYED BY BRIGG BROTHERS

Cliff with brother Ken, born 29 Sept 1926, in a picture taken at 4 Redcombe Lane, Brigg, in the summer term of 1938. Cliff is wearing the tie.

Cliff Turner, now 91 and living in New Zealand, continues his memories of growing up in Brigg during the 1930s...

Every year an old builder, Zadok Clark, in Glebe Road, would give a few prizes for essays about the school trips and I think it was after the York trip that I received sixpence for my effort. This was handed out at the annual prize-giving which took place in the evening and I spent my sixpence on the way home on "One of each twice" at Morris's fish and chip shop in Wrawby Street. "One of each" was shorthand for one piece of fish and a pennyworth of chips and "twice" meant I shared my bounty with my brother Ken.
Another annual event was the turning out to grass of George Brocklesby's horse. In the winter months the horse, which pulled the Brocklesby coal cart, was stabled in the owner's back yard only a couple of hundred yards from my Princes Street home. Somehow a few local kids would learn when the horse was to be turned out after its day's work, in a field on Bigby Road. Every year the horse gave unmistakeable evidence of its joy on the first evening back in the field. He would snort, gallop up and down the field and roll on his back with legs in the air. All too soon the coal cart was replaced by a lorry and I do not know what happened to the horse.
Also in spring the swallows returned from Africa to nest in Grandad Turner’s pig sty. The nest was made of dried mud and was in the form of a half hemisphere. For a few years I would be lifted up to see the eggs. Swallows reared two broods of chicks annually but the number of birds returning to England did not appear to increase so the mortality rate must have been very high.
Periodically, Glebe Road was visited by the somewhat intimidating Nurse Bull who scrutinised the head of every child for head lice. The names of infested children were announced at assembly so that they could get a letter to take the news to their parents. Imagine the fuss that would ensue if that happened today. Thanks to mother’s frequent use of a small-toothed comb Ken and I were spared that humiliation.
In my young days lots of families had a custom of walking out together on summer Sunday evenings and my family had three favourite walks, each of at least four kilometres. One was to Scawby Brook, through Scawby Park to Scawby village and returning via the King William IV pub at Scawby Brook, where there was a garden with tables and chairs for families. Mum and Dad had a drink and we kids would have lemonade and crisps.
Another route was down Closehedge, then a rutty cart track but now called St Helen's Road, and then across three fields to Gravel Pit Lane which led into Wrawby. Here there was a choice of pubs: The Black Horse and the White Horse. We alternated between them, possibly because both were customers on my Dad's country round. On one occasion, while brother John was still in his pram, we were at The Black Horse when a violent thunder storm occurred. When the rain eased, Dad walked to Brigg to get the butcher's van to take us home. I can't recall if the pram was somehow put into the van or if it was collected later.
Our longest walk took us along Bigby Road, then we turned left into Kettleby Lane, over the level crossing on the Brigg to Grimsby railway and into Wrawby. There, refreshment was taken at one of the aforementioned pubs and then it was back to Brigg by the main A18 road. This must have been at least four miles. 
It was on one of these walks that I first saw a baby cuckoo in a nest of a much smaller bird. It was close to the first milestone out of Brigg on the Bigby Road; I think I could go today and point to the spot within metres. Perhaps I should explain that cuckoos do not make nests or rear their own young. The female cuckoo deposits an egg in the nest of another bird, and when the baby cuckoo is born it ejects any eggs or chicks in the nest so that it receives the sole attention of its unwitting foster parents.
As a young boy I loved to roam the fields and hedgerows looking for birds' nests, gathering blackberries in the late summer and wild violets in the spring to carry home for my mother. One thing I took home was not so welcome. In Westrum Lane a field belonging to the Sumpter family had been left as a rabbit warren and there was a little hut, about the size of a telephone kiosk, just big enough to hold a man and his shot gun. One day we found a white ferret there; it was the practice to put a tame ferret into a rabbit hole with the hope that it would drive out rabbits for the man waiting with the gun. Sometimes the ferret would stay in the hole until its owner got tired of waiting for it to emerge, and this is obviously what had happened. I took the ferret home; mother asked where it had come from and when I told her she said "Take it back". And so the ferret was liberated.
Collecting a jar of frog spawn was another annual event; usually we found our frog spawn in a drain we knew as Pig Pudding Dyke which was reached by crossing two fields at the end of Closehedge. I have no idea of why that name was given. The spawn always provided tadpoles but I was never successful in keeping one long enough for it to become a frog.

To be continued on Brigg Blog....

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