In the time we were at Clitheroe No 7 had three lots of residents. Part 1 is about the first residents we knew there.
Mr and Mrs South and Mr McDonald lived there. I called Mrs South Aunty South, and her husband Uncle Don. Mr McDonald everyone called Mac and I called him Uncle Mac. Nobody ever quite
understood the relationship those three shared. Uncle Mac was a tenant supposedly but when eventually they all bought a house together, it was all a bit confusing.
Aunty South was a gentle, absolutely sweet lady and she loved to give me cuddles. She used to wear corsets which held her very upright and firm, but when those corsets were off she was gorgeously soft and I would sink into her in a most satisfying snuggly manner. On washing day the corsets would hang out on the line and were a fiercesome sight with boning and lacing and hooks and eyes and with suspenders hanging down.
Aunty South was a war bride. Why she chose Uncle Don is anyone's guess. She was refined and gentle and he was rough as guts, skinny as a rake and tiny. He could easily have been a jockey.
Aunty South said he was the laziest person she had ever met. He could turn his hand to almost anything, but usually chose not to. He had no teeth because, as Aunty South said, he was too lazy to chew. As a returned soldier his medical necessities were looked after and he was given a new set of teeth every so often. They lived in a drawer. Aunty South said, "one day those teeth are going to jump out of the drawer and bite you on the bum!" He didn't care and I can't remember him ever wearing them.
Uncle Mac, on the other hand, was a refined, kind, tallish, roundish gentleman who helped Aunty South around the place. We all really liked him. He was almost the direct opposite of Uncle Don. When people met the trio for the first time everyone assumed that Aunty South and Uncle Mac were the married couple.
Uncle Don's passion was magic tricks. He was a really good magician and had a performance in which he did his tricks at charity events until he was in his 80s. I can remember being astonished and amazed when he magically transformed a cake pan full of cigarette butts into a sponge cake and pulled a 1952 penny that we had all examined out of a whole sack of pennies without even looking. He was driven when he was interested. Only he wasn't interested that often.
Uncle Don did make me my first dressing table which I loved for ages. He also rescued me from a funnel web spider. One day he captured another funnel web spider in a glass jar and brought it down to our flat so that we knew what to look out for. The spider was terrifying. It was in the jar rearing up, huge, black and hairy. After my parents had examined it, my father announced that I could take it back to the Souths' place. I was scared and didn't want to. The Souths' place was one of the funny hodge podge flats. To get there from the front gate of the property you had to walk up a long concrete path, up 4 steps, past our courtyard, up about 20 brick steps, along another long concrete pathway and then down 4 steps and onto a wooden walkway which led to their door. There was no back door. As an imaginative child I had visions of dropping and smashing the jar on the steps, the spider jumping out and biting me and me dying in agony. My parents insisted that I don't be a coward and return the spider, so extremely frightened, and super carefully I carried the jar with its dreadful contents back to Uncle Don. Non of my fears eventuated, but as a result I had nightmares for years.
Uncle Mac bought a car. There was great excitement when we knew that he had picked it up and was bringing it home. All the neighbours went out to admire the new purchase. There was a collective gasp and then much laughter when Uncle Mac drove to where the residents' cars were parked (some distance from the flats because the road sort of petered out near the front gate and there was quite a drop next to that bit of road so you couldn't park there). The car was a real vintage number dating from about the 1930's. It was a box-like vehicle (think model T Ford) with skinny tyres. Uncle Mac was so proud. He never drove above 25mph because he had a fear of the tyres bursting, so if he ever gave us a lift it took absolutely ages to get anywhere. Aunty South was equally proud of the car and she and Uncle Mac would go on excursions which they both obviously enjoyed.
I used to love spending time with Aunty South and would often sit in her kitchen watching her cook. The food was so different from anything my mother made. She baked sponge cakes and often made rice puddings. Uncle Don refused to eat fruit or vegetables so she made lots of mushy stews. He loved sweets so there were bowls of lollies around the place. No wonder he didn't have any teeth!
Aunty South and Mrs Hummerston were direct neighbours and good friends. They both spent a lot of time with me and we became very fond of each other. The two ladies asked my mother if they could take me into the city to visit Father Christmas. My mother had never allowed me to be anywhere without her but she agreed and I was taken into the city two years in a row by these two delightful surrogate aunties.
Aunty South, Uncle Don and Uncle Mac bought themselves a tiny little house not too far away on Avenue Road when I was about 5. We visited often.
After several years Uncle Mac was stricken with prostate cancer and Aunty South nursed him until he died. She lived on for a few years but then had a stroke and had to be moved into a nursing home where she died.
Uncle Don, who had smoked like a chimney from the age of 12, who ate sweets, white bread and mush and enjoyed more than the occasional beer, lived well into his 80's. The secret to his long life was that he didn't worry about a thing. He enjoyed every day and figured that problems would sort themselves out if he worried about them or not. It used to drive Aunty South batty.
Perhaps his attitude is something we should all work on!
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