| If, when you were playing games, you became out of breath, or got �stitch� in your side, or you wanted to tie a shoelace, you crossed your fingers and cried 'BARLEY'. This intrigued me as my name was Barley. This applied mainly to the chasing games. MAY DAY CELEBRATIONS May Day was celebrated. I remember too celebrating the end of the war. The armistice was in November 1918 and in the following summer we had a peace celebration. It was held on Warner's field which was half way up Church Road on the right where there are bungalows now. It was a nice open field with Tettenhall Dick pear trees growing in it. There were a lot of these old pear trees growing in Codsall. They produced a pear about an inch and a half long. The tree itself was very large and it produced a prolific crop. The fruit had to be eaten very quickly after it had been picked because it soon turned brown. OAK APPLE DAY Oak Apple Day was a local tradition because of Boscobel just up the road. On this day if you weren't wearing oak leaves you were chased by children with nettles and you were stung. We certainly did that when I was under ten. One activity, I remember, was skating at Leighton Pool (Lightning pits) after a spell of hard frost. This pool is not far from Wheatstone. About sixty people would be there � skaters and non-skaters. I remember being pushed round the pool seated on a wooden kitchen chair, no doubt by someone who was not too confident! 1929 was notable for six weeks of hard black frost. I think that between the wars the pool probably froze over about half-a-dozen times. -7- |
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