By: Bill Silvester
This was just prior to the move to number ten (Warkworth Street). I remember the house very well as I lived there until the end of the war. I used to play outside in the street and had a scooter to use. I actually rode my scooter into one of the common pillars in the street and my nose was damaged and it bled profusely. Should have gone to a doctor but my ‘Nan’ sat me on the kitchen table downstairs and treated my injury. I should have gone to a doctor but there was a war on.
My mother sent me to St. Faith’s school, and grandma would take me to the congregational church most Sundays. My Christian upbringing was valuable. We had virtually no toys during the war, but us schoolboys would gather up horse chestnuts and play ‘conkers’. We would drill a hole through the seeds, tie on a piece of string, knotted at one end so the seed would not fall off, and take turns at trying to break each other’s seed. When we found a boy who had an old dry seed, the fresh ones always broke. We used to remember how many times we could break other boys’ seeds. It was fun!
Marbles were virtually non-existent during the war. The other game we played was with cardboard bottle tops. The boys would collect the bottle tops off the milk bottles. We would then see who could get their top closest to the wall. Winner would take the other boy’s bottle top. I was quite good at this game!
Bill Silvester, writing in 2022
Reproduced with kind permission from Capturing Cambridge. Read the full entry https://capturingcambridge.org/centre/warkworth-street/10-warkworth-street/
