Welcome to the world of
Michael G Kimber
Michael G Kimber
The Nightwriter
About This Site
The Formative Years
As I have told you; most of my early memories centre on my home for some twenty three years, in Leeds. It was (and still is) a large terrace house with cellars and attics, two features that in later years I would come to miss in my modern semi. It was here that I lived, and where my basic characteristics were formed; from being a child, through to adulthood and marriage. Those years seem so long ago, and yet in my mind there are many images of that time, and sadly, many blanks too.
Old photographs of my parents showed my mother to be an attractive slim dark haired young woman, smartly dressed in the fashion of the day. Little wonder that my father found her irresistible. He too was an impressive figure in his Navy uniform, a young man in his twenties, tall, slim, and good looking.
When they married they must have had dreams of how their lives together might be, but difficult times ahead changed everything for them, and indeed everyone else, and life was never easy. He was just twenty years old when the first world war ended, having seen action, yet being one of the lucky ones to survive. Like all the others who, one way or another, managed to get through the war years, the period of austerity that followed made life hard for them and their countrymen.
The first decade of their life together, and the six children that followed, must surely have tested their resolve, but not once while I was young, or at any time afterwards for that matter, was I ever aware of any resentment, beyond perhaps wistful imaginings of what might have been.
We were not a well off family, but no longer destitute. Like many families in those difficult years, mine had wandered from place to place, in the never-ending search for work. My eldest siblings had seen harder times, but by the time I was born, and became aware my surroundings, my father’s paining and decorating business had stabilised and was generating enough work to keep his family in some kind of dignity. Luxuries were non-existent, and treats were rare. Skimp and save was the yardstick by which we conducted every day life, and yet; and yet, I do not recall ever being, or feeling, deprived.
Money was always tight, and my mother, like countless mothers in those days, took full advantage of the weekly visit of the Provident man. He would call to collect an agreed sum of money, and when required would provide a cheque to be spent at one of a number of designated shops. This simple system kept me, my parents, my brothers and sisters, and most of the people I knew, adequately clothed and shod. There was little if any financial back-up. Few people then had bank accounts, and even though there was a branch of the Yorkshire Penny Bank quite close, the best my mother could manage was a few pounds in the post office.
“For a rainy day.” she would say. Looking back, I smile at the thought. Considering the difficulties and the constraints she endured, what, I often wondered, would she have considered to be ‘a rainy day’?
Of course, there were many occasions when we had to settle for second best, although we were not alone in this. As most of the people we knew had experienced the same difficulties during recent years, we came to realize that second best (which usually meant second hand) was better that nothing, and pride was one of the seven deadly sins that least troubled us.
Being part of a large family meant that it was a active house, where there was always something going on, and my parents must have had many exasperating times, but I can recall only few moments of anger.
Conversely, most situations that come to mind in my quiet moments of reflection seem to include laughter. I guess it’s something of a cliché, but it really was a poor but happy home.
It was also home for more than one family, because in later years, for a variety of reason, and for varying lengths of stay, some of my brothers and sisters brought their family’s to join the household.
Inevitably, most of my memories overlap, many of them refusing to be categorised neatly into sections of type or time.
Numerous times for example, I helped to black the Yorkshire Grate in the living room, or clear out its ashes. Indeed this was a most important feature of our lives at the time, for though it was no longer used for cooking, it was wonderful for keeping the family’s slippers warm.
Apart from the time just before she died, I recall only a few occasions when my mother was unwell. But there were countless times when she became doctor and nurse to one or another of her brood, when illness came, but the real doctors did not. In my adolescent years for example, like most boys of that age, I suffered with boils. She it was who gently bathed and squeezed them, until, with a little murmur of satisfaction from her, and an exclamation of distress from me, each in turn was dealt with.