There were five of us in the family, one brother and three sisters.

On many occasions we saw more dinner times than dinners. We never wore boots and never had chilblains.

Our feet were so hard they would almost gap an American axe and we were forced to cut our toenails every month with a coal chisel, as scissors would double up like the mudguards on late model cars.

Very rarely we suffered any illnesses, excepting mumps and a cold. Mother would pluck a basket full of eucalyptus leaves and boil them, pour the water into a basin and we would inhale the steam with a covering over our head. The cure never failed.

The nearest doctor was 20 miles distant but he would never travel any distance to see a patient unless the money was guaranteed, therefore it was no use ever thinking of getting real ill and requiring the services of our local medico.

If we got a thorn in our foot Mother would poultice it with a herb known as Marsh Melow followed by a smear of Venus turpentine. Sure enough the thorn would be showing out of the skin by morning.

Our main diet consisted of home-made bread and black treacle. We grew our own vegetables. Mother was an expert at gardening. She never grew pansies or violets. She often remarked that cauliflowers were more substantial.

On rare occasions she would buy a sixpenny tin of raspberry jam, and that would be spread as thin as a safety razor blade. Only for the seeds it contained, one would imagine the bread was smeared with carriage varnish.

My father, a Yorkshire man, worked on a station, and we only saw him once a month.

I remember him coming home and bringing a pound of butter and spreading a bit in the centre of a slice of bread, telling us to eat all round it and save the butter for the next slice.

I remember him telling us about shadow soup in the old country. They would buy a shin of beef, hang it in the chimney, and boil a pot of water underneath the hanging shin, then stir it with a tallow candle. The next week the shin would be cooked as well as smoked.