the brief history of coachkirkham continued.......

Don Kirkham A.K.A coachkirkham - my very early life. Continued........

So there we were living on Accrington Road, I have to mention that we lived next door to a fish and chip shop. Conell's fish and chip shop. The chip range was against what was for us the hall wall. Even on the coldest day you could touch that wall and feel heat, lots of it. The same obviously applied in summer, on the hottest days of the year, the heat coming from that wall was unbearable, but at least we had some form of heating! long before the days of central heating in terraced houses, this was a little bit of luxury, the heat went up the wall into my parents bedroom, mind you on cold days the single glazed windows regularly had ice on the inside, I used to marvel at the patterns the ice made, scratching my initials (very clever, as Denis and I had the same initials) in the ice, then denying that I had done it!

This was a very nice area, relatively speaking, as mum would say "at least we don't live in Stoneyholme, they're a bad lot down there" Little did she know that my girlfriend and now wife of 36 years lived in Stoneyholme. But more of that part of my life later, much later. Around us we had a whole range of shops, the already mentioned chip shop, a bookies, called a turf accountant, though I am sure that accepted principles of accounting may not have been closely followed , (the owners bought their daughter a pet lamb, and she used to walk it along Accrington road on a dog lead, where else would that happen?) Further on our side of the road was a hardware shop, post office and something called a dainty shop, this shop sold 'stuff'. Mainly cooked meats and cakes, weird, absolutely weird combination of foodstuffs, but there we are. Mum would send me down there at least once a week to buy 1/4lb of roast pork and "don't forget to ask for the stuffing". The stuffing was the key to happiness, or free, either way it must have been one or the other because if I forgot it I was sent back, holding my still stinging ear.



Brian Redman



Across the road was a chemist, ladies wear shop and Redmans grocers. The story went around that the son of Redmans owners raced a car in Monte Carlo, and other big races. To a snotty nosed kid this story was amazing, of course I believed it, even though I had absolutely no proof of it's validity, but to be in a shop where the owners had a son who may know Stirling Moss, the Biggles of the race track, well that was special, as a young boy the thought of buying bread in a shop owned by the family of a racing driver was heaven. I have since found out that Brian Redman was in fact a real life racing legend, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Redman says it all.

Sadly this way of shopping is gone, forever. But at the age of six or seven it was what we and every one else knew, the weekly shop and the daily trips for bread, and who would have thought that it would ever change. It was in this regular, working class world that we, Denis and I, grew up as young lads, and went to school.

Our first school was Coal Clough infant school, I have no real memories of this school, I assume that I survived relatively unscathed, because later we went to Hargher Clough junior school. This was a very impressive building, red brick, the famous NORI brick from Accrington, with a caretakers house at the entrance to the school, the caretaker was the friend of everyone, a kind man who would always pick you up if you fell, and take you inside when bleeding, falling on concrete hurt, no grass for pl

aying football on was visible anywhere near this school!



Hargher Clough school as it looks today
this is the 'girls side' of the school



One interesting thing that has always stuck in my mind is that even though the classes were mixed, the playgrounds were separated. A very high brick prison type wall divided the girls from the boys, things such as physical education, and sports were separate, but classes such as English and what we called sums were not. I am not sure what we could have got up to, or maybe I was just naive, and I never thought it was strange either. We, Denis and I were placed in the same class, our mum was very adamant to the school headmaster that "twins should never be separated", incidentally she told me the same thing when I told her many years later that I was emigrating to Canada. So it began, my memories of school milk, heated on the pipes during winter, and playing out in the school yard are very pleasant, but things were not all happiness.

This was where a couple of things became very apparent, the first was that twins were ridiculed mercilessly by their fellow pupils, and that Denis and I were seen as one. If one of us broke the rules, did something wrong, or were wrongly accused of something, we were both guilty. Guilt by association is one thing, but guilt by birth is even worse. My favourite memory is that we had two classes, made up of A and B forms, the A form class was run by Mrs. Hargeaves, the B form class was run by Mr. Bannister, so the break time football match was always "Aggies tek Baggies"! If one of us kicked the ball out of the yard, we both had to go and get it back, once in absolute horror I kicked the ball and broke a window, we were both dragged into the headmasters office to explain why. Around this very early time of my life I knew that I 'had to get away, and be myself', this proved to be a prophescy that came true, though it retrospect maybe I got too far detached from my family, but no-one can ever accuse me of doing half a job! More of that later.

and so it continues, .....the history of coachkirkham