Page 26 - Once a copper 10 03 2020

Late in 1956 mom was diagnosed with Tuberculosis of the kidneys and spent
six months in Yardley Sanitorium and Queen Elizabeth hospitals.

Mom gave birth to a fourth son, yours truly, in
1960, at Loveday Street Maternity Hospital,
Birmingham. Now there was a scary looking
place, not a bit like the modern labour facilities
today.

I stumbled across a
photo of the delivery
room at the hospital Figure 8 Loveday Street Maternity Hospital
evoking images from Birmingham
black and white horror
movies. Seeing such an image made me appreciate
how much more traumatic childbirth must have
been back then.
Dad was often out of work,
Figure 9 Delivery Theatre Loveday St
Maternity Hospital, B'ham although for short periods he
was a delivery driver for
Smiths’ Crisps and Corona Pop. Eventually he found a
more permanent job at Land Rover in Solihull, where
he worked on the track on the valet line until he took
early retirement in the 1980’s.

In 1964, we were moved by the Council to a
maisonette on Warwick road, Sparkhill. Three years
later, the family returned to Stockfield Road, Acocks
Green, where I was to spend my childhood and Figure 10 Remember the pop
teenage years. As my brothers grew up and got man? My dad was one.
married, Mom, Dad and myself moved to a two-
bedroom council house in Tyseley in the mid-seventies. From here I was pass
though senior school, start my first job in a retail store, meet a girl, get married
at 19 and move into our first home, a co-ownership flat in Erdington.

From an early age, every alternate Saturday followed a pattern. Dad would
take mom shopping, often on the Coventry Road, in Small Heath. The family
would then wind up at Bordesley Labour Club, Whitmore Road Small Heath,
where many pints of mild were consumed by Dad, John and Tony. We were
often joined my dads’ bother Sid, who had lost a leg having been run over by
a bus at the age of eleven. Sid would bring along his two sons, our cousins.
Mom would go home on the bus and the seven of us would head off to the
football, in our usual place on the terraces between Tilton and Cattell Road Page26