A little bit about me

I jumped into writing here without any thought of structure or content, I tend to be impulsive. perhaps you would be interested in what made me who I am today.

I was born on the edge of a North Norfolk village in May 1951, we had a large family home and my mothers parents lived with us.

One of my earliest memories is of baking with my Granny on Sunday mornings, everyone had a lie in except us two. Granny raked over the coals in the range and stoked it up while I got the baking things out of the pantry. We had a cup of tea and toast in the summer or porridge in the winter, then set to cooking. First was the bread dough, mixed,kneaded and put to rise at the far end of the table, it went into a glazed earthenware conical bowl with a damp muslin cloth over it.

Pastry was next, sausage rolls, little meat pasties, cheese and onion slices, Norfolk Shortcakes, curd tarts and jam tarts. Then as the oven cooled a little a plain cake and a fruit cake would go in followed by a sponge and some buns. At some point the bread dough was knocked back and shaped into loaves and put to the second rise. Granny changed the dampers to increase the oven heat ready for the bread, once that was cooked the joint would go in ready for lunch if we were having a roast. My favourite was a rabbit casserole with sliced potatoes on the top.

In the meantime the family would have got up, had tea and breakfast and done the myriad things that needed doing. My job was to collect hogweed , when growing, for the rabbits. My Granddad bred rabbits which were bartered with the butcher for meat or sold in the village as well as food for us. I never questioned this it was just our way of life, we raised poultry for the table and to sell, Roast chicken was a luxury then that not many could afford.

We had no central heating, there was the kitchen range, a fireplace in the "front room" and one bedroom had a fireplace in that was used when there was illness.

I scraped ice of the inside of the windows in winter but was always warm in bed, flannelette sheets, wool blankets, bedspread and eiderdown saw to that and if it was very cold there was a stone hotwater bottle and bedsocks

This is turning into a saga, I will tell more another time. I had a wonderful childhood, I was surrounded by people who loved me, and let me know so, I was well fed , had warm clean clothes and good shoes. I had every thing that I needed and enough of what I wanted, books mostly, to keep me happy. TTFN Pam