Golden days of Cork childhood when we went slogging apples

Can you those autumn and winter evenings of childhood, when you spent your time happily working on the latest bit of handicraft, the tricky bit of woodwork, the endless knitted scarf, even that model plane kit?

Or perhaps u leftover scraps of timber which your father had whittled away from something he was making for the house? Saving matchboxes to make dolls’ furniture?

What happened to our joyful occupations of younger days, when we enjoyed nothing more than creating something new and so special because we had actually made it ourselves?

If you had parents who were similarly creative, then you were extra fortunate, because you learned by example. Mother made all your clothes, so you clothed your dolls from the scraps. You watched keenly as Dad glued a loose piece of wood on the sideboard or straightened a bent saucepan.

You longed to save up enough to buy that kit for the Red Baron’s tri-plane – only then you would need the extra pennies for the glue and the tiny tins of Humbrol paint. (Or did the glue come with the kit?)

And how about Meccano? How many rapt hours were spent sorting and screwing and searching for just the right piece to add?

You might have been bought a starter box, and then, as funds became available, you added to that. Nowadays, you get a kit which will make just one thing. 

All the pieces necessary, nothing more, nothing less. 

So you can make the tank or the pterodactyl that they show on the cover. No diving off into the world of the imagination, fuelled by something you might have seen in a comic. No personal invention.

What worried me lately, on visiting a hobby and craft shop, was to see ideas and kits which were already made up, so to speak – pieces already cut out, shapes already painted, even the beloved model ships and planes now in snap-together form. Nowhere could I find real creativity, scope for thinking for yourself. It was all pre-formed, pre-thought-out.

Painting by numbers extended to every hobby. Even fairy doors, for heaven’s sake.

The great thrill in country childhoods of the past was finding little entrances in mossy trees or stone walls, and decorating around them with scraps of ivy, acorns, making tiny steps from flat stones, to honour the fairies (or entertain your toy soldiers).

The brightly-painted model doors you find in toy shops now, or appearing in their droves along country walks, leave nothing, but nothing to the imagination.

The thing is, they are somebody else’s idea of what you should see as a fairy door, not yours. And your creativity remains dormant in your brain, never taken out, never having anything demanded of it.

Well, that definitely wasn’t the case with Throwback Thursday reader Tim Cagney.

He recalls: “When I was younger (much younger) a friend introduced me to a magazine called Hobbies. This was devoted to craftwork, which required only the simplest of equipment. One of these was the humble cotton reel. These could be used for a wide variety of creations, one being a steam engine.

“You would place the reel in the tray of a used match-box, and there you had the ‘boiler’. Using cardboard, you could then cut out a cab for the driver, and also wheels.

All would be put together with paper, and glue, squeezed from a plastic bottle with a pierced rubber cap.

“The final requirement was a box of water-colours, with which you could paint your creation any colour you wished.

“Luckily, there was a plentiful supply of cotton reels at hand – most stay-at-home mothers (like mine) did plenty of sewing in those days, before you could afford to discard old clothing.

“All you had to do was wait until your mother had exhausted the thread on a spool and the item was yours, so that your imagination could get going.”

Tim adds: “I was reminded of such things recently, when I spied an image of something I hadn’t seen since my schooldays – a homemade tank. Once again, the trusty cotton reel was employed.

“You attached a rubber band to one end of a short pencil (didn’t we all have short stubs of pencils hanging around back then?), and ed the band through the hole in the spool, securing it on the other side with a matchstick, to prevent it being pulled out again.

“A small circle of candle wax would then be cut out, and a hole bored in its centre. (Again, there were plenty of old candles lying-about in most households, back then).

“The elastic band would be threaded through the hole in the wax disc and the wax placed between the spool and the pencil. You would then rotate the pencil, in a winding motion, which would tighten up the elastic.

“When the rubber unravelled, it would cause the cotton reel to move forward, the circle of wax acting as a lubricant to aid the movement.

“To finish the process, you would cut notches in the rims of the reel – someone always had a penknife you could borrow to perform said exercise. This would give your tank additional grip, which would enable it climb over small obstacles, such as school books.

“Some of my pals would use two pencils (one on either side) to add a bit of ‘show-off’, but I was quite content to use just one.”

Tim says: “These were just two of the very many creative ideas which emerged from the pages of Hobbies and other such publications, and I never failed to be impressed by the seemingly endless inspirations found within the pages.

Is there any room for such creative innovation in these days of game-consoles, mobiles and the like, I wonder?

“I’m reminded of that ad for Fairy Liquid on TV, where the young lad waits endlessly for the bottle to exhaust itself so that he can convert it to a spaceship. He does, of course, eventually get it and off he goes with great glee. The flame of invention, it would seem, has not entirely been extinguished!”

Now that is really satisfying, Tim, and thank you for sending in such a lovely dip into past creativity.

Those cotton reels could be used for so many other things too. How many readers can making their first tiny tubes of knitting on a cotton reel dolly or ‘knitting nancy’? Four small nails hammered into the top of the reel, a small ball of wool, and you were off. Wind the wool round twice, lift the first over the second with a needle or something similarly long and narrow, and repeat.

You could go on to make placemats, little shoulder bags, even rugs, and display your expertise with pardonable pride.

Nowadays, you will often find modern versions of the knitting dolly in good children’s shops, but surely the best joy comes from finding something in the house that has finished its primary purpose and re-using it for a new life? (Rather like that plastic washing-up liquid bottle mentioned by Tim.)

We really would like to hear from those of you who making tiny matchbox chests of drawers for your dolls’ house, miniature sailboats from walnut shells. Or creating your own planes from balsa wood and tissue, or those strange little torpedoes from tin foil and a ball bearing that would roll up and over from end to end when tilted. Maybe you still make them?

For another reader, Mícheál Kenefick, earning an extra penny or two was always to the fore in his mind in childhood, and he tells us of gardening duties which achieved that end.

“I was Head Gardener in Mrs Hawkins’ in the late 1950s. Had I realised at the time that I was the head gardener I might have been able to negotiate better and conditions but as it took me more than 40 years to figure out that the only gardener had to be the top one, it was a bit late for negotiation!

“I earned a shilling an hour tax free and I got two hours work every second day for a few weeks in the summer.

“I hated it, in particular because the hours were from 2pm until 4pm and, as every 11-year- old knew, your day was well decided by 2.15pm during summer holidays.

“I would of course have found the action by 4.30pm and could in whatever was going on, but somehow it wasn’t quite the same as I hadn’t been part of the planning process. I was ing some one else’s show.

If you did a full 45-hour week with time and a bit for Saturday, that was almost two pounds ten, and a bag of windfalls for the lads (which we didn’t really need as we would be helping ourselves to the best fruit the trees had to offer later on!).

“Mrs Hawkins had an old grandfather clock just inside the front door and if I ed him in at three minutes after two then I ed him out at three minutes after four.

“Even if I had finished the work, I still had to wait in the kitchen with her until Grandad’s big hand arrived at the appropriate minute.

“It wasn’t that I was a poor timekeeper, but even though clocks were everywhere, it would be rare for any two of them to agree.

“We had one in the Middle Road with a man in a black suit and a bowler hat and an umbrella who was supposed to come out when it was going to rain, and a woman on the opposite side with an apron, cotton bonnet, and sunshade, who was supposed to come out when it was going to be fine.

“It didn’t take us long to figure out that when your man with the brolly came out, the sun would be ‘splitting the stones’, and when herself came out with the sunshade, it would be raining ‘cats and dogs’.

“Some clocks would only go if they faced the wall, and others not only facing the wall but in their box, which was always kept facing the wall. In extreme cases they even had to be put on the mantlepiece on their face and hands.

They were wound religiously every night but rarely consulted.

Still on the subject of clocks, Micheál adds: “There was an electric clock on the window in Kelly’s garage and when the house clock would have gone completely out of kilter, I’d be told, ‘Go out to the garage and see what time is it’, so that we would have some idea for the next few weeks.

“Time was figured more by the coming and going of the bus, the hooter (‘Come straight home when you hear the hooter’), the Angelus, and waiting for Din Joe on the wireless. Take The Floor was unique in so far as it was a radio programme where we listened to dancing.”

Returning to the gardening work, Micheál says: “As well as all the normal jobs of weeding, sweeping, sowing and hoeing, I had to mix a bucket of whitewash which was to be used as a spray for raiders of apples.

“This gadget looked like a big bicycle pump which sucked up the liquid by drawing the handle out and sprayed it when handle was depressed.

“In ‘eacetime’, I think it was for spraying caterpillars and greenfly.

“It had a poor range, however, and I regularly got more on my clothes mixing it than my colleagues got later in the evening as they climbed the wall with the booty while a few of us kept watch on the hill.

“One time, Jacko got his shoelace caught on the wall and came out looking like a snowman!

“The raiders never intended an ounce of malice and never caused any damage, and of course if poor Mrs Hawkins didn’t have the whitewash gun, we wouldn’t have bothered going there at all!”

Wonderful, Mícheál!

Any more memories out there of childhood summer jobs?

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