Memories are made of this

Del Cooper My parents were Mr and Mrs Wood. Mum worked as a music teacher and dad worked at Fox’s shoe factory in Burton Latimer. I attended Burton Latimer School and left when I was 14 and then started work at the Co-op clothing factory in Station Road.

I married at twenty two in 1937. Diane, my eldest, was born in 1938 when we lived in a cottage at the bottom of Station Road in Burton Latimer. I remember that there was a garage and three cottages there. We moved to Finedon when Diane was twelve months old and lived in Tenter Lane and that there was gas works at the back of the house. Gill was born in 1940 and Robert in 1942.

My husband Robert James Cooper worked for British United Shoe Machinery where he was a mechanic and he was employed to visit the shoe factories and repair the machinery there.
In fact I met him as a direct result of me working at Whitney and Wesley shoe factory and one of our first dates was at Burton Latimer feast.

During the war I remember a German bomber flying over us in Tenter Lane and we had to run and hide in the cellar. We were really afraid that the gas works at the back of us would be hit and half of Finedon would have gone up. In the war we had to queue up for things like English tomatoes using a Co-op card and we could only have them every fortnight. Folk without cookers would take their dinners to the Co-op bake house. One night, whilst lying in bed, a bright light lit up the entire sky and we could see that Coventry was being bombed. I used to be scared stiff in blackouts.
An uncle from the Isle of Wight sent me a silk parachute that I went on to make curtains with which I then embroidered. I made my own stair carpet, which I machined on my treadle machine. I remember that we had our first telly when we lived in Tenter Lane when a Mr Clark had the telly shop. It was one with doors; our Robert would have been four or five at the time.
I was expecting Robert when Bob was called up to Catterick.
He got pneumonia and was discharged and he then went on to work in an aeroplane factory on the A6 where plane pieces were made. We did not suffer here like places such as poor Coventry and London during the war. He sometimes would have to work through the night.

WAR I remember that on VE night we all went up to a party at the boss’s house in Finedon. We had to have shutters fitted all around the house. I do think though that we were healthier then with the food we ate. We had half a pig from someone we knew and it was wheeled up Mill Lane in an old pram covered in muslin. That pig was made into pork pies, sausages, faggots and a great big shoulder hung in the kitchen. Bobs mum was ever so good and we lived on pork chops for ages. When we think about it is a wonder that people got through. We had ducks in the garden, which laid eggs in the rockery, and we used to make egg custard with these. We cooked our own chips in margarine and instead of fish we boiled rice and then rolled it in batter to look like fish. I also used to have powdered milk for Robert but it did not suit him so I made lovely white sweets with it for the kids. We used to cut up toffees in three pieces. Kids never saw a banana until after the war and when they did they went mad for them. Sometimes Bob would send us his ration of chocolate. I had to have three evacuees’ during the war. I would make up beds by putting two chairs together. It was at this time I was expecting my first baby. I think they stayed with us for twelve months. Whilst they were with us I tried to rig them out with clothes. I remember one Sunday I was preparing Yorkshire pudding when a lady knocked on our front door and told us that she was our evacuee’s mother. She had a very large portmanteau and was holding a cat and she said she had nowhere to go. She did find somewhere to stay in the end. I remember it was all a struggle but somehow we all managed.

We all used to grow our own fruit and vegetables. I used to go and queue for ages at Myer’s the butchers in Wellingborough and then I would get to the head of the queue to find everything had been sold. I remember that one Christmas I wanted to buy our girls dolls with eyes that opened and closed from a shop in Irthlingborough and how exited they were. During the war we did not go on holiday but afterwards we would go and stay in a caravan in Hunstanton and once we visited our uncle in the Isle of Wight. Bob’s grandmother had a shop (Manning’s) that sold sweets and vegetables. He recalled visiting her every day and taking her a mug of beer. She used to be the caretaker at the Girls Junior School. Bobs grandfather was a gardener at Finedon Hall One of Bob’s hobbies was to keep pigeons; Hob Boddington helped him. I once helped to win a gold cup for pigeon racing.
I sometimes had to clock the pigeons in at the end of the race and it was very difficult to get a good grasp of the bird to take the ring off. I remember once nearly plucking a bird of feathers and in order not to be discovered I buried the feathers in the garden. Bob thought for many years that the bird had been caught in a storm.