Tag Archives: Alec Cokes

Alec Cokes: Free Time at the Dump 1950s

The Dump was quite a big thing in our little lives and the dump was always alight.
Do you remember those Kiora bottles with the big clamp?  We used to get those and half fill them with water then put them in the fire and stand around watching – eventually they would just blow to bits because the top wouldn’t come off, and that was another chicken game.  If you were close enough to see it properly you could see it boil and you’d have steam and water but immediately the water disappeared and it became steam, you were out of there, and this glass used to go everywhere!

Yarmouth Quay with the Dump seen burning in background

Yarmouth Quay with the Dump seen burning in background

Alec Cokes b 1945

Les Turner, Alec Cokes: Free Time with Go Karts 1950s

Alec and I would go out after school with one of our karts across to Sandhard or down to Fort Vic. to collect the wood off the beach.   At weekends we sawed it up for firewood.
I remember we used to take turns to ride the Kart down over Fort Vic hill.  The Fort was still manned by the Army then.
It was my turn this particular time.  I went hurtling down over the hill.  All of a sudden this dispatch rider appeared coming  the other way up the hill.  He went in one hedge and I went in the other. Les Turner b 1944

I can remember going over to Fort Vic; it particularly sticks in my mind as I think we brought back a carton of those 7 pound tins of cocoa.  We had about four of them in a box, and we had chocolate cakes for a long time after that, and chocolate puds.  Yeah I can remember doing that one.  Alec Cokes  b1945

Alec Cokes: Free Time 1950s

Mill Copse beyond marsh

Mill Copse beyond marsh and stream

When they used to dredge the stream they piled it all up with the reed and everything in, that’s why you’ve got high banks.  Just after they dredged it, it was lovely and soft.  You get down there, you dig yourself a hole, you build it all up round, plenty of reeds – you make a roof with the reeds  –  you’ve got a little hide.  It only used to be about so deep, you used to crouch in there.
Nobody used to have candles much or anything but we used to get half an eggshell and a little stump of candle, put it in the eggshell;  it would burn for ever.  You had to keep changing the wicks.  We used to play around like that a lot of the time.  Sometimes other gangs would set the huts alight, they used to burn the roofs off.  It didn’t matter, you just dug another one.  Alec Cokes b 1945

Alec Cokes: Early Days

Train in siding at Yarmouth The thing I remember about grandfather, he came from a time when food was hard to come by.  When we used to go occasionally to dinner at Granny’s, they were much into greens.  Kids don’t like greens do they?  The greens they ate were just so green, bitter.  They used to have curly kale and leave it in the ground for about two years and you would strip the stalks off and it would put out little shoots and they’d go along and rub the shoots off.  It was gritty.  No doubt it was good for you if you’ve got nothing else.

The nicest thing we had in those days, in the fifties, when we were small…At the back of the railway station was a siding and sugar beet there in trucks.  We used to go down there and lift a few sugar beet.  If you cut them up they’re quite nice.  You didn’t eat it, you just sucked the sugar out and left the fibre bit behind.
Alec Cokes b 1945