Yarmouth Station, Mill Stream and marsh from platform 2013
When we were kids and the marsh froze over, we used to go skating on it and if any of us fell in and got wet, we would go into the station. They always had a big fire going in the waiting room, so we used to be able to dry off. The stationmaster was Peter, and didn’t mind us drying off. I can see his face.
Annette Haynes nee Holloway b 1929
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
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