Joan playing in Port Gaverne
JM: That was Bide-A-While Hotel. Mr and Mrs Ashton had it and they used to take in visitors.
YC: Was there a Mr Ashton?
JM: Yes he was a thin man and he had a heavy moustache. She was a little dapper old woman. I used to go out there, well I was more or less brought up out there with Uncle Jo and Aunt Wheeze. And I used to go picking primroses on Saturdays, that’s when the new people was coming in. So I used to pick my primroses and sell them for pocket money………that’s what we used to do. Anything for pocket money.
YC: I mean threepence was good.
JM: When I used to go out Uncle’s, as I said, nearly all my time. Fridays especially when we come out from school, I used to say to Mam at dinnertime, ‘I ain’t coming home, I going out Gaverne’ and I’d stay the weekend and Uncle would bring me Monday morning for school. But no, it was brilliant. But then I had a penny and a Jaffa orange. That was my pocket money on a Saturday ….a penny! And the Jaffa orange, they was lovely.
YC: We used to go out in the valleys, roam the valleys for blackberries.
JM: When you roamed about picking the primroses, out there where Uncle lived you could look right up the break (gestures up the valley) and it was yellow with primrose. But I was always told not to go very far, up the valley and that. Just stay in the one field that he could see. Anyway, probably I would go and Aunt Weezer would come out and shout for me and I wouldn’t answer. And she’d be on there hollering and I’d duck down behind the bush. But in the end she got wise to me!