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Books Cumbria : Places : Other Towns : Maryport


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Maryport

Edna Croft
Ł12.00

When asked what life was like before washing machines and television, Edna decided to write it down.
This became a picture of a small life in a Maryport that was emerging, struggling, from the Second World War into times of optimism, progress and seeming stability.
It is not so much a love story as a story of love; the love within one family and a love of Maryport.

Published by : BOOKCASE
Published Date : May 2010
Pages : 344
Format : 148mm x 210mm paperback
Illustrations :
ISBN :

Maryport
Quantity: 
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Review


“What on earth did you do in a little town like Maryport, and what on earth did you do before microwaves, mobile phones and television?” Such was the question posed by Edna Croft’s son.
Edna said, “I put my head in my hands and squeeze my mind,” and the result is this book, a rich and detailed evocation of one of the most characterful of Cumbrian towns.
Edna was born when “the war was over bar the shouting”. Her father had just returned from Barrow, where, despite chronic asthma, he had been working in the fire service. “He was a quiet man who tried to avoid arguments, if such things were possible with my voluble mother.”
Her two black-haired sisters accepted the little baby with vivid red hair, but her father was unemployed and they struggled to put the two elder girls through grammar school. Her sister Mary tells her: “And it was so cold after the war. That made life more miserable and Dad had some terrible sieges with his asthma in Grasslot Street. You being born was about the only good thing that happened there even if they shouldn’t have had another baby.”
They moved to Curzon Street, “over the railway bridge to Maryport, funny little town, clinging to the sea.” Edna could gaze down on Senhouse Street and Curzon Street and on the neon light on the Bata shoe shop and see the boys who came looking for her beautiful bubbling sisters. Edna was surrounded by family. “At the centre was Mother Tuke”, her mother’s mother – her boast that she had had nine children that had lived. “Everyone loved her and I lover her too.”
“Suddenly Mam went into hospital. . . ‘You know Ethel French? Well, she’s gone for an operation on her . . .” and no words mentioned, and Edna carried on pasting her latest scraps of cherubs and angels into a scrapbook. Her mother became a convalescent and her sisters took charge. “Luxury for me was a night at the pictures with a Kit Kat from Annovazzis’ ice cream parlour.”
And then they moved to Lawson Street, a vast house without any heating except for the one fire in the living room grate. “I remember spending ages perusing Jack Frost patterns on the windows, their delicate patterns and intricate tracery. Long icicles hung where the sash windows divided and slowly dripped into the window sills. And that was inside.”
And then it was school: “If you two girls don’t stop, you will be sent to stand outside Mr Crellins’ door.” It was a poor school – “There was always a little knot of children who were bottom of the class and exuded a nose-wrinkling odour.”
After being top of the Infants, she found herself bottom of the Juniors, in Annie Robinson’s class. “If ever I learned anything I learned while I was in Annie’s class. It was a diligence generated from fear.”
The years past with Coronation mugs and trips to Silloth and Carlisle.
Edna Croft has a wonderful memory. She recalls the Maryport of the forties and fifties in vivid detail. It is the life everyone led with the cold and the classrooms and the cold custard and the dentists and Woollies.
But Edna is also a strong-minded critic. She knows what was good about her childhood, the love and community and the value placed on education; and she knows what was bad, the secrecy, the hypocrisy and the narrow-mindedness.
And she writes extremely well. This is a long memoir full of the detail of childhood presented with exceptional energy and character. Just the sort of thing you’d expect from someone from Maryport.


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