I can still remember quite vividly, my first real bedroom. I was about four years old.

Shades of Nicotine 

At first glance, the walls looked brownish beige. (I am assuming that the last tenants were heavy smokers), but with a good scrubbing, the shirting boards came up as a disappointing beige eggshell colour. 

Very faded light blue and ‘white’ broad stripes appeared in the wallpaper underneath the top glaze of nicotine. You couldn't wash it off though as the wallpaper would peel off and there was no money or inclination available to redecorate.

Edison's Lightbulb

A naked lightbulb dangled from a black flex in the middle of the ceiling. The bulb could have been one of Edison's first by the looks of it. The element looked like an upside-down tuning fork and nearly filled the glass balloon.

Linoleum

The floor covering was a largish cut-off square piece of light blue linoleum (after it was washed), which didn’t fit ‘wall to wall’ but did cover most of the uneven floorboards where we walked.

Rusty Bathtubs and Kettledrums

There was a grey ‘army’ blanket for a curtain which was stretched over two nails hammered into either side at the top of the window frame across the single sash window. 

The window itself, looked out onto a very small concrete yard, complete with outdoor toilet, a coal shed and a rusty tin bath hanging from a nail in the brickwork which bounced about and sounded like an out-of-tune Kettledrum when it was windy. 

You could see across and into the other identical backyards and the alleyway that ran between the two rows of terraced hovels.

Regeneration

I called them hovels as you couldn’t really call them ‘houses’. They were condemned council terraces, part of the 1960’s ‘regeneration’ programme of knocking down all the old slum housing and moving everyone, road by road, community by community out to new housing around the edges of Liverpool.

Sadly, instead of keeping communities together, people were split miles away from each other across various parts of Liverpool and the areas beyond, so you lost all of your community, neighbours and friends as no-one had a car to go visiting and it was too far to walk.

At the time, there was a shortage of new housing (nothing changes), so people were still living in these cramped, condemned slums, waiting to be relocated but still paying the local council rent for the privilege!

We were told it would be a maximum of six months before we would be moved - in the end it was nearly seven years!

Smoggy and Foggy

You could look out across the horizon of black slate-tiled rooftops and crumbling smoky chimneys (the days of coal-fires and before smokeless fuel) for what seemed like miles. You could smell the coal smoke in the air most of the time. The smoke would catch in your throat sometimes if you were out when everyone had lit their evening  fires.

If it was foggy, the smoke would mix with it and become smog. We were warned not to go outside and keep the doors and windows shut. But if you had to go out, you had to wear a very thick scarf across your face to stop you breathing in the toxic air.

The fog/smog could be so thick, you couldn’t see someone four feet in front of you. It had a slight yellowy tinge to it and smelled slightly of sulphur. Some people carried little battery torches to light their way, but they looked like little bicycle lamps in the fog and I think this sometimes confused the (very few) drivers who were crawling along the road.

Army Blankets and Abercrombie's

My two sisters (two and three years old at the time) and I shared the bedroom and also the big rickety, black iron framed, double bed parked in the middle of the floor that was well past its expiry date!

It was so old, I think it actually had a horse hair mattress. 

To us three, with our little legs - it seemed very high off the floor and we had to have an old wooden orange box next to the bed to enable us to climb in!

The smallest sister would fall into the ‘well’ in the middle of the bed - like a little baby chick in a nest - whilst the two older sisters would cling to the edges of the mattress, hoping not to roll into the middle and squash the youngest one in their sleep.

We had flannelette candy stripe sheets and matching pillowcases, a white candlewick over-blanket (no duvets then) and if it was really cold, a few grey scratchy ‘army’ blankets and a great big old Abercrombie overcoat which weighed a ton. I used to stick my arm down the sleeve of the coat sometimes.

It always made me feel sorry for soldiers, as I imagined them wrapped up in these awful scratchy grey blankets, not being able to sleep. I don’t know whether they actually were ‘army’ blankets, but that’s what we called them.

Fighting Feathers and Creaky Floorboards

The pillows were feather-filled and we usually spent first half hour in bed, fighting them by trying to push the feather shafts back in to the pillows so they didn’t stick in your face and scratch you when you were asleep. (We had to push them back in because if we pulled the feathers out, Mum would go bonkers)

There was an old dark wooden chest of drawers against the wall opposite the bed -nearly as tall as me at the time. 

We had one drawer each for our meagre possessions. The bottom drawer had ‘doubled-up’ as a ‘cot’ for each baby as we arrived. 

There were no ‘Moses’ baskets or cradles available for poor kids. 

The wooden floorboards creaked and moaned under the linoleum as you walked across the room, so there was no chance of sneaking out, even if you went on the quietest tippiest toes you could possibly manage and lift up the big black iron latch to open the heavy ebony wooden ‘z’ door to the landing.

Ice Ferns and Moonlight

In the winter, ice would form beautiful fern patterns on the inside of the single pane window (you don't get this on double glazed ones) and I would stand in the cold for ages, wrapped in one of the ‘army’ blankets, tracing the patterns in the ice with my finger and marvelling at the beautiful and sparkly way they lit up in the morning sun or moonlight, or the reflected light from the florescent street lamps.

I sometimes tried to melt patterns into the ice with my fingers, pressing them against the glass to change the pattern. 

If it was really cold, sometimes you could peel a sheet of ice from the inside pane of the window. Formed by the condensation from our breath hitting the cold surface as we slept.

Gossip and Flying Pegs

I'd imagine the people in the other houses – what they would be doing, conversations they would be having. 

I'd listen to them as they walked up and down the alleyways gossiping.

When it rained suddenly - hearing the shouts of ‘Sweet Jesus! Will yer give us a hand here!' from women hurriedly grabbing pegged sheets from the clothesline. 

In their haste to outrun the downpour, pegs would be popping and flying off into the air, pinging against the brickwork and falling into the gutter. 

In the icy weather, bad tempered men cursing and growling aloud about having to carry in coal from the backyard coalhole to rekindle the dying fire inside.

Stray Dogs and Stray Cats

Watching a drunk stagger down the alleyway late at night, kicking out at growling stray dogs and swearing as he loses his balance and ricochets off the narrow walls like a pinball. Weaving along on automatic pilot, trying to find the back door to his house in the dark.

Barking dogs shouting greetings to one another, and people yelling out the window at them to shut up.

Cats, walking primly - their heads held high and tails sticking upright as they made their regal way across the tops of the single brick back walls that separated the houses. Yowling late into the night and having empty milk bottles or a piece of coal thrown at them to chase them off.

If it was foggy, you could clearly hear the mournful foghorns of the ships and boats sailing in and out of the Mersey. 

And me, watching it all - just daydreaming.

Mermaids and Airplanes

But my favourite thing was looking out over those rooftops at night when I was supposed to be asleep. 

Elbows on the window ledge, chin resting on my hands - making up stories in my head about Galleon ships and the sea, faeries and wizards, mermaids and airplanes.