Living in the Wick in the 1930s

I was born in Eton Wick in Gallater Cottage in 1925. Lived in Shakespere Place till we moved to Colenorton Crescent after the war. The following are my thought about that time in a poem.

When I was ten

That hamlet by the winding shore
 Of memories it holds a store
 Hard pews line the chapel room
 Harmonium playing out of tune

 Singing hymns ancient and modern
 Good English tunes, nothing foreign
 Preacher raised in pulpit lonely
 Eulogising homilies homely

 So many half-forgotten tunes
 A childhood that expired too soon
 Three places that upheld the rule
 Loving home, chapel and the school

 Homeward sucking sweet gobstoppers
 Through that school where boys wore toppers
 Released from lessons running free
 Pinning winkles for Sunday tea

 November's fire and jumping jacks
 Grazed knees and jam jarred sticklebacks
 Friday's tin bath by the open fire
 Before to bed I did retire

 Grandmother's white hair brushed to her waist
 Then bound in a bun, Victorian taste
 Sticky cakes full of calories
 Kaleidoscope of memories

 Halcyon days- gone, I know not when
 That long lost world when I was ten.

 Arthur F Mylam