Thank God for
999 #2
by Jilliana
Ranicar-Breese
I was 19 in
1962 and living at home with my parents at 195
Woolton Road, Childwall, Liverpool 15.
'It's about time you left home.' Said my close
teenage friend Estelle Irving who had moved to
Manchester from Liverpool to study psychology at
Manchester University followed by a post graduate
course in Personnel Management. 'We need a fourth
girl to share our house.' She was right of course;
And so it came to pass. I moved into a bedsit in
a crumbling depressing large house in Withington
for £2.50 a week on the third floor. Estelle was
on the second floor and the other two girls on
the first. The large communal kitchen was on the
ground floor beside a pokey communal living room.
The bedsit had a shared bathroom on the second
floor for Estelle, the 2 female psychology
students from Leeds and a depressing recluse who
worked on night shifts in a factory and never
cleaned the bath after use, leaving disgusting
black water rings which we would have to clean
first before our ablutions. We never saw him nor
knew his name as he never ventured out of his
room during the day. I recall the old fashioned
coin telephone was on the wall outside his room.
My dream was to live in leafy Mersey Road, West
Didsbury but I wanted to be with my friend
Estelle so I reluctantly stayed on in the house
of horrors as I had no other friends. I was not
at University but working for Shearer Estates, PA
to one of the directors, the formidable Elton
Davis from Bolton. An older man who growled at me
and trained me to pass his documents from behind
over his shoulder rather than hand over his daily
post as one would normally do. How I lasted a
year in my first ever job, I know not!
When the Xmas holidays came, the 3 students went
back to Liverpool and Leeds and poor me was left
freezing to death in the famous Big Freeze of
1963. I went to bed keeping the gas fire on
putting shillings in the slot, with two pairs of
woollen underpants on and a wool sweater over my
pyjamas plus bed socks. Snow lay up to 9 inches
in nearby Wythenshawe in January 1963, the
coldest month since January 1814. The thaw set in
during early March. The temperatures soon soared
to 17 degrees centigrade and the remaining snow
rapidly disappeared.
I had a medium sized bedroom, a white painted
wooden fireplace with a mantelpiece opposite an
old wooden dressing table. A dining table and a
couple of rickety chairs. I had made a big
Reddicut Rug to be placed by my bed so I would
feel warm when I got out of bed to stumble down
to the bathroom below. I had a few books like 'The
glass bead game' and 'Steppenwolf.' But was
reading an anthropological one called 'Love in
action.'
My little cubbyhole of a kitchen was outside on
the landing. I didn't know how to cook but manage
to rustle up some concoctions to eat. The thought
of going out for a meal never occurred to me as I
only earned £7.50 and £2.50 was my rent plus
heating.
In early March the girls were away perhaps for
Easter holidays when one early evening I heard
dripping coming from the landing. I looked up and
saw a bulge in the ceiling which was water from
the frozen pipes that had expanded with the thaw.
I stupidly touched the bulge and the wallpaper
collapsed in my hand with water gushing
everywhere, fortunately not inside my room. I
became hysterical. I rushed down to the recluse
who opened and then shut the door in my face.
What to do? I rang Irene, a Scottish girl I had
recently met at a party and asked if she had a
spare room in her nearby flat in Palatine Road.
Yes, she had, someone had just moved out and it
was free. 999 sprang to my mind. I called totally
hysterical and asked the police to help a damsel
in distress.
Four policemen turned up around 10.00 pm. 'Where's
the stopcock, love?' One of them asked me. I
looked at him blankly and shrugged my shoulders.
He soon worked it out, brought a ladder from the
police van and got into the cockloft on the
landing. No more drips but what a mess with water
all over the place.
One of the cheerful policemen saw my book and
thinking it was a sex book, sat down to take a
gander! I told them about the room for rent close
by. Could they move me? Well I was a Liver
Bird! Apparently they could only move bare
essentials but I persuaded them to take the lot,
not that I had that much anyhow. I can still see
my dresses on hangers merrily swinging from the
black grill of the police van. Pots and pans plus
one hurriedly packed suitcase and a shopping bag
full of vegetables and potatoes all went in the
back with the 3 men.
By this time I was laughing hysterically and the
driver told me to pipe down while he made his
report to central office. We all arrived to Irene's
at midnight and she kindly offered the men tea
and biscuits.
I moved in and stayed a short while buying the
daily paper searching for another bedsit. Then
someone called me. He had found out somehow that
a bedsit in Langham Court, Mersey Road had become
available next to the British Council. My dream
had come true! If you want something and put your
mind to it, you will get what you want sooner or
later. In my case it was sooner.
Overjoyed I moved in at £5.50 a week, expensive
in 1963, and the first time I had lived alone. My
father subsidised me. Estelle moved in to the
room I had just vacated and through Irene went to
a party where she met her future husband Laurence
from Blackpool. I lived in Langham Court for a
few years until I left for a 2 month adventure in
Israel in 1966 and then on to Perugia, Umbria,
Italy for several months. Estelle lived happily
ever after thanks to 999.
Written
in Casa de los Bates, Motril, Spain on 7/2/17.
References
Wikipedia - The Big Freeze of 1963
Famous British Winters 1947-63
60s UK winters - historic weather
The Big Freeze of 1963 remembered BBC news.
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