FAMILY life! It’s something very difficult to categorise, as it means different things to different people.

To some it’s all consuming, to others it’s merely contacting each other occasionally — but in no way does that mean the bond isn’t strong.

My family had to move away from Bury, where I was born and come to Feniscowles during what I know now was ‘The Depression’.

Things were bad in the labour market and at that time my father, being a paper mill worker, was fortunate to get the job of foreman at the Star Paper Mill and with it a terraced house on East Street, Feniscowles.

I have very happy memories of the time we lived there. Of course, during that time there was no television and our radio was a set with a fret work front that my Father had made himself.

So our main pastime was playing out, which we did until it got dark, enjoying hopscotch, tag, marbles, skipping, hide and seek, buck and stick and, of course, cricket.

We had no proper stumps, so we always chalked them on a wall.

I must say our Tom was really very good at the game so I basked in his glory.

I was quite a good few years younger than my two brothers and always wanted to go wherever they were going, which meant their constant cry to my mother was ‘Oh, mum, do we have to take her with us?’ I hate to admit it but I was a rather unattractive child as I often wore glasses with a patch over one side which Dr Wisheart, the eye specialist, thought might correct my squint.

It didn’t but the operation he performed a few years later when I was 17, at Blackburn Royal, did, much to my delight.

Now I was no longer ‘a speccy four eyes’ and unkind friends stopped asking ‘Hey who are you looking at? Me or him?’ Funnily enough I squinted when I met my husband John and he always said he found it quite attractive, so you see, you never can tell.