Rene Smith talking about her family
Did you play with your children and what games did you play?
Well we used to play … we used to play coloured dominoes, we used to play games with cards, Ludo, Snakes and Ladders, everything that we could play, we used to play. And on a Sunday, Sunday morning, their dad used to take them out, every Sunday morning, didn’t matter whether hail, rain, shine or blow, he used to take them out every Sunday morning and he used to make them walk for about at least an hour or an hour and a half. And if it were fine they used to go into bluebell woods, and all like that.
Did you have any pets at home?
We used to have a dog. We don’t like cats, but we used to like dogs.
What were the dogs called?
Well, we had one called Lassie, and then we had one called Prince and then we had another one called Scruffy.
[Laughter]
Did you have a family schedule and did the children help around the house?
No, not really. They used to do errands, because you could let your children out then and not be afraid to send them to the shop, you know? But they weren’t shops like supermarkets, nearly every corner had a shop so you used to shop at the corner shop. You didn’t go to supermarkets, which were handy because you could just say ‘well I need some bread’ and you could just say, ‘here, take this money and just go get me a loaf of bread’ and they’d just go down to the street and get a loaf of bread. Only when they got older they were made to tidy their room up because if they didn’t it were piled in the corner til I got fed up of seeing it.