I suppose I thought it normal for a small child to have bad dreams. Looking back, I remember that during the night I often woke up crying, and one of my parents had to comfort me.

I know I had a vivid imagination and suspected that ghosts lived among the coats hanging in the dark hall of our tenement house. During winter nights, with the living room lit only by one gas mantle, my sister and I would often glance up at the window above the door leading to the hall, half-expecting to see horrible faces watching us.

Perhaps much of my fear sprang from the fact that I was really afraid of God, and believed that, if I misbehaved, he would punish me there and then. The words of another children’s hymn were very real to me.

God is always near me

Hearing what I say,

Knowing all my thoughts and deeds,

All  my work and play.

Children had to be especially good on Sundays, for it appeared that God didn’t like unnecessary noise on his holy day. We went to church of course, and after the service our parents would go home, while my sister and I stayed on for Sunday school. In the afternoon, if the weather was fine, we might all go for a walk to the cemetery or perhaps along the canal bank.

Where we lived, children didn’t play outside on Sundays. In the public parks the swings were all chained up and no ball games were allowed. I suppose that the only shops open were newsagents early in the morning, and perhaps an ice cream shop later in the day. I must mention that in those days motor cars were used mainly for pleasure, and on Sundays would stay in the garage. I knew of car-owning families who would walk to and from church - in some cases a round trip of four miles.

At home we could play the piano, provided the music was “suitable”, and what we listened to on the wireless was vetted by our mother.

The war of course was to change all that, and from 1939 onwards, even in our family, the concept of keeping the Sabbath holy lost much of its importance.

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I used to tell people, jokingly I must add, that I had a deprived childhood. As a wee boy, I took all the illnesses that were around, I was small and thin, and had to be encouraged to eat. (My family will tell you that my appetite hasn’t improved much). Also, when I got scarlet fever, our doctor told the hospital staff to take particular care of me.

The consequence of all that was that my mother made certain rules for me. I wasn’t allowed to run about outside, I was excused PT in primary school, in winter I was warmly wrapped up all the time, but worst of all I wasn’t allowed ice cream!!!

Most children in those days went to the Saturday matinee in the local cinema, but that was not for us. There were two reasons - first, my mother’s upbringing as a Baptist gave her serious doubts about picture houses and theatres, but more important than that was the terrible tragedy which occurred in Paisley on the afternoon of December 31st 1929.
Nine hundred children between the ages of eighteen months and twelve years had gathered in the Glen Cinema, when a fire broke out in the projection box. It was quickly brought under control but as smoke filled the hall panic ensued. Some of the exits couldn’t be opened and tragically 70 children were crushed to death in the stampede.

On rare occasions certainly we went to the local cinema as a family, and I remember that I was always so excited that halfway through the main feature my father had to take me to the Gents’. The films we saw were usually stories about children and starred either Freddie Bartholomew or Shirley Temple.

Probably the most famous child actress of all time, Shirley Temple later became a USA ambassador and diplomat. Aged 80 she lives in San Francisco.

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