I was born Kath Flavell, in Dartmough Cresecnet, the Lunt.  There were five of us: me, my sisters Floss and Marion, my brother Jim (who died aged 42) and my sister Val.  As a child I thought life was great.  We have some lovely memories of the Lunt.

I went to Etheridge School.  When we came home from school and had had tea, we would all congregate at the Bank (Dartmouth Crescent) and play skipping, tin-can-a-larkie, top and whip, marbles - and every other game you could mention.  There were us lot (the Flavells), the Dolmans, the Webbs, the Turpins, the Howells and many more.  We would go over the fields at the back of our house.  Beddows Field was full of cows and we would run between them and go and jump the Rusty Brook and go over to the Open 'Oles and watch them fish; and carry on over the Bridge to Darlaston Park.

When the war started I was in the Girl Guides.  Mum wouldn't let me go camping, so Dad bought me an old bike for 50 bob.  It was great.  I would ride up with a gang to the filter beds up the Lunt and right across the fields to Moxley - it is now the Vulcan Road.  Dad used to have an allotment down by the filter beds and there was a row of houses there and what we called the Forest.  They have taken a lot of the trees down now but I hope they leave the rest. 

I used to go with Mum to Chattins in Oxford Street.  And there was Jim's, the butchers; across the road there was the rag shop, next to "the warm entry", where we had our first fish and chips;  on the corner was Berriman's fruit shop and in Queen Street used to be the milk dairy; and on the same yard there was Smiths, the travellers who would mend your umbrella for six pence. 
Happy days.