There was so much to do. I balanced on the rusty rails, rode on the crossing gates as the porter opened and closed them, danced on the goods shed platform pretending it was my stage and practised my tennis forehand and backhand against the goods shed wall.
In 1948 my brother emulated the Olympic shot-putters by putting the shot (a brick!) over a measured distance along the track in the goods shed; ran the 100 yards from the goods shed to the coal yard and made his own high-jump over which he tried to match the athletes’ records. My job was to measure the shotputs and retrieve the brick, time his 100 yard dashes and re-set the high-jump bar when he inevitably crashed into it.
When he made a goal and ‘became’ a football centre forward, I had to pass the ball to him from the wing in such a way that he could score time and again. I had an inkling then of my assigned role in life!
What I enjoyed most was the big orchard that ran the length of the goods yard. I could climb the trees, build dens and eat as much fruit as I pleased. Perfect freedom. On Mothering Sunday I always picked violets for my mother from the expanse of them growing under the trees.
I had a swing (railway sleeper seat and tarry ropes) from one of the trees and one spring day a reporter from a Sudbury newspaper went by on the train and admired the apple blossom. He asked my father whether he could photograph the blossom for the paper and enquired about whom the swing belonged to. He thought that a child on the swing would add to the interest of the photograph. On a very chilly day I had to put on a summer dress and sit on the swing in a specific way to give the impression that I was mid-swing. After several tries (during which I became more and more cold) he was satisfied. The photograph was printed on the front page of the newspaper under the heading ‘Celia is swinging her way from Springtime into Summer’. ( I’ve often wondered whether the photograph still exists in the paper’s archives….)
When my friends saw the photograph in the paper they teased me horribly about it. I decided that what with the cold, the tedium of getting my pose correct and the subsequent teasing, being photographed was no fun at all.