Liverpool was bombed very badly. Loads of lovely buildings went. At the pawn shop people will bringing their medals in. Old Mullins said he’d give them as much as 6 shillings.
The streets were still mostly cobbled. I remember the men still walking to work with their clogs on, the clatter of the clogs on the cobbles. I had loads of friends on the docks. Working all different times due to the tides, and the different ships coming in.
After the pawn shop I went into a ropeworks for the ships. We had test the strength of the ropes. This was on Lodge Lane.
Another job I had was finding clothes for the dockers and the sailors and selling them on the ships.
God the size of the rats that used to run off the ships! The ship used to dock and you would see them running down the ropes and then fall off
Everything felt like it was building up to a new era after the war. Ships bringing in things like transistor radios made in Holland. Ships coming in from Hong Kong. We made lots of friends with Liverpool Chinese families. One of the girls was a dancer for Felix Mendelssohn and the Hawaiian Serenaders.