More thoughts on Lyndon Road .....

At the top of our garden was the garden of another house, now this was a different story. I think that this family was one up from gypsies, I don’t know why but even at a young age I knew that this family was ‘different’. Mrs Oldcroft was short, fat and scruffy and there were lots of kids of all ages. I was friends with one of the youngest, Tosha, she had a proper name but everyone called her Tosha. One day stands out in my memory with regard to Tosha, we must have been about 5 or 6 and I went round one day to call for her. One of her teenage brothers was coming out of the front door as I walked out the path and he said ‘Tosh is just having her tea, you can go in and wait if you like’. So I went in the house and through to the back room and had the shock of my life ….. there was Tosha having her tea, sitting across her Mom’s lap and latched onto the left breast!! I was amazed; I had never seen anything like it! So I sat down and waited till she had finished her ‘tea’ while all around me life carried on, teenagers arguing, little toddlers running round with noses running or nappies hanging half off and all of them in various states of dress, as though nothing different was happening. Maybe it wasn’t for them but it sure was for me! When we came outside I asked her what it tasted like and she said ‘milk of course!’ and then didn’t want to talk about it anymore and I soon forgot about it. I told my Mam and she said that was one of the reasons why she didn’t want me to have anything to do with them, they didn’t do things correctly – what ever that meant.