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boys wore balaclavas or cub caps on their heads, raincoats buttoned to the collar over short trousers, the girls in pixie hoods, cotton dresses and grey knee-length socks. All pals together.
    My oldest brother, Jack, suffered chronic kidney problems and also had a bone-marrow defect that affected his legs. Jack never grew above five feet tall and for much of his childhood was confined to a wheelchair. I used to push him to and from the Bug Hut. When we arrived I would wheel Jack down to the front then take one of the sevenpenny seats some rows back. I remember on one occasion being so engrossed in the film that when it ended I headed straight home without him. When Mam asked me where our Jack was I ran hell for leather back in the direction of the Bug Hut. There he was, only fifty yards from the cinema and all alone, slowly cranking the wheels of his chair towards home. My eyes filled with tears when I saw him, but any sadness for his predicament quickly evaporated when he looked up and caught sight of me.
    ‘Where the bloody hell have you been? You bloody daft ha’p’orth,’ he bawled. He had a way with words, our Jack.
    When I was about eleven years old, my dad, having had enough of working his fingers to the bone for a pittance, decided to branch out on his own. He left his job in the steel foundry, bought two ramshackle lorries and set up his own haulage business. He worked impossibly long hours but the business never really took off because those old lorries were forever breaking down. After only a few months, during which time Dad had spent more time with his head under the bonnets of those lorries than in the cabs, the business folded. Undaunted, he decided to launch a new business, one he knew plenty about – gambling. For a number of years Dad had supplemented his meagre income running an illegal book on horse racing. Licensed betting shops were still to come, the only legal place to bet in the late forties being the racetracks themselves. Given that most people I knew considered a trip from Tinsley into Sheffield City Centrea major journey, a day out at the races was virtually unheard of. Dad, knowing the steel workers liked a flutter, reckoned he was on to a winner opening up his own betting shop, and he wasn’t wrong.
    We moved from our Tinsley home to Catcliffe, a mining village on the Sheffield–Rotherham border. Our new house adjoined a series of railway arches. Dad decided one of the arches would be ideal for his ‘flapper’ betting shop so, by the light of the one dingy bulb, we cleared it out, cleaned it up and helped him install the spartan fittings he needed to get the shop started.
    The business did well, but there was a risk in running an unlicensed betting shop. Fortunately, the local policeman who patrolled the village knew everyone and everyone knew him. Should we kids step out of line, he’d clip us around the ear, but we knew better than to run home and complain. To do that would have invited another, much harder clip around the ear from Dad. The local Bobby drank with Dad and the other men of the village, either miners or steel workers, in the working men’s club. Many was the time, only a matter of an hour after doing so, he’d be called upon to bring peace to the home of one of his drinking pals as a result of what he would euphemistically call ‘a domestic’.
    I remember one day being in the betting shop when the Bobby called to inform Dad a raid was imminent.
    ‘Let everyone know, Tom,’ he told my dad. ‘But make sure there are enough in, so as not to arouse suspicion.’
    Such raids would result in a court appearance where Dad would get a ticking-off and a £40 fine. The shop would quickly recoup the money and Dad viewed these occasional court appearances as a small price to pay for our increased standard of living. In return for the tip-off the Bobby would make a Christmas detour to the shop where Dad would hand over a bottle of whisky and a large turkey that naturally had to