The following months were very hectic and enjoyable. One Saturday we took our new baby to Blackpool and enjoyed the visit to the seaside as we hadn’t made any preparations for a holiday that year. I had now to plan out our gardens, which up to that time had been a field, as our houses had been built on what had been Jim Kane’s farmland. I turned over with the spade the whole of the back garden, including what is now the back lawn. The back garden extended further back than it is now as later Mill Lane road was widened and a large piece of the garden was taken over for the widening, including making an earth bank to sustain the new road and footpath. I also turned over the front garden and planted potatoes to break up the soil, which was very clayey owing to the drain which runs under the lawn. In addition we had the side garden duly turned over and planted black currant bushes, my father having given me quite a lot of cuttings from his garden. The bushes fruited very well over the years but eventually they were attacked with “big bud” so I eventually dug them all up and burnt them. We had many pounds of black currants from them and mum used to make a great deal of jam, which she was very adept at doing. Mum’s sister-in-law, Annie, with the two girls used to come down and help us pick the fruit, very often till the light faded.
We had bought a secondhand crib from Mrs. Tom Bates for Paul to sleep next to his mother during his early months. We painted it blue and I think the new painting made me very sick for a day. With having a new baby meant having a new pram which was quite a large one and during the summer months of nineteen forty eight onwards Paul would sleep outside the back door. We also had to have a fireguard as we had a coal fire to start with which incorporated a back to back oven, which was far from useful, and we always had to clean out the flu to remove the soot. Fortunately we had an electric oven, which all council houses had installed by the council. It was a Ritemp and lasted quite a long time. We also had an immersion heater installed for extra hot water. The hot water normally being supplied by a back boiler for which you needed a good fire to get the water hot. At ten months old Paul took his first steps on his own. We had purchased a play pen which we set up in the middle of the living room and mum or I would sit in it with Paul and much to my delight he took his first step to me across the pen on his own.
During nineteen forty nine we decided to have a week’s holiday at Morecambe. One of my work colleagues had taken a boarding house there, so we booked in for a week and had a very enjoyable break. Uncle Norman and Auntie Nelly and the two boys paid us a visit one day. During that time I was doing a lot of overtime as money was very scarce. Towards the back end of summer and early autumn we were overjoyed to learn we were going to have a further addition to the family the following spring, so mum had to take a great care of herself as with her blood group being opposite to mine, she had to be very careful of having a miscarriage. As nineteen fifty approached we were looking forward to our second child and on the morning of the twentieth of April 1950 Mr. Potts, who lived at number twenty eight, took mum very early to Chorley Hospital in his car. Mum was in labour all that day. I had visited her during the evening, Paul now being looked after with Auntie Elsie. I had to come home as visiting time was over. However, I made one last call from the phone box, which those days was near Cow Well Lane, and I was greatly pleased to know Alice had given birth to another baby boy at around 8.20 pm. We named him John, as this is what we had decided, should it be a boy. The following evening, Friday, the 21st of April, I visited the hospital to see our new arrival, who I found had quite ginger hair, and that he had also been placed in the kitchen as there had been some sort of outbreak in the maternity ward, so he was isolated from the rest of the new babies. I visited each morning to see Alice and John and the time came to bring them both home. We now had two young boys. We had purchased a full size baby cot in which Paul now slept, so our hands were rather full.
During John’s first few months he fed very well, but then mum developed a problem and Dr. Milligan was called, who immediately stopped the breast feeding process and Alice had to be tied up to prevent the milk coming. This, of course, presented a very difficult problem to feed John as he hadn’t been bottle fed. We tried and tried again to get him to use a bottle but it seemed to be no use and he was very hungry. With one last attempt, saying “let’s just have another try” – miracle on miracle – he took the bottle and away he went, much to our great relief. From then on he was always bottle fed and we used to prepare a bottle for him for night and would keep it warm by placing it under the lagging on the hot water cylinder in the cylinder cupboard. He usually woke at the same time and I very often gave him the bottle during the night.