Memories of my Mum Doreen Strickland

Going back in time - memories of my Mum, Doreen Strickland nee Orwin, wrote by her in 1981 - in her own words.

As a little girl I seemed to be the one in the family that had accidents, I had three fractures of the left elbow, at different times. After the third one I had problems and the Infirmary doctors wanted to cut the guiders of my arm as they couldn't get the bones to set properly. My Mother found me crying and I told her my wrist ached, she insisted they remove the dressings and plaster which was down to my wrist and they found gangrene had started just in a little place, so they had to take me up to the operating theatre and my wrist bone had to be scraped, fortunately that was a success. My Mother and Father took me out of the Infirmary and took me to an Auntie Joe at Bridlington, a sea side resort. They had heard there was a very good Bone setter from London who was in Bridlington treating someone. My Auntie and Mum got in touch with him and he decided he would see me. It was painful and I had to see him a few times so it meant staying with my Auntie for a while, my poor Mother and Father had to sell some of the things in their home to pay this specialist a Dr. Carr. However, he saved my arm, I didn't have to have a deformed arm, it's a little thinner than my right arm and you can see when I stretch my arms out that it isn't perfectly straight and also my first finger is shorter than it should be and hard to bend, but no one notices unless I bring it to their attention. I had to have a lump removed from my neck when I was about 9 years old, I think it was a firework that exploded near my neck and started it off. When they operated the doctor who was a lady, said it came out just like a shelled hard boiled egg. I'm glad it was a lady doctor as she was so careful, leaving a very slight scar, she really thought about my feelings and looks for the future. It is a long scar from my back ear to my throat, so it could have been ugly. I found out whilst in my 30's that I'd had two broken toes, I remember bumping into the wardrobe and hurting my toes, they were black and blue, it wasn’t till years later I found out they had been broken. I had been trying to clean my Mums ceiling and I fell off the chair hurting my ankle. When I went to the Hospital for X Rays a young Intern came up to me and said “I’m afraid you have 3 broken toes”, I said “I didn't come about toes, I came with a twisted ankle.” A Doctor heard me saying this and came over and looked at the X Ray's and said, “Mrs Strickland, you evidently did have two broken toes years ago.” the 3rd toe was a bunion. The young intern had seen that the bones. were not as straight as they should have been, bless him, and had thought that I had come in with broken toes. My ankle was badly strained, thankfully no broken bones. I used to be in a dancing group in my early teens, and we used to dance on the stage for the troops, I also walked in splits. We all had our own thing to do at the end of the performance, we formed a horseshoe and each in turn did our special thing. I can’t believe that I could walk in splits from one end of the horseshoe to the other. I also taught people to do ballroom dancing, but on roller skates, at the White City Roller Skating Rink, Anlaby Rd, Hull. It isn't there anymore, what a shame - it was a lovely place. Of course Hull was badly blitzed in the 2nd World War and many beautiful buildings were bombed. Our house in 122 Spring Gardens, Anlaby Common, Hull, a lovely house,was damaged when a land mine was dropped by Parachute, the Germans were trying to hit the big guns in the Park about one and a half miles from our home. Fortunately there was a slight wind that evening and it carried it over our houses landing on soft ground, the crater was enormous, you could have put quite a few houses in it. My Sisters husband to be (she didn't know him at the time) well his house was badly damaged, along with many others, but the fact that we had had rain had made the land soft stopping a lot of the blast, and maybe saving our lives. My Dad hadn't been called up then, but he was an Air Raid Warden, they would take turns and patrol the streets if there were air raids in progress. He came in and saw the windows in and our ceilings down, also soot all over everything from the chimneys. He said. - "I must go next door and get Mrs Skelton in our house",she was an older lady and on her own. She came in, gave one look at the mess and said, "You had better come in my house". Her's was fine, it seems every other house got the blast. It was a very pretty house, such a shame to see so much damage, but we got it fixed after a while. When the Buzz bombs as we called them were being fired to destroy Londen and the South, they would be shot at and now and again some of them would be knocked and they would go off the planned direction and come our way. I can remember we were under the table which in turn was piled with cushions from the chairs and couch, we hadn't got out to the air raid shelter which we had in the garden. I had the torch and suddenly my mother knocked the torch out of my hand and told me not to use it whilst a raid was on. The light she had seen and thought it was the torch light, was one of these Buzz Bombs coming down in flames. It was awful, but again we were blessed it missed us, but other people had to suffer. These Buzz Bombs were awful, you would hear them like a plane then suddenly the engine would cut out, and that was it they just fell, you had no idea where. You just waited and prayed. I pity what the people in London and the South of England went through, we only had a few. It was often that we had Air Raids though, with being a Sea Port. We had a German. plane which had been hit land in the fields behind us, almost hitting our houses, and many nights a week we would hear the awful noise of bombs coming down, the screeching noise, then the explosions. If we went to the City Centre after an Air Raid, many times we stood crying when we saw people digging and trying to release people who were trapped under buildings. I vividly remember standing near a building where quite a few people were trapped, and the people working to save them knew that water was creeping in the building and that they maybe couldn't get to them in time. Such horrors, no wonder I had night mares. My poor Mum, with us kids and having to pacify us, it must have been such a worrying time for all parents, trying to protect their little ones. We often had our fields behind us on fire, they used to drop incendary Bombs to try to light up the area, as they were after bombing the Anti Aircraft Guns in the Park, those guns were called the (Big Bertha's) that upset me as my middle name was Bertha. (Doreen Bertha Orwin) I have hated that name ever since and try not to use the name, just put B. I was named after an Auntie though and I love my auntie, just not the name.

I have gone way back to when I was a child in these few pages. As I keep remembering things I will use these pages up. My Dad had a beautiful singing voice, I like to sing but my voice isn't any thing like as beautiful as Dads. My fathers brothers and sisters had children who got this beautiful talent of singing, and my sister Joan has a lovely voice. My Jackie is clever with her fingers, she knits beautiful things, a suit that she made looked out of this world and Mario our Son in Law married to Denise, he loved the waistcoats Jackie had knitted. She also used to do her own cards, all with coloured pens, the patterns were beautiful. She does patchwork, and you should see her home, she has so many antique things, a baby doll's pram, a Victorian doll, a brolly, a really old bike. Jackie's Jacob and Sam used to go to an old Victorian rubbish dump, they would dig and come up with dishes, jars and lots of things from the Victorian days. Debra went a few times also and Jackie gave Kim a few things, like old Victorian Jars that held ink and meat extracts for gravy, bottles that held medications, very interesting. We lived in many places in England. Our home town was Hull, then we moved to Little Neston in the Wirrel part of Cheshire, then Four Oak's near Birmingham, Sunbury on Thames, then Scotland, East Kilbride. After three and a half years in Scotland we came to the U.S.A. San Pedro, California in 1971. I gave birth to Kim in the San Pedro Peninsular Hospital. I had a slipped placenta at 8 months but managed to carry Kim to full term. Kim was born, then straight after the placenta tore out and I had problems. It was a wonderful blessing that Kim was born before this happened. Kim came into the world round about 1.20 a.m. and they (the doctors) were with me until about 6a.m. I had blood transfusions, Dr. Matthews really saved my life. I was 45 years old, not an awful lot of women аre blessed to have a baby at that age. Sarah in the Bible was much older. Isn't that something!