Initially my parents moved in and lived with my Mam’s eldest brother, Ronnie, and his wife Violet, who had a council house, 102 South Parkway in Seacroft; that’s where they lived when they registered my birth on the following Wednesday. But they eventually moved in with Florrie and Bill and lived in their Boggart Hill home for just over 18 months. The house, although with three bedrooms (well two and a ‘box room’ that just about held a single bed) was small and always full. My Grandparents, we three and my uncle Derrick all falling over each other before Molly and Reg were finally able to establish their first home. It was a top floor flat in a large converted Victorian terrace; 76(a) Louis Street in Chapeltown.

The once rather grand houses had passed through various hands and communities and when we arrived the largely Jewish presence was drifting away to settle in Moortown, Headingley and other parts of north Leeds. Mid and eastern Europeans were arriving in large numbers to replace them in Harehills and our neighbours (soon to become my parents’ best friends) moved in very shortly after we settled. Elda was from Italy and Bela from Hungary; Danny, their son, was the same age as me. Authentic homemade Italian and Hungarian meals in the mid 50’s were quite a departure for my parents. Unbelievable as it now seems, at age five I’m told that I flatly refused even to try a taste, preferring instead (at every meal apparently, even when invited for dinner) the nourishing delights of a fish finger sandwich.

Both Reg and Molly worked full time (my dad by then as a Foreman at Schweppes on Dewsbury Road) and Molly as a ‘seamstress’ at what I recall from my after-school visits be a Dickensian-like run-down, rambling and ramshackled old building, close to Leeds Market. Waiting for my Mam to finish her shift at 5.30pm, I would explore to find where the imagined ghosts might be hiding. And then, 31st October, 1957, to be precise, we got off the bus at the parade of shops on Roundhay Road, went into the sweetshop for a Fry’s Chocolate Cream bar for my Dad and me to share, before turning right and walking up tree-lined Spencer Place. On past Leopold Street and left then right through the narrow cobbled lane towards Louis Street. Nights were darker then and this night was pitch black, and what moonlight there might have been was hidden behind heavy clouds. We held hands as we slowly walked forward with the high brick walls crowding in on both sides. The crash as the glass exploded onto the cobbles on both sides was deafening, as were our screams. Two milk bottles, a length of string and a Mischievous night to remember.

Every weekday morning, we’d leave 76(a) very early, walk to the bus stop outside of the Midland Bank on the corner of Gledhow Valley Road and Roundhay Road. Molly would see me safely onto the bus before catching hers into Leeds, and I would ride on the bus alone (yes, quite alone) to Grange Farm Infant school, just off Boggart Hill Drive at Seacroft. Met at the bus stop by my Nana we’d chat about everything and nothing as she walked me to the school gates.

Ice cold milk from the small bottles with their red foil lids in rows in the crate, the class photograph at the end of the last term with me standing next to Miss Trickett, stealing a green wooden crocodile (well I found it months later in my satchel, so who knows), stories of Janet and John and the obligatory afternoon nap, are the sum total of my recollections of the time I spent at Grange Farm Infants school.

Apart from my best friend telling me at the school gates one morning that he’d eaten a worm

Five years old and already learning about the realities of life, starting with the unrelenting hard grind of daily toil for my parents.