MEMORIES OF THE CORONATION BY MALCOLM DIXON Hi my name is Malcolm, Malcolm Dixon referred to in the theatrical business as Little Malcolm. I was born in the 1930’s and I lived at the top of Hargill Bank which was then called the Old Bay Horse Inn. I was brought up in a family of seven, there were seven children and I was the youngest. I have great memories of Howden-Le-Wear and like to visit it every now and then. I live now in the South of England which I enjoy very much and I travel quite a lot to all different parts of the world. This year for us has been a memorable year as we have just celebrated our 39th wedding anniversary. We were married in Bridge Street Methodist Church in Howden-Le-Wear in 1963 and since then have moved on to different parts of the country to reside. The exercise of this short story is to tell you of my memories of when our Queen was crowned. Well it goes back some time, as we all know and it first started in 1952 when I was going into the village to do my mum and dad’s shopping on my little bike which I used had then. I used to call into Mrs Fleets which was the corner shop. We used to be very friendly with the lady and also her son Kenneth. However before I approached the shop I was met by Miss Heslop. Now needless to say, many of you know Miss Heslop or knew her I should say because Miss Heslop was a character in herself. She was a great lady, a very good teacher, very nosey, yes very nosey, but she was a lovely teacher and we enjoyed her company and now and again she would come and visit my mother and my father at the top of the bank; I don’t know whether it was for a slice of home fed bacon or a few eggs. However she was a great teacher and she looked after me as she did everyone else. I was still punished by her when I was naughty or should I say misbehaved in class or in school, so I was taught the hard way and I do not regret it at all. Any how this particular day in 1952 I was on my bike and on my way down. Miss Heslop always used to go across to the school dinner hall, which was then the Women’s Institute, to see what was preparing for dinner or maybe to give them the number of children who were going to have their lunches . However she stopped me and she told me that the King had died. I was devastated because in those days our King and our Queen were such an important part of our lives. Now I went to Mrs Fleets and did my shopping and I went straight back home to tell our mother and father of the incident that the King had died ; well they were surprised too, so that evening we all sat around our little radio which was then called the wireless and listened to all that had happened. We did not have electricity in our house and we did not have running water so we lived the life of , well I don’t know what I would call it, but we enjoyed our lives , we were happy. We used to have to go to Mrs Calvert’s or, which was then changed to Wilkes, or we used to have to go to Marcus’s to get the batteries and the accumulators to run our radio so we did not have it on all the time. However this was a very important time and the family had gathered together and listened to the story and the news of our King who had passed away. Not many weeks after that my father took ill and he went into a coma and he died. The whole family were saddened by this but we had to carry on and pick up the pieces. It was not long after this that Princess Elizabeth who was the daughter of the King, the late King, was being crowned as our Queen. This was a memorable time; this was something of 1952 that I remember well because we used to sit round the wireless again at night time listening to all the preparations. Television was not in our field because we did not have electricity and we did not have any means of being able to battery operate one like they do nowadays, so we used to listen to everything and it was a great time and although we did not have television to watch, to see all the great pageantry, to see all the great memorable service we still enjoyed in our great humble way the coronation of our Queen. Of course we had street parties. We joined in with Hargill Hill and we had a lovely time. We had it in the Women’s Institute which was also the school dinner hall. We had ice cream which was a delight to savour because we rarely got the opportunity of having any ice cream because of the shortage of different foods with the after effects of the 1945 war. This is history, history of our lives; remembering all the good times that we have had, remembering the sad times that is what history is all about. It is about contentment, discontentment, wars and peace. Let us be thankful that we live in a civilised world where we can accept these happenings as, our history which we can look back on and cherish in our own lives.