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Good Old Days

Author: Ally McKay

These were the good old days
The good old days were the best days.
We had good days and bad days but mainly good
We just got on with it and helped other people out when they needed it.
I remember moving to a house where it had nothing in it.
It had no kitchen and it was open plan.
The kitchen was nothing but a runner along a back wall and one wee bunker for you to put your bits and bobs on.
There were two sinks and you could just turn around and put your cup and plate in the sink.
And you would draw the curtain along if you had visitors in as you did not want them to see your piled-up dishes you had left sitting all day in the sink.
The other sink was for washing your clothes in.
In the middle of it was a mangle.
So, when you washed your clothes you’d pull them through the other side of the mangle.
Everybody was in the same boat.
We did not have a bathroom.
We would go to the bottom of the garden to go to the toilet.
It was an old wooden hut and the lock was broken.
You had to whistle or sing but I couldn’t do either.
To get to the toilet you had to go through the bedroom.
My brother said he wasn’t going through the lassies’ bedroom at night.
So, mum put buckets in the bedroom but my brother wasn’t having that!
Oh to have these days back again
Oh for the love of these old days.