A RETIRED housewife has found herself
the cover star of a new book which details her family’s austere existence
in 1950s Sheffield.
Patricia Eales, aged 70, is featured on
the front of her brother Michael Glover’s memoir Headlong Into
Pennilessness, in which he writes about their early life in a terrace house in
Fir Vale.
Patricia - just seven years old at the
time - is pictured at Michael’s christening more than five decades ago.
Michael grew up without a father in a
poor, two-bedroomed house on Coningsby Road, sharing the tiny house with five
other relatives.
Despite his deprived upbringing he has
fond memories of the house - but Patricia said she doesn’t share her
brother’s view.
“I couldn’t wait to leave
that house - it was tiny, damp and horrible,” she said.
“Wild horses wouldn’t drag
me back to an existence that was ruled by the make-do-and-mend attitude of the
time, nightly arguments about money and the freezing cold outside
toilet.”
Patricia moved to a semi-detached house
in Holymoorside, Chesterfield, in the early 1970s, where she still lives today.
Her brother went on to gain a degree at
Cambridge University and worked as editor for publishing house Mirror Books, as
well as an art critic for The Independent newspaper.
Patricia said Michael never knew his
dad, and that she didn’t meet him until she was four years old after the
Second World War.
“He appeared in all his khaki army
gear with a huge handlebar moustache,” she said.
“He was nearly black from years
under the hot sun in Burma. My mother fainted.
“The man that came home in 1945
was very different from the one that left in 1939, according to my mother.
“Their marriage was one of the
many casualties of the war.”
Headlong Into Pennilessness is published
by ACM Retro and available in The Star shop on York Street, Sheffield, priced
£9.95. It is currently being serialised in The Star’s Retro supplement on
Saturdays.
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