Lovely Jubbly days

Susie Dent of dictionary corner said it used to mean Orangeade.

To me it always reminds me of hot summer days trainspotting down Roundwood where the L.N.E.R. line and the L.M.S. line could be watched. I would get on my B.S.A. Golden Wraith bike from Oak Terrace and first call at the shop at the corner of St Johns Road and Fitzwilliam Road and buy two or three frozen Jubblies and put them in my saddle bag with a few sandwiches and a bar of chocolate and then it would be down Wash Lane/Aldwarke Road until turning off right on the country lane which took you to Roundwood. Sometimes I would stop at the farm on the corner and buy a few apples and then on to meet up with the other lads who would be there.

We would be there six to eight hours sometimes. When things got quiet we would play football or cricket. Once nobody had a ball so we started playing cricket with a piece of wood and small stone. When it came for my turn to bat I hit out and the stone smashed into the left lens of my glasses, ouch.

Another time my bike was out of action so I had to walk there and when I came back I ran all the way non-stop until I got to the corner of Doncaster Road and Fitzwilliam Road. I ran alongside one of the other lads, who was on his bike, he was Steve Ashforth. You would get lads mainly from Eastwood and East Herringthorpe there. This was the late 1950s.

Sometimes a gang of us off the School Street area would take the same journey and walk to the Roundwood ponds to fish for sticklebacks. We didn’t have bikes then, this was pre-train spotting days.

Instead of carrying on over the bridge that went over the L.N.E.R. line, we would turn right and along the side of the farmers’ corn fields to the ponds.

Happy Days!

Ray Hill, Greenfield Road, Rotherham