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41

our old clothes and Wellingtons to start work at half past four until half past six. It made us feel very important to have a job and on Fridays, pay days, we were very well off, receiving four pounds per week, including a Saturday morning's pay. Our work consisted of various tasks; planting seeds, cutting lettuce, packing it and weeding. On rainy days, we would work inside the greenhouses. These occasions were enjoyable as sometimes the boss would leave us to get on with our work — a grave mistake, for we would immediately down tools and fool around, having peat fights (throwing clumps of peat at each other) — great fun but rather nasty if one caught you in the mouth. On Saturdays, we started at seven o'clock in the morning, working until half past one in the afternoon. We took a piece with us and I remember we used to be so hungry at the time break came, that we would happily munch our way through crisps and sandwiches washed down by lemonade, sitting next to a heap of manure and with dirty hands. When I think of it now, I feel quite sick, but these were happy days and ! have lots of memories too numerous to recall.
Winter in Prestonpans brought new and exciting games to us children. We would beg, borrow or steal from our mothers' kitchens trays to sledge down the steep hill which is now a flight of stairs between Summerlee and Burnside leading to the Wee Shop. We would haul our sledges to the top of the hill and go speeding down the slope (which was by this time as slippery as glass), shooting right off the kerb and on to a road which was used quite often. My house looked over on to the slope and if my mother caught sight of us, we would be ordered into the house and skelped, then told not to go and play there again but to go to the Pennypit Park where it was safe. However, we took no heed of her warning — what good was it playing in an area that did not carry the slightest bit of a risk? Until one day a friend of ours took her turn on the slope and sledged right under a lorry as it came full speed along the road. We were thunderstruck, the lorry driver slammed on his brakes and jumped out of the cab. He was a deathly white colour as we all were, but our friend had escaped unhurt and had run away. Well, that was the last we ever played there as the lorry driver reported the incident and the council workmen came and gritted the icy slope whenever it snowed.
Where the houses are built now at Summerlee used to be a slope and we would often play there. We discovered the soil had a lot of clay in it and we would dig it with our spoons, then make models as we would have done with plasticine. If we left the models out for a day, the sun would bake them hard. On top of the slope was a wilderness of long grass and weeds which every so often the council workmen would come and cut, and we would then collect armfuls of the stuff and form dens, playing for
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