Tradition that's right up my street

BACK in the early 1990s I worked in a town in Yorkshire and rented a little back to back terrace house.

- Susan Lee - Columnist

It wasn’t much to write home about - damp with an old fashioned bathroom and a cellar I never dared venture into - but the street in which it was located was fabulous.

It was cobbled and with only one way in and out, parking was non-existent so I’d regularly come home to find my neighbours had grabbed deckchairs or kitchen chairs - or in one case an old arm chair - and were sitting in the middle of the road shooting the breeze.

They'd say hello and ask after my day and on a couple of occasions I joined them for half an hour or so.

These mid-road get-togethers were made up mainly of women of a certain age; women perhaps who even today might struggle to be noticed in society.

None had high powered jobs, most had kids and grandkids but all of them possessed the wisdom of Solomon.

How best to clean my inherited oven? Number 4 had the answer.