Let's hear it for happy childhoods

9:35am Monday 10th November 2008

He’s famous for his tales of a North Yorkshire schools inspector, but Gervase Phinn’s latest book is a nostalgic celebration of childhood in general.

Julia Breen speaks to him about the magic of childhood past – and his own happy upbringing.

WE’VE seen the “misery memoir” genre come and go. Now, says Gervase Phinn, it’s time to celebrate all our childhoods.

“The book is doing very well,” he says. “It’s really an antidote to all the misery memoirs. I’m just trying to capture a magical time, with early memories of growing up, families, friends, the first schooldays, and those first, tentative steps into adulthood.”

Gervase’s latest book, All Our Yesterdays, contains reminiscences of times past, of happy, although sometimes hard, childhoods, of days before computer games and health and safety initiatives.

He has compiled memories from famous people over the years, and has also included many reminiscences from readers of Dalesman magazine, who responded overwhelmingly to an advert in the publication.

“Over the years I’ve been on literary lunches with quite a few famous people and it occurred to me after about four or five that the speakers were always standing up and telling dreadful stories about their childhood,”

he says.

“But the majority of famous people I have come across actually had uncomplicated, happy childhoods.

“What I wanted to do was to celebrate childhood at a time when everyone is preaching doom and gloom, and there’s a credit crunch, and it’s getting darker and colder in the run-up to Christmas. I hope readers will dip into the book to remember a magical time when we were happy.”

The catalyst for Gervase’s literary career was a rather successful appearance on Esther Rantzen’s show, after which five publishers offered him work as a writer. He chose the agent who looked after Yorkshire vet James Herriot – and is himself often dubbed the “Herriot of Schools”.

His debut book, The Other Side of the Dale, became an overnight bestseller.

Gervase himself had a very happy childhood, with no harsh punishments, just great love and affection from his parents. “I was never smacked and my father never swore,” he says.

“I just remember spending all day outside with a bottle of pop, going all around Rotherham. In those days your parents didn’t worry too much and you could play conkers without wearing safety goggles. We could climb trees, we could drink straight of a garden hose, we could eat butter and have chips.

“Nowadays everything we do seems to be wrong, but as a child my life was very uncomplicated and carefree.”

Most of the memories in the book are from the 1940s, 50s and 60s, a time when Gervase himself was growing up.

Part of the book’s aim, he says, is to remind people of a time before stringent safety checks, complicated education systems, endless exams and massive constraints on teachers.

He says: “Having been a school inspector for 15 years – and now seeing the fact that we can’t put an arm around a child and can’t go on a school trip unless there is a rigorous health and safety check, and we can’t talk to children without it seeming suspicious – it’s very worrying.

“There isn’t a paedophile behind every lamppost waiting to jump out and grab your child. Education was so much simpler in those days. I suppose my book is a reflection on present society by looking at the past.”

The book is something of a warmup for Gervase’s next work as he is now working on his autobiography.

■ All Our Yesterdays by Gervase Phinn (Dalesman, £9.99).

EXTRACTS FROM ALL OUR YESTERDAYS

“We were a happy family – we always had shoes.” Ernie Wise.

“The smell of the baking bread was the most attractive of our household aromas. Dad’s wind the least.” Tom Courtenay.

“Judi Dench would be a very good pupil if she lived in this world.”

School report.

“I was popular with my teachers – on Saturdays and Sundays.”

Eric Morecambe.

“He has glaring faults and they have certainly glared at us this term.” Stephen Fry school report.

“Dad hadn’t a regular job, he just took what came along. In the summer, he dressed up in tails, top hat and spats, and carried a sandwich board advertising a café in the seaside town. Another time he was a pirate on the Hispaniola sailing to ‘Treasure Island’ in the middle of the park lake. That, I think, was his favourite job. One day he came swaggering down our street in his pirate costume, waving his sword in the air. When Mam opened the front door in answer to his loud knocking, she fell in a dead faint as he waved his sword in front of her nose shouting “Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, me hearties.”

Nicholas Charles.

“They were hard but happy days.

Families depended on each other.

Neighbours helped to peg out the washing. If the lady of the house was ‘confined’ she could rely on the folk next door to make her home ship-shape for the arrival of the doctor and midwife for the everyday occurrence – another home delivery of another new baby.

People were kind and considerate.

They shared each other’s joys, blessings and tragedies. They celebrated births and they mourned at the wakes.”

John Morgan.

“At chapel the preachers often ‘shouted to God’ during the sermons, and Mum told me it was because God was sometimes ‘a long way off and a bit deaf’.”

John Iveson.