Wigan Album

Think it would have been round duke street love the dresses they wore

A lovely photo when girls looked like girls,women looked like women and little girls looked like little girls..not a pair of ripped jeans in sight.

What a brilliant photo, so typical of walking-days back then. I remember the girls wearing stiletto heels and those dresses with the net underskirts. If the underskirt hung down a little below the skirt's hemline, someone would shout "You're slatin'. Missis!". Walking Day was such an important event. My Aunty Mary used to put a posh voice on at Walking-Day, but she always got her "h's" in the wrong place, and as the procession passed by she would say, "Oh, 'ello Vicar...hisn't it 'ot?". Then she would spot some high-up Church-Lady's little lad "leading-out" on the banner with a silk-covered crook, and would revert to her normal broad Lancashire and comment: "Ey-up....Ah thowt yon mon ud a't be a shepherd!". Little lads in the boys' brigade started to play imaginary trombones to accompany the brass band, causing many smiles from the onlookers on the pavement; of course once they realised they had an audience, they obligingly crossed their eyes and adopted a comical walk to accompany the "trombone-playing". Perspiring bandsmen glanced enviously at men with pints in their hands outside the pub and the co-op staff stood on the step waving to the local children who were, on every other day, the bane of their lives, dashing into "cworp" shouting, "'Ave yer any Wild Woodbines, Missis?....well tame 'em!". Ice-cream vans vied for the best "speck" and everyone seemed to have a boiled-ham tea on Walking-Day where Auntie Mary brought us up to date with the local gossip..... who was "livin' o'er t'brush" and who had "done moonleet". Happy, happy days!

Loved your memories Irene !

I doubt we will ever see anything like the pretty little girl in her flouncy dress ever again....that way of dressing has gone, mores the pity. Today we have children dressed as clones of their parents, down to the holes in the kneecaps of their jeans !

I don't think we will ever see the like again of such naturally humorous characters Irene, no wonder Coronation Street was based on Northern life, but even that programme has gone down the drain....'updated' to the modern scene! What tosh and drivel...

I watched the first episode of Coronation Street in December 1960, Veronica; I had just turned 8 years old and I watched it religiously until the 1990s when I went off it and have never seen it since. I have such happy memories of Walking-Days. We are lucky to have known those times and those wonderful characters, and isn't it good to reminisce with the people who were there? xxxxx

Remember Diane and Julie Forshaw's mum lovely memories of walking days. The Lovely Emmalene.