Working Day!
"It's working day cry all the wives,
Oh it must shorten all our lives!
For Johnny gets his shirt so black
I really must give him a smack!
"Then Billy gets his trousers torn,
And Ian gets his shoes all worn.
They play in sand and walk through mud,
I'm going to beat them till they're good.
I've no idea what provoked this one! True I used to be in the sand and the mud, the former at the old mortar works near Failsworth station when the men had gone home, and the latter when playing "over the wall" down Moston Brook - an open sewer! And I was aware my mother worked hard. But no beating. Incidentally, shirts did get black then. There was so much soot coming out of the chimneys of the cotton mills that were all around the area, and from the steam trains going up and down between Manchester and Oldham.