of nine to about twelve, every Tuesday and Saturday I had to Yellow Stone Grandma’s steps.
I don’t know where the idea of “yellow stoning” steps came from but I often wished it far enough away. However it was done it left your hands a nasty pale yellow.
The “Yellow Stone” was a brick made of a yellow stone material which was soluble in water and to yellow stone a step it had to be soaked in a bucket of cold water and rubbed against the house steps. Now if this wasn’t bad enough almost everyone had a different way of doing this.
Some would cover the whole step in yellow, others just the step risers while many just had a line rubbed around the edge of every step. This latter treatment was enhanced by having lines of varying widths around the steps ,some settling for a narrow line about an inch in width, others a line as wide as a brick or any combination in between. Later patterns were developed like dashes all around the edge of the step.
Grandma would have a wide stripe around the top step and narrower ones on the lower steps. Mother favoured a narrow stripe on all the steps, my auntie May had her steps done on the risers and woe betide you if there was any yellow stone on the top of the step itself and she had seven steps to her door!.
Breaking the dry brick in half helped but usually it shattered in pieces which certainly resulted in a good “Skelping” “Skelping” you didn’t want, not at any cost! Usually it meant being held by the collar while been beaten around the ears, lustily! Skelping was always accompanied by verbal explanations of why you were being so assaulted, though it was not viewed as assault by the users of this practise, merely a bringing to your notice the displeasure you had caused the skelper and the inconvenience in having to skelp you at this time.
The older women were the worst for Skelping, they practised it at every opportunity and we became adept at keeping a safe distance from those who became renowned for the practise. I once had two old ladies attempting to skelp me at the same time.
I was yellow stoning me grannies steps and had reached the bottom one when one of her friends came down the steps and stood in the bucket of cold yellow water now resting on the pavement. Over she went on her ample bottom and legs waving in the air suffered the awful and unforgivable mishap of showing her regulation red flannel draws “to the whole world”, though I felt this was an exaggeration of the facts as there were only a few people passing at the time .Hardly “the whole world”.
The last time I saw an arse like that was when watching a two horse ploughing match. Though I didn’t think it necessary to point that observation out to her
Ladies “draws” in those days were not like the wispy things modern ladies wear. No these draws came below the knees where they were secured by three bands of strong elastic and were made of substantial material too.
Nearly always red, don’t ask me why! and never displayed on the washing line. These items were dried in front of the fire during the night on a wooden structure called “a horse” it needed a Horse to carry the weight of wet flannel draws and boys were not welcome in the kitchen at times these things were drying, I once ;in a suicidal moment wrote” spinnaker number 3” on the leg of one of these voluminous red garments. “Skelping” did I get a Skelping. But after the bruising and pain had subsided to tolerable levels I just killed myself laughing on the roof of the house where they couldn’t get me. The roof had two roofs with a valley in-between and access through a little skylight in the loft ceiling
The only time these things of passion were shown while being worn was in front of the fire, for some reason a glimpse of red knickers leg was allowed in these circumstances
However I was deemed to be at fault for the old ladies plight and was skelped by both. Grandma adding a bit “for spilling the bucket on the footpath” While I nursed a sore head they retired back indoors where the brandy bottle was plied to good effect by both the participants. Though why grandma had to have a drink of brandy was beyond my reasoning, she hadn’t fallen at all.
