The story of one house in Lausanne Road over a century and a half, and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*
Now mother came of that generation which was very practical about pets and erred on that simple premise that they either contributed to the common family good or they weren’t crossing the threshold which is how we got the rabbits.
There were two of them bought from a pet shop in Rushey Green and the grand plan was that like all rabbits everywhere they would breed and produce off spring which mother could sell.
To do this day I am not sure if this meant just selling on the baby rabbits , or taking the project to the next level and dealing in the meat and the fur.
Dad had been dragooned into building the hutch which stood on legs a full three feet off the ground with a long “run” made from an old door he had acquired.
But the plan failed because the rabbits didn’t like each other and after a decent time they went back to the pet shop and the hutch became firewood for the kitchen stove.
Of course we weren’t alone in such schemes.
Mr and Mrs Potts next door kept chickens and the man who lived beside Nana and granddad in Chellaston managed pigs.
Later mother joined one of those outsourcing schemes which in her case involved assembling little tourist dolls which were dressed in classic London outfits including a policeman, Guardsman and Yeoman of the Guard.
All these were just the casual way people round our way supplemented the weekly income.
Pictures; mother around the time of the rabbit project
*The story of one house in Lausanne Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road
There were two of them bought from a pet shop in Rushey Green and the grand plan was that like all rabbits everywhere they would breed and produce off spring which mother could sell.
To do this day I am not sure if this meant just selling on the baby rabbits , or taking the project to the next level and dealing in the meat and the fur.
Dad had been dragooned into building the hutch which stood on legs a full three feet off the ground with a long “run” made from an old door he had acquired.
But the plan failed because the rabbits didn’t like each other and after a decent time they went back to the pet shop and the hutch became firewood for the kitchen stove.
Of course we weren’t alone in such schemes.
Mr and Mrs Potts next door kept chickens and the man who lived beside Nana and granddad in Chellaston managed pigs.
Later mother joined one of those outsourcing schemes which in her case involved assembling little tourist dolls which were dressed in classic London outfits including a policeman, Guardsman and Yeoman of the Guard.
All these were just the casual way people round our way supplemented the weekly income.
Pictures; mother around the time of the rabbit project
*The story of one house in Lausanne Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road
No comments:
Post a Comment