Still Telling It As It Was (More Memories of the Black Country)

About the Book

The second part of Kathleen Hann's autobiography, Still Telling It As It Was, sees us through her early married life in the Black Country from 1951 to her move to Telford in 1969. With her husband Peter, just demobbed, they face financial hardship due to low wages and high housing costs. Bringing up three children at the time, Kathleen shows her love, care, mettle and great skills with "make do and mend" which have been passed on by her mother.

Unwittingly renting a room to a prostitute and her pimp, buying a war bombed house, and getting a failing public house back on its feet are just a few of the trials and tribulations which Kathleen and Peter face in this story. Tales of terribly hard physical labour for both of them, which left permanent physical and mental scars, are retold with chilling accuracy.

The progress of her son's major illness is also described with great passion and dignity, especially considering the way she was treated by the some of the medical profession at the time.

There are lighter notes though – the DIY chimney sweeping saga, the Golden Child who stuffed her knickers down the drains, and Kathleen's own very short fuse to an exploding temper – these all bring very different and sometimes highly amusing insights into this very closely knit and loving family.

A vital document for any social historian, or a grippingly real story of hardship in the Black Country of the 1950s and 60s, this book is a prime candidate for anyone's must read list.

About the Author

Kathleen Hann was born in the heart of the Black Country in 1930. Married to Peter in 1951, they lived though a time of hardship with their three children in the 1950s and 60s, until their move to Telford in 1969. She has always loved reading and writing, but as a child did not even have such simplicities as a sheet of paper and a pencil to write her stories with.

Kathleen's loving nature, her skills with what she calls "make do and mend", and her great passion for her family have brought her though those hard times - times which have left an indelible mark upon her. Today in her seventies, she sits at her computer looking out over her adopted county of Shropshire, and writes away the pain and injustices of the past. Her family has now spread down through four generations, but every single member of that family is fully aware of their own family social history, thanks to Kathleen's writings.

When her two daughters obtained their degrees in later life, Kathleen took a more active interest in writing. Kathleen was further spurred on by a "highly educated middle class" lady historian, who's coldly statistical version of working class history so angered her that she decided to put the story straight.

Kathleen Hann has written from the heart, and we can understand only too easily that she has seen more than her fair share of worry and despair. She is still not afraid to relate the harsh truths about her life, and of those around her.

Book Three is on the computer's hard drive right now …