WHEN Audrey Rostron was born on Mary 26, 1936 and her arrival did not go down well with her older brother, Howard.

He was just three-years-old and when his mother arrived home with the new baby rubbed little Audrey with Pond's Vanishing Cream (an early face cream with the consistency of lard, explains Audrey) in the hope it would do what it said on the jar, she laughs.

Audrey decided to share her memories with Looking Back readers in the hope it would remind others of their Bolton past.

She recalls living in a terraced house in Sunlight Road in Bolton.

"From the front door there was a small vestibule, a narrow hall, a sitting room (nobody used the word lounge), a living room and a kitchen.

"Mind you the front door was reserved for visitors. we used the gate into the back yard, down one side of which father had made a small flower garden.

"Down the other side there was an outside lavatory, a coal shed and a wash house, then a window and a door into the kitchen," she explains.

There was a tiny bathroom with a wash basin and an enamel bath.

"During the war we had a line painted on the bath, about 100mm up to show how much water we could use and Howard and I shared this on Friday nights.

"There was a shortage of soap so father tipped in some thick green disinfectant. We emerged smelling like clean drains.

"The only light came from a high window called a skylight. The glass was painted black during the war years, presumably to avoid attracting German bombers to Sunlight Road," she says.

Audrey says she would keep well out of her mother's way "especially on Mondays when the copper boiler in the wash house was filled with hot water and soap, ready for the ritual of the weekly wash.

"There were no biological powders then, just Oxydol, Persil and Rinso all of which got up my nose and made me sneeze," she says.

Audrey recalls her mother having a "long handled posser as a sort of primitive agitator" then lifting the heavy, wet clothes and bedding with a clean broom handle, carrying them over to the mangle which had two heavy rollers.

"These had to be turned by hand, returned for a rinse and put through the rollers for a second time, varying the pressure according to the load.

"Mother decided one day that my teddy bear needed a wash then put him through the wringers. He never recovered," she says.

The posser was a long pole with something resembling an upturned colander fastened to the end, explains Audrey.

The holes in it allowed the soapy water to pass through and created a foam.

Stubborn marks were dealt with by rubbing on a washboard — a piece of wood with a a rectangle of corrugated zinc fastened onto one side.

While the posser died with the advent of the automatic washing machine the washboard had a new lease of life, says Audrey, in "skiffle" bands — three or four metal thimbles rubbed rhythmically up and down the corrugated zinc "and you were Lonnie Donegan".

Everything was hung to dry in the back street where each household had hooks for two or three lines stretching across the cobbles.

"Woe betide any coalman who tried to make a delivery on a washing day," she says.