Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Nellie Well Oooh!

April 15, 2010 by  
Filed under Bygones

In the area of Manthrig Lane, there lived an elderly lady who everyone called “Nellie Well OOH”. The nickname came about because of her habit of exclaiming ‘Well OOH!’ continuously throughout her conversations. She made a precarious living selling shoes from her front room, often on credit, many a harassed mother was glad to take advantage of her services.

It was also rumoured that Old Jack the Clocky was not her only boyfriend. Old Nellie also had another secret, she collected the old silver threepenny bits, this fact was unknown until the night of the great fire when old Nellie’s little cottage was completely destroyed. It was so badly damaged, the Council raised it to the ground. It was then that the local lads began sifting through the rubble, finding single threepenny bits and sometimes numbers of them all melted together in lumps or, as in my case, a four inch long pencil-like shape of melted silver.

I kept it for weeks, what eventually happened to it escapes my memory, I probably swapped it for some useless article like a couple of gob stoppers.

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