Tell'em you're from t'Fish Shop

The surge of interest in local and family history is most rewarding and should be encouraged.

The lives of ordinary people are just as fascinating as those of so called celebrities.

I say "ordinary", but pretty much everyone has something extraordinary and interesting in life to tell the next generation.

That's why I was pleased to get in my Christmas stocking Tell'em You're From t'Fish Shop, the compelling story of Yorkshire lass, June Lindley.

In her late 60's, she finally put pen to paper to tell the story of her turbulent childhood, growing in a fish shop near Wakefield, and her unhappy marriage to a violent man.

June's book recreates 60's Wakefield, a more innocent and less degenerate era of teenage freinds, dance halls, "shotgun" weddings and working in the offices of small engineering works. It is the world of This Sporting Life - but for real.

The title comes from her mother's instruction, whenever she had to run an errand on tick, to "tell'em you're from t'fish shop" - which they could probably smell on her clothes anyway, such was the pervading whiff of the chippie.

It cost her much to write all this down, because she had a tough life with her aggresive plumber husband before finding happiness elsewhere. He served a prison sentence for stabbing her.

June tells her story with complete, sometimes brutal, honesty and I commend it to the Mirror readers.

If only more would follow her example, young people would be not so ignorant about the life their parents nd grandparents lived. They might understand what the older generation went through, and what makes them how they are today.