Stories from the past

When Mrs. Khan came to Rotherham, there were only a few other Asian women living here. Mr. Khan would take her for walks in the park, and whenever they met another Asian woman, it was such a rare event that they would be so happy and go up to her and start talking, even though she might be a complete stranger. To begin with Mrs. Khan wasn’t very happy with life in England. Her husband would be away at work and her children were at school, so she was left alone in the house a lot of the time. She found the terraced houses in Rotherham to be very cramped. In Pakistan families had very large houses with big courtyards, even if they were poor. Also she wasn’t terribly fond of the English weather – but then who is? Mr. Khan would make up for this by taking his wife and family on outings and on holidays. Eventually Mrs. Khan grew to love her new home, because she realised that home is not a place, it is family.

The winters were indeed extremely cold, and the snow used to fall heavily. Mr. Khan had to go out every morning to clear the snow from the path. There were no gas fires or central heating in those early days, and the only way of heating the house was with a coal fire. Coal would be delivered every week and be dumped into the cellar. If you’ve ever wondered what those metal hatches outside some terraced houses were for, that was where the coal man used to pour the coal. The first person to wake up had to light the fire, using firelighters to get the coals burning. Firelighters were sticks of solid paraffin oil.