REMEMBER the old cast-iron mangle, the famous Okie-Koki ice-cream man and the evenings when sidestreets were briefly emptied as kids crammed into their homes to listen to the Dick Barton radio series?

These and a host of other recollections have come steaming back for that delightful old duo, Norman Owen and Harry Worthington. It turns out to be the event of the week when these owd codgers get together to ruminate about the bygone times of their Thatto Heath schooldays.

Both now in their seventies, they chuckle as they speak of the old dolly-tub days. These were traditionally Mondays, when all the house windows were completely steamed up by all the damp washing, airing on a wooden maiden by the roaring coal fire.

It was the boys' duty to wind up the creaky old mangle as sheaves of wet washing were fed through it to squash out the soapy water. "You had to duck now and then", they report, "as buttons came pinging off the laundered shirts and working pants. Some of these were of metal and came firing at you like bullets."

But there were less traumatic moments when Tommy Sheron came round pedalling his three-wheeler ice-cream box. Known universally as the Okie-Koki man, you could hear him singing his wares from the streets all around: 'Okie-koki, a penny a lump; that's to stuff to make 'em jump.'

You might have a minute to grab your penny bar of ice-cream and wafers when one of the kids would shout: 'He's on the wireless now, Dick Barton, special agent.'

The street would empty as the kids crushed around the front-room radios listening to this, their favourite programme. "We'd hear the current episode of this adventure", says Harry, now 78, "while mother sat back, darning the socks with her wooden 'mushroom' holder and bodkin, or sewed back all those pinged-off fly-hole buttons."

Boisterous

Almost everyone wore clogs in those far-gone years. But the clatter had long since ended for the day as the formidable 'Man in Black', Valentine Dyal, drifted on to the radio waves, to tell his terrorising night tales. After that, the kids hid under their counterpanes while dad went about the nightly ritual of loading the mousetraps in the pantry.

The old folk were hard-up, but gradely, say our veteran couple. Running errands for the neighbours was a regular job for the lads in knee-pants. Reward was a sticky toffee plucked from the crumpled bag of some obliged old lady who'd had her rations brought in or her radio accumulator restored at the hardware shop.

Twists made pop, from dandelion and burdock to cream soda. And the Thatto Heath library was a popular place to stop, to read the latest Tim Tyler episode in the evening newspaper. Nelly Lowe's chippy was a hot spot, with folk queuing with their plates to have their dinners dished out.

By today's standards, the old-time kids were well behaved, though they could get into scrapes. They had the girls screaming as they chased them with sawn-off chicken legs, salvaged from the back-yard hen that had served as Sunday dinner.

There were boisterous soccer games in the street, frantic skipping games and playing 'six aside', leaping on to bent young backs, trying to collapse the opposition team. Piggy (a sort of pitman's golf) and a chasing game, 'Pie Crust Coming', were among Norman and Harry's favourite street pursuits. "Now and then, you'd get a bucket of cold water chucked on you from behind the garden hedges, with a grumpy old voice bellowing: 'Clear off, you lot! Go and play on your own fronts.'"

Keen and quieter fun was gained from swopping comics among the kids of the neighbourhood - all those Hotspurs, Magnets and Wizards changing hands until they were faded and tattered.

But street soccer games were a big pull, with more players each side than you could count. Frank Fairhurst was the first to get a real leather football (a worn tennis ball was usually kicked about). "When blown up it was all shapes", says Harry, "but great fun, because you never knew where it would bounce to."

Roller skates, little tut-tut wagons, made from planks and old pram wheels, and scampering around the back-streets trundling an old bike or car tyre. They were all on the menu - many a mile away from the computer games and pub pool matches of today's better-off youths.

H THAT'S all for now. More of Norman and Harry's memories soon...