Sadly, the link led to a newspaper account of the almost complete demolition of the building I knew so well, to make way for the construction of a multi-million pound leisure centre which opened 2 years ago. Only the central part of the façade, with its pillars and steps, was retained to provide a link with the past.
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| The impressive facade of the baths |
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| The 'big plunge' drained ready for covering |
The large pool (always known to us as the ‘big plunge’) would be drained in the autumn and covered with wooden flooring, providing a very spacious area for dancing and other activities. I still vividly remember the New Year’s Eve dance that I attended with my next sister and how I left early and went home (walking at least half the 4 mile distance in the dark for lack of buses) because I was tired of sitting like a wallflower at the edge of the dance floor. It’s not always fun being a teenager.....
By the end of the 1960s life and leisure had changed so much that the dance-hall became financially unviable and after that the baths offered year-round swimming. But I’m getting ahead of myself, and the memories that really stick in my mind are of swimming there and, above all, of the weekly trips to the baths from my village primary school each summer term for those all-important swimming lessons.
My primary school was a small, two-teacher, Church of England school with about 50 pupils. Only the juniors in the ‘Big Class’ were eligible to go swimming, the infants in the ‘Little Class’ being considered too young. My memory isn’t at its clearest at this point, but I think Wednesday was our swimming afternoon, and as soon as lunch was over we got ready to catch the bus into town, accompanied by our teacher.
Primary school children always used the small pool or ‘plunge’ (I’m not sure I’d even heard the use of the word pool for swimming back then) and we only graduated to the big plunge when we went to senior school and could more or less swim. I freely admit to not having enjoyed the swimming lessons very much, mainly because I’m so short-sighted that without my glasses I couldn’t recognise the children in the pool with me, let alone see the teacher properly.
There is something more than a little disconcerting in trying to learn something when the world around you is a blur and when you only get to practice during one term out of three. However I persevered, and though I’m still a poor swimmer, I did manage to swim my ‘breadth’ and get the first certificate and was making good progress towards swimming my ‘length’ by the time I left for senior school in 1957.
The part of the afternoon I remember with most pleasure was after we had dried and dressed ourselves and were waiting for the bus home. We always had at least a quarter of an hour to wait for the bus and so our teacher would take us into the market hall next to the bus station and let us buy broken biscuits at the grocery stall there.
Those were the days when butter, sugar and biscuits were all sold loose and weighed out to order and the inevitable broken biscuits would be put to one side and sold cheaply by the two or four ounces to schoolchildren. As soon as we were given our bags, we would look eagerly to see what this week’s mixture consisted of and feel distinctly disappointed if there were too many rich tea biscuits and not enough custard creams. J
Some years later, in the early 1960s, I found myself behind that same grocery counter, weighing out the loose foodstuffs as I earned extra pocket money by working at a Saturday job. By then I could swim as well as I was ever going to and even enjoyed going swimming out of school, though my surrounding were still a blur.
So many memories conjured up by a single Google link. Serendipity indeed.....
I think it's quite sad too when the old has to make way for the new, but at least they preserved the frontage. We never had swimming lessons in school but I did manage to learn to splash about a bit on my own. We have quite a good leisure centre in Welshpool and I used to take my grand daughter when she came to stay (nearly 17 and all grown up now) Oh and I remember those broken biscuit counters in Woolies - all gone now but that's progress I suppose.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think we have to be thankful for small mercies where redevelopment is concerned, Molly. I’m not sure whether we were particularly lucky to have had swimming lessons when we were young or you were unlucky not to. I suppose it s depends how far you lived from a proper swimming pool. I know the Flash Centre in Welshpool, but have never used it. When our children were little we used to take them swimming at the Maldwyn Centre in Newtown.
DeleteDo you know, I’d forgotten that Woolie’s used to sell broken biscuits? Thanks for reminding me. :-)
I am glad that at least the facade of the old baths has been kept. The same has happened with our old Grammar School, as it has being totally rebuilt recently as a comprehensive high school for the C21st, but with the original 1930's portico and frontage. I am not sure if the school has reopened yet. When the town's other high school reopened in 2010, having moved to bespoke brand-new premises in the centre of town, it was opened by Prince William and his new fiancee, her first official engagement.
ReplyDeleteBy the time I went to the baths for my swimming lessons they had hot drinks and soup to warm us up afterwards. Mrs Schofield still ruled with a rod of iron, though, as I am sure she did the decade before. PolkaDot told me she picked her up by her swimsuit straps and flung her in when she was too timid to enter the water voluntarily! Mrs S always wore her late husband's Olympic silver medal around her neck. At least I believe it was an Olympic medal, though I suppose it may have been from the Commonwealth Games.
I went to Saturday morning swimming school as well, but even so, I wasn't very good. Always preferred backstroke as a child because I didn't like to get my face wet. Not so pathetic now, can do prower crawl, etc, but I have never enjoyed diving. I never want to "let go"!
Wasn't the main cinema called The Plaza in the 1960s and 70s (before it became a supermarket)? You took me to see The Sound of Music there. I was very confused when I was little that the nearby bus terminus was called The Circus. I once overheard you tell Mummy that you would get off the bus at The Circus and I begged to go with you. I thought the Big Top had come to town! My, how you all laughed...
I gather that the only bit that’s been retained is the centre part and it isn’t at the front of the new building but off to one side like an add-on, kept because it had to be, I think. At least with the old Grammar school they are keeping the whole of the frontage. Interestingly both buildings date back to the same decade. Obviously the town fathers didn’t let the Depression prevent them making improvements.
DeleteDo you know I’d completely forgotten Mrs Schofield’s name, probably because I could never see her properly and was too busy trying not to go out of my depth. Certainly there were no refreshments available in my day, nor was there a Saturday swimming school to my knowledge. Backstroke is still my preferred stroke because it lets me breathe properly.
The cinemas I remember were the Ritz (at the top of Church St, if I remember rightly), the Savoy in Blackburn Road, the Palladium at the edge of the market square and bus station and the Olympia in Bolton Road. I certainly remember taking you to see The Sound of Music, Baby Sis, but not which cinema we went to.
As for your innocent query about going to The Circus – it can’t always have been easy being the youngest…..
I remember going (from my primary school) to Egerton baths. Yes...even a tiny place like Egerton had a baths. And having to do my 25-yard swimming certificate, and all that diving to the bottom of the pool in a pair of pyjamas and rescuing a sunken weight. Moving to secondary school, we had our own swimming pool (posh school, no more "baths", it was a "pool"!!) Neither featured biscuits or hot drinks, though. You were lucky! (Monty Python moment)
ReplyDeleteGosh, you grew up less than 10 miles from me as the crow flies, CB! You were lucky to have your own baths in Egerton, but it wasn't uncommon for quite small places to have them back then. as well as two plunges, our old baths had slipper baths for people without a bathroom at home and even a Russian steam bath!
DeleteYou must have been a much stronger swimmer than me. Being asthmatic I hated putting my face under water, so never mastered proper crawl and certainly not diving. But we did have biscuits, even if they were only broken biscuits....:-)
Dear Perpetua,
ReplyDeleteWhat exactly is a "custard creme"? I watch "As Time Goes By" with Judi Dench on PBS every Saturday evening. In the story, her husband loves "custard cremes." I've always wandered what they are because custard here is a kind of pudding.
Once again your posting has captured my imagination and I'm there with you at that swimming pool and in the store. And, yes, I can so remember going to dances and being what is called here "a wallflower." I was never "date material" with boys. Instead, they wanted me to help them with their algebra and chemistry! And......I never learned to swim.]
The facade of the bath is so impressive. Thank you for sharing it and its history with us.
Peace.
Sorry, Dee, I really must remember to translate some of the very British things for my overseas readers. A custard cream is a biscuit with the two halves sandwiched together by a layer of thick (in fact solid) sweet filling which tastes vaguely of custard.
DeleteYes, back then girls had to wait for a boy to ask them to dance and if that didn't happen they sat out the whole time. It became much easier later when dancing became almost communal and you could just stand up and dance with the group. It all seems so very long ago now, but mattered so much at the time.
It can be so sad when we discover bits and pieces of our childhood and such wonderful buildings torn down.
ReplyDeleteThe high school in the community we lived in and where our daughters attended was such a symbol of the community. Three and four gnerations of families went to school there. Unfortunately, it could no longer meet the needs of the students. What might happen threatened the community, the students, property values, etc. We met with every possible person who had a stake in the process and listened to what they wanted. We won the electorate by an unheard of margin at the time, or since, We rebuilt the school, leaving the oldest part intact, and making the new parts fit in with the historical architecture. One of my finest days was when a senior citizen, who had attended the school seventy decades hence, thanked us for returning their school to them.
As to swimming, oh my, that brought back many memories of me in my own high school trying to learn to swim for the first time in my life, afraid by then, and seeing it all in the same blur you did, Perpetua. I dreaded swim class. Remarkably, both of our daughters are good swimmers.
Serendipity, indeed. Wonderful post.
Thanks, Penny. I'm glad I wasn't the only one to swim in a blur. :-)
DeleteI can understand why old buildings become no longer fit for purpose as needs and expectations change, but they carry so many memories with them and it's very sad if they disappear completely. I'm so pleased to hear that your community managed to keep part of the old school while rebuilding the rest, which is what is being done with the grammar school I and my sisters all attended.
The swimming baths were as impressive inside as out, and so much a part of my childhood. I'm sure the shiny new leisure centre is much more functional, but I think the old facade must look very out of place with all the new glass and steel next to it.
Perpetua I see what you mean by this new comment system. Now I have to click on the comments posted and if I want to read previous comments I have to scroll back...oh what a nuisance..I am heartily sick of all these Blogger changes.
ReplyDeleteAnyway back to your post. Lovely memories and you've just set off a chain of memories for me too. We are of the same generation so I too remember the shops selling everything loose including broken biscuits which were quite a treat. I also remember endless summers spent at our local outdoor swimming pool and how sad everyone was when this was demolished to make way for a big, new, ugly leisure centre with no character. I also recall the two cinemas we had in our town, one of which we visited on Saturday mornings...the kids films...we were known as ABC Minors. If it was your birthday you were allowed up on the stage and received a free ticket for the following week.
Now of course the town cinema is one of those awful multiplex buildings.
Thanks for stirring up the childhood memories.
Ayak, the jumping down to the comment box has been much complained about in the Help forum, but I had to change to this format if I wanted to allow people to subscribe to the comments. One good aspect of it which I'm discovering as I do these first replies is being able to see the whole of the comment I'm responding to because of the box which opens beneath it when I click on Reply. I also like the fact that my answer is directly underneath the comment, rather than several comments below it, as often happens.
DeleteGlad you enjoyed having your own memories awakened. I love it when that happens to me as I read other people's posts. Those broken biscuits were fun, especially as they were always such a mixture where I bought them. My first experience of an outdoor swimming pool was when I stayed with my penfriend in Hamburg, I thought it was wonderful to swim outdoors in the park like that. We never went to the children's Saturday morning matinees, through DH used to do so when he was growing up in the big city. Happy days....
What delightful memories, Perpetua, and I agree with you that it is great serendipity to stumble upon some moments of our past while on an Internet search! I relate to the frustration of fuzzy details, and I wonder what previous generations did to calm that frustration when they couldn't summon recall! The facade of the baths is so majestic! It must have been very impressive to you as a child! I really enjoy stories of your childhood. Keep up the web searches! Debra
ReplyDeleteThanks, Debra. I couldn't stop to deal with those memories at the time as I was in the middle of another post, so I made a note to come back to the link later and try to capture them in writing. I so agree with you about the frustration of our fuzzy memories and find myself online very often trying to confirm what I can't quite remember.
DeleteMajestic is a perfect description of the facade and similar classical facades were often found on many other public buildings of the time. We lived in an area where stone was plentiful, which added to the impressiveness. I think we thought such solid buildings would always be there.
Lots of memories evoked by this post Perpetua.Our outdoor lido style pool ( in a north london suburb) was the scene for our school swimming lessons....I just recall horrific coldness, and very unpleasant changing rooms. The pool was a fabulous social centre in the summer. Families would take picnics and spend the whole days there, lazing in the sun on the vast grassy banks surrounding the pool....I only remember swimming lessons in the cold though. Last time I was in the area, I noticed it had been filled in and was now a garden centre. Just off now to break up a few biscuits to have with my morning cup of tea before I go off to visit our new grandaughter...born last night ! Have a lovely day. Janice
ReplyDeleteA new grand-daughter, Janice, how lovely! Many congratulations to all concerned.:-)
DeleteSo you were another one who learned to swim in an outdoor pool. Given our British weather that must have been close to purgatorial at times, though wonderful in summer heat (when we get any!) Our baths didn't have changing rooms back then. Instead the long walls of the plunges were lined with little individual changing cubicles which a shy child like me really appreciated. Sad to hear that your pool too has gone.
When I was starting school we lived in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. School broke up in the summer around the 11th of June and re-opened early in September. Not far from where we lived the Kiwanis Club had an outdoor swimming pool which it opened to the town during the summer. On Saturday morning there were swimming lessons, where I had my first lessons. I was happy to see the pool is till there! At the age of 10 we moved south to Connecticut and our house was on the road to Burr Pond State Park, which was a quarter mile away. So for many summers I had daily access to the water. My high school building was next door to the local Y and as part of our physical education we were required to take swimming and the school had a find competitive swim team. Most of us became very adequate swimmers and in fact swimming is the sport I am best at -- though not fast, I do have endurance.
ReplyDeleteLike you, though, I have terrible vision and have needed glasses/contacts since I was about 11. I do find it frustrating to be out in the lake and unable to see very well and have often thought how nice it would be to have optical goggles!
Southport still had the old baths here when we first came in the early '80s. Sadly these beautiful building were torn down and a boring old complex thrown up in its place! Lovely, interesting post, Perpetua!
note to The Broad..... my husband has prescription lenses in his goggles.... not precise, but close enough to make him feel more confident in the water without his glasses....first came across them in Australia when they were offered as a matter of course for snorkelling trips on the barrier reef. he did a bit of googling when we got home and found UK suppliers...not expensive either. J.
DeleteThanks, Broad, glad you enjoyed it. Gosh what incredibly long summer holidays you had as a child. They make my 5-week summer holidays look very meagre. They would have given you so much time to learn things like swimming when the weather was good. I'm pleased to hear that the pool you first used is still there and I doubt the lake you swam in is going anywhere. :-) I wish I were a good swimmer, but I have neither speed nor endurance and not much skill either.
DeleteAs a member of the fuzzy vision club you must be as interested as I am to read Janice's note about the prescription goggles. Thanks for that, Janice.
What lovely memories. I'm very much enjoying the visual of the pool being covered by a wooden floor for the dances...
ReplyDeletePearl
Hi Pearl and thank you for visiting. Doing memory posts is always fun, as it triggers such wonderful memories in the comments too. We all realise we're not alone in whatever it is. :-)
DeleteThe dance floor was huge and very good. According to the research I did it was made of maple, one of the very best woods for the purpose. It shows that the council didn't skimp on building quality, even in the midst of the Depression.
I get rather sad that so many of the 1930s open air baths and lidos have been done away with. Perhaps the saddest is at Severn Beach, near Bristol, which used to be a holiday town but then had everything that was fun in it removed to make way for coastal defences. There is a little row of shops and lots of houses and a terribly forlorn abandoned little funfair.
ReplyDeleteDon't want to seem downbeat, though, because I enjoyed your memories of the baths. Funny isn't it that those broken biscuits have also lingered in your mind as a great treat!
I feel downbeat too, Jenny, when I think of what has been lost, whether lidos and outdoor baths or the dignified and well-built indoor baths of my childhood. The loss of the one you mention sounds particularly sad, and I must google it when I have time. I know times and needs change, but how many of today's glossy leisure centres will still be fit for purpose 30 years down the line, let alone 70 or 80?
DeleteAs for the broken biscuits, they were an essential part of the swimming classes experience at primary school and really were a treat. My mother and grandmother were good cooks and sweet treats at home tended to be home-made cakes and puddings rather than shop-bought biscuits when I was little.
This is a lovely post, how it brings back lovely memories. Firstly of my junior school, which was also in a small village and with only two classes, big and little class. We didn't have swimming lessons until we got to secondary school and then it was to a local hotel which rented out its OUTDOOR pool !! With OUTDOOR changing cubicles !! Gosh, I can remember how frozen I was most of the time but I loved swimming and eventually became a sub-aqua club member and instructor !!
ReplyDeleteAnd those broken biscuits......can you still buy them? How I loved the custard creams and bourbon biscuits and how disappointed I was if the bag had mostly "nice" biscuits and rich teas !!
Happy days !!
Thanks, Jean, I'm glad you and so many others have enjoyed going back to your childhood memories. We all have them and it's fun to see the similarities and differences between us. You obviously belong to the spartan outdoor club, though I think outdoor changing as well as outdoor swimming was unduly harsh. Brrr!! Well done for conquering the shivers and becoming a very good swimmer.
DeleteAs for the broken biscuits, I doubt they are sold loose any more but I have in the fairly recent past seen sealed bags of 'imperfect' biscuits for sale in supermarkets. Must check whether they're still available. There's something rather endearing about the lucky dip aspect of a bag of broken biscuits. :-)
Memories are a wonderful thing. I remember visting an outdoor swimming pool in Wales as a child. I vividly remember the pool, the changing cubicles and the little paper ticket we got with 3D printed on it! (Makes me feel quite old!)
ReplyDeleteAren't they just, Sue? It's amazing how little it sometimes takes to release a huge cache of almost forgotten memories, like your threepenny ticket to the outdoor pool in Wales. I bet that was a pretty chilly place to swim most of the time. Wales isn't known for being the warmest place in Britain and I would think heated outdoor pools must have been unknown back then.
DeleteI love how one little thing can open up the memory floodgates too! Unfortunately, this lovely post of yours has reminded me of the dingy, smelly pool that we had to go to as school children - Drummond Road Baths in Bradford. Deeply yeuky. I shall stop now before too many memories crowd in.
ReplyDeleteAs for custard creams - Dee, you're not missing anything! Strange, isn't it - I had a real aversion to these sort of biscuits and particularly disliked Bourbon and Gypsy Creams. For once, Perpetua, we don't coincide - but never mind, your post is as engaging and well written as usual. I just don't share the fondness of your memory. So a big hug instead! Axxx
LOL, Annie! There's always one, isn't there? :-) I'm sorry that the memory evoked for you isn't as enjoyable as for most people, but given what you say I can quite see why. Interestingly I've just googled the baths you mention and found that it was closed last year by the council in the face of a great deal of local and historical society protest and put up for sale, despite being Grade II listed.
DeleteAs for biscuits, as it happens my tastes have changed since those far-off days of swimming and broken biscuits and I too am no longer fond of the cream-filled ones. Too sweet for my taste nowadays, so we're not so far apart after all. :-) Pxxx
Like you Perpetua - I too remember journeys by bus from the two different Primary Schools I attended in order to attend swimming lessons. But our destination was a post WW2 swimming pool that was part of Coventry Teacher Training College (now subsumed as the Institute of Education within the University of Warwick), not grand municipal swimming baths dating from the 1930s.
ReplyDeleteOne of the great attractions of the secondary school that I attended was that it had it's own indoor swimming pool. Swimming along with Tennis, were the two sports at which I excelled as a teenager and I successfully represented my secondary school in both.
I was pleased through reading your post, to discover that I'm not alone in looking something up via Google, & then, seeing something else that distracts me, going off at a completely different tangent.......
Those trips to the pool for swimming lessons are an indelible part of our childhood, Ricky, whether or not they had the desired effect on producing good swimmers. In your case they certainly did, as you must be good to have been chosen to represent your school. Having your own swimming pool for practice must have helped enormously. I notice that tennis, not cricket, was your other school sport which surprised me a bit, knowing your fondness for cricket nowadays.
DeleteI very much doubt that you and I are the only two people who can easily be distracted on a a Google search and find ourselves wandering along completely unexpected byways. :-)
What a vivid evocation! I almost feel as if I had been there with you. As a child I was unusually lucky in my early swimming lessons: after a few months of introductory lessons in a cold Scottish pool, my family moved to SIngapore and my instruction continued under the palm trees of my parents' club in tropical heat. These days I have the same problem as you, though; namely an inability to see beyond the end of my nose, which renders swimming a disconcerting blur!
ReplyDeleteGosh, you were lucky, DB. Learning to swim in the warmth of the tropics must have been heavenly and a great improvement over the chilliness of most UK pools back then. I'm sure I would be a much better swimmer nowadays if I'd learned in those surroundings. :-)
DeleteThe blur thing is awful. I usually keep my glasses on now if I go to the pool or the beach with the grandsons and haven't lost them so far.
P. S. Oooh, custard creams.... :)
ReplyDeleteI'd rather have a nice sharp ginger snap or a chocolate biscuit nowadays, DB :-) But back then I loved custard creams....
DeleteGreat trip down your personal memory lane.
ReplyDeleteI can just remember my first swimming lessons -- I was about 4 or 5 it was outdoor but unlike Jean's experience lovely and warm [we were living in Los Angeles at the time]. Huge -- in my memory anyway -- pool and a guy in a floppy white hat called Chuck taught us crawl. I loved it!
Glad you've enjoyed the trip, Antoinette. How lovely for you to be one of the lucky ones like Dancing Beastie who learned to swim in the warmth and sunlight of a hot climate. Nowadays of course children are taken swimming almost from birth, but back then 4 or 5 was quite young for swimming lessons in my experience. I love the fact that you still remember your teacher's name and floppy white hat. :-)
DeleteWonderful post Perpetua. It brought back so many memories of my own swimming excursions but at nothing so beautiful as your Baths. And those broken biscuits...they were our weekly treat from the corner grocery shop. Yum.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Astrid. I can imagine that learning to swim must have been a more comfortable experience in Australia, even if your swimming baths weren't as beautiful as mine, and swimming in Hawaii must be a total joy. The time I came closest to really loving swimming and the water was on a holiday in Barbados over 20 years ago. The warmth and clarity of the sea was magical.
DeleteI love the fact that your corner shops sold broken biscuits too...
This was an enjoyable post. At least the town kept the façade of the building. It is true that you can find some sites on the Web and suddenly your memory is triggered. I saw an old ice skating ring in Paris on the Web – which was a swimming pool in summer – and I was back being a teenager and going skating there. I wish I had taken many photographs then but at the time I had a regular film camera and would only use it in summer on holidays. I enjoyed reading about your school. When I went to school in England, before going to bed we would drink a last cup of tea and would eat a custard cream along with the tea.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Vagabonde, I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's interesting that the place you remembered because of a Web link was also a dual-purpose building, with separate winter and summers uses. I wonder if that kind of thing still happens nowadays? I certainly share your regrets about all the things you didn't photograph in your youth. In my case it was because of the cost of film and processing and because it just didn't occur to me to photograph the places and buildings I took for granted.
DeleteI smiled to read that custard creams were part of your childhood too. :-)
Perpetua,
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely walk down Memory Lane.
But you know what? You, as a librarian, very effectively archived these memories and photos on your blog. Your family will always have access to your memories, just one click away. No more searching the Internet.
I like that...from one librarian to another. :)
Hi Nerima, glad you enjoyed the trip. You have put your finger one one of the main reasons I so value blogging and indeed I mentioned this in my anniversary post a couple of weeks ago. I will never write a memoir, as I'm just not that kind of writer, but I love the thought that my memories (fuzzy as they are sometimes) will still be here for my family and friends after I'm gone. I find that a fantastic thought!
DeleteYour description was so vivid that I thought I could smell the chlorine!
ReplyDeleteI loathed swimming lessons and was delighted to catch what was then fetchingly called African Foot Rot which allowed me to stay in the library while he rest went down to the torture chamber.
I had not appreciated having my head shoved under water in a bath of bleach!
The school and I came to a sort of turning of blind eyes agreement, as we did over cookery and needlework classes.
Mr. Fly later taught me to swim - after a fashion - in a nice warm pool in Egypt, but it still doesn't appeal much.
LOL, Fly. I never thought I'd hear someone rejoice at having caught Athlete's Foot. :-) African Foot Rot sounds so much worse - enough to excuse you from swimming indefinitely. Mind you, your school sounds very different from mine. I can't imagine negotiating any kind of an agreement which would have let me off classes, even hockey which was my bete noire.
DeleteA nice warm pool in Egypt does sound tempting, though....
I was dumped in goal for hockey..I suppose they thought the pads would anchor me. Fat chance. Once my legs turned blue I was off to the library.
DeleteAfter half a year...library permanently.
I think African Foot Rot was a sort of ingrowing corn. I remember it being burned out.
Oh, you rebel, Fly! :-) I wouldn't have dared, though library instead of hockey would have been my idea of heaven. Ah, it was a verruca you had - the scourge of public swimming. I can still remember the fun of trying to get rid of the ones DD caught....
Delete