I think we must have been the first guests at the Coronation Day party, but others arrived during the course of the next hour or so to take their places gathered round the TV set in the lounge. There are very few of them I can remember from the day, but there seemed to be an awful lot, some of whom I knew because they were relatives on mum’s side, others I didn’t – neighbours and business friends of Emlyn I guess.

Nana would have been there, also Uncle Geoff (Emlyn and Mum’s middle brother), Auntie Molly and our cousins Peter and Pam, and quite likely Uncle Griff and Auntie Mag who lived in a terraced house off Allerton Road, maybe a mile away. Another couple who might well have been there (because they always turned up at children’s parties) were Bill and Clara Masterton, Uncle Geoff’s in-laws, who also lived in Childwall. They were all such interesting characters in their own right that I’m saving them for a later “memories” blog.

Somehow we’d taken on board that Alan and Grahame didn’t have the full complement of grandparents; Lulu had apparently been orphaned quite young and brought up by an Aunt, probably her mother’s sister. I never knew her real name, can’t remember what she looked like, and I don’t think we ever exchanged words. She was just “Auntie”; she was probably there but was always a bit of a mystery.

So family alone would have accounted for six children and about ten adults; there may not have been many more than that, although there may have been that number again. I can’t remember any of the strangers, children or adults – except for one.

The Coronation ceremony in Westminster Abbey was three hours long, and a further eight hours of TV covered the processions to and from the Abbey. I can’t believe that even the novelty of television would have held the attention of Infants school age children for that length of time, especially through what was essentially a particulaly long, boring, church service. At some point we must have eaten, and I remember a table groaning under the weight of sandwiches, sausage rolls, cakes, and of course the novelty of cheese, pineapple chunks and little sausages on sticks. It was a long day close to midsummer and I’ve no recollection of how much time we spent indoors glued to “the box”, how much time eating, or how much time we spent outside in the garden. Luckily the weather was fine in Liverpool if not London, and at some point we all found our way into the garden to play games.

And that was where we met “Mr Hozey”.

I don’t think any of us, in our short lives, had ever come across a grown-up like Mr Hozey before. This was an era well before the term “children’s entertainer” had been coined so I’m pretty sure Emlyn hadn’t hired him to keep us occupied. He simply behaved like a big kid himself for what must have been more than an hour: playing ball games, hide and seek, every game imaginable. Yelling, shouting, letting us win and pretending to be cross with himself when we did. Thinking about it now, he too had probably been bored by the interminable Coronation service or the procession of assorted dignitaries and heads of state and decided children’s games on the lawn were a preferable option.

We never met Mr Hozey again, and although my memory is still vivid, I don’t think I ever mentioned him to my parents. However a few years ago quite by chance I came across the name Ian Hosie, in the context of the Liverpool newspaper world of the 50s and 60s, and it rang a bell. By that time there was no-one around to ask, and it wasn’t until I started committing these memories to keyboard that I thought I should look into him a bit more seriously to see if it was plausible that the newspaperman (Hosie) and the party entertainer (Hozey) could be one and the same.

Ian Hosie at his retirement do c. 1970

Much to my surprise a Google and Wikipedia search for Ian Hosie yielded absolutely nothing, and there was no-one of that name listed in the electoral records of Liverpool between 1920 and 1970. It wasn’t until I looked at the online British Newspaper Archive that his name cropped up in half a dozen Liverpool Echo articles. But there was enough detail there – including a photo – to make me 99% certain that I had the right man.

So we are now the only ones in the world to know that on Coronation Day seventy years ago the Editor of the Liverpool Daily Post* was not putting to bed a special edition of his newspaper, but playing silly games with seven year olds on my Uncle and Aunt’s back lawn.

*The Daily Post was (until 2012) the city’s main morning newspaper. If there’s any interest I’ll put the results of my research into “Mr Hozey” in a separate blog along with some of the press cuttings about him.