May issue - Magazine - Page 51
Glenside
News
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COMMUNITY
A Village in the Fifties
By Nigel Allsopp
IGrowing up in my home village in the 1950s is in stark
contrast to village life today. So many things have
changed, some for the better and some worse. It is one of
the privileges of getting older to be able to compare postwar austerity with the better times we now enjoy.
As a small boy I remember sweet rationing. It never
impacted on me as my mum and dad always kept me
well supplied, but some friends at school had parents
with a sweet tooth. I went to the primary school just
across the road and I shared my 'sucks' as we called them
with my two friends, Boris and Dicky-drop-dead. We
always used nicknames. Mine was not repeatable in
polite company.
Boris Arnold's father worked on a village farm and
Dicky's father worked as a warder at what was known in
those days as the local lunatic asylum. Boris always had
a good supply of apples as his dad's boss had a large
orchard and used to store the apples in an attic over the
stables. One of the perks of Dad's job was a steady
supply to take home. Most of them were supplied to
village shops during the year for what the farmer called
“beer money”.
Dicky's dad was a dab hand at making kites, catapults
and model boats to sail on the village pond. Dicky got
his nickname from the occasional fit he had. We boys
knew exactly what to do when he had a seizure. The
main thing was to stop him biting his tongue. Anyone's
none too clean handkerchief screwed up and inserted
between his teeth did the job. Then we would just watch
over him till it passed.
Newspapers were shared. The local doctor lived two
door up the road and would drop in his copy of The
Sunday Times for Grando (our family name for my
grandfather) in exchange for his newspaper, The News of
the World. Grando would remark, “Must get a balanced
view of the world”. The News of the World was often
referred to as The Screws of the World. As a child I
thought it referred to the screws in Dad's toolbox.
Innocence is bliss they say.
Our daily copy of the Leicester Mercury, once read
by the adults, would be handed on to elderly neighbours
with the words, “Can you use these to start your fire?” so
as not to seem patronising. Pensions then covered the
basics of life; newspapers were a luxury, so they did the
rounds of a number of cottages. My reading matter at the
time was Beano and Dandy. Mum worked in Oadby at
Thorpe & Porters which distributed magazines. Once a
month they brought out The Classic magazine. Each
edition of that was an illustrated version of books such as
Black Beauty, Robin Hood, Moby Dick and, best of all,
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fennimore Cooper.
Mum's boss would give her the latest edition for me.
After reading the print off the paper it was given to my
two pals, and no doubt passed on many times after that.
Early mornings I would lie in bed listening to Farmer
Perry's plough horses being led to their work by George
the ploughman. He was a man of incredible strength with
forearms like tree trunks from years of guiding the
plough. He lived with his dainty wife in one of the farm
cottages. They had two daughters about my age who
went to the village school and were very bright. One
became a vet years later, the other married and went to
London with her husband.
They were good villagers, joined in all the village
pastimes and were regulars at our local church. George
had a powerful baritone voice. We children made sure not
to be in front of him as they said he could rattle the
windows and loosen the slates on the church roof. He also
was a dab hand at poaching. He and Grando's bachelor
brother used to 'line net' a field gate or a stretch of poorly
maintained hedge at night, then walk their dogs around
the field and beat towards the net. Most times they would
be successful - hare, rabbits and sometimes pheasant, as
they would run and not fly because it was dark.
The net was about four feet high, 50 to 60 yards long
and made of a fine mesh material. They untangled their
prey and quickly despatched them, putting the lifeless
catch into the inside pockets of their long coats. The net
was gathered up and put in a backpack for the walk
home. If they were seen by the local constable he would
never question them as to why they were wearing heavy
coats in the summer, and he would find a hare or
pheasant on his doorstep when his shift had finished much appreciated during the war when meat was scarce.
If it was a pheasant he would quickly pluck it and
burn the feathers on his stove, though the whole village
would know what was going on by the smoke issuing
from the chimney. No feathers, no guilt.
A rabbit's foot lucky charm was not so lucky for the
rabbit. George gave me one as a boy from one of his
kills. When skinning the rabbit, the skin is cut about an
inch above the first joint and peeled back to the tendons
at the joint and cut off. The skin is then tied off and the
foot would be put on a shelf above the fire and left to
dry. Then the end was sewn up with a keyring loop
attached. I kept mine on my key ring until I was in my
mid-20s. A girl friend at the time used to admire it. Our
relationship was, to say the least, a bit stormy and one
day she disappeared to London along with my rabbit's
foot. At last, it had brought me luck!
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