The Thirties

My grandmother, widowed, lived during the 20s and 30s at 1, High Street (next to The Dolphin), and was glad of family visits to assist in her invalid-style of life.  That usually meant our family, and my mother took a number of 'Busman's Holidays' each year to help her mother, my Gran.   We children became familiar over the years with the village, especially the Upper Middleton part.  My grandfather had been schoolmaster at the Primary School; he was called William George.

Gran's cottage had, like many, a rather decrepit pump in the garden as its water supply (see Nancy Long's History).  A large apple-tree stood in the garden and - of course - a vegetable patch beyond.  Over the low garden wall, in Cotswold stone, lay the Jerrams' farmyard; it was usually quiet, but one day I was to observe the killing of a pig (my parents might have been horrified had they known of my secret observation.)

I lived in S.Wales, where coal was cheaper, and delivered by tipping a ton, loose from a cart, on to the pavement.  The coal was soft - one could sometimes crumble it in the hand - but Gran's came in strong sacks of 1 cwt. and was utterly different in nature, in smell and in performance.   This impinged on my young mind; but not more than that my Gran had electricity, magical to us whose house, and streets used town gas only.  To me it just didn't gel with this house where every drop of drinking-water must be boiled , but ours was clean, from taps!

It was a climax to my memories of M.C. when in 1941 I came face-to-face with a village lad aboard a troopship in mid-Atlantic on a grey November day, for only recently he and I had been acquainted as boys.  He was from Queen Street; we were not even known to each other by name.  Our ship put in to Durban harbour, and I wound up in the Suez Canal zone.  Other drafts sailed into the hands of the conquering Japanese in Singapore.  Where are you now ?

In 2008 I have driven through the village yet again.  It looked thoroughly well-kept, still a good place to call 'home'.  Round Gran's old front-door the sparse roses have given way to rich berberis; one could only guess what other changes lay inside that loved cottage.  Does the pump still clank ?