Time Gentlemen Please!

A Memory of Thaxted.

We came to live in Thaxted in about 1950, and though we lived in one of  the Borough Cottages, Bolford Street, which then were in a bad state, for me,  fresh out of an institution ( I was only eight), it was the most wonderful place - and I still feel that way about it. I had my own bedroom, and though all it held was a brass-knobbed bedstead and a wash bowl, it was MINE and I could see the beauty of the world from it. The cast for the film 'Time Gentlemen Please' came to Thaxted while I lived there, and was filming on location by the Alms Houses, and because I kept getting in the way, the film crew eventually got me to hang round a lamp post waving a flag as a posh car came by. I think it was to be seen while the credits rolled, but I think it probably did not survive the cutting room floor as it is not on the CD of the film.
I remember Farmer Latham, and the windmill, which was in a less finished state than  now, and the Morris Dancers, and seeing the  wind ripple the grain in the fields and the barn that got burned down, next to the pigsties. I used to play in the stream next to the barn, and on the old army lorry in the back garden, and the tractor quietly rusting in the front. Oh, and I loved to see the stars and hear the owls screeching at night. Without doubt my entire childhood started and stopped in that place - and so sad when we had to move again. My mother worked at Lees sweet factory and would sometimes bring me home a small bag of coconut squares, delicious and sticky. There was also a home-made sweets shop in Thaxted, and when ever I smell night-scented stock, I remember that  place.
I had to take a battery up to the main street every now and then, to be charged, so we could hear the radio. It was quite a job, trundling it up on a little trolley

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