Ah, Summer !

A Memory of Rickmansworth.

Each summer we would set off, my mam and dad and I and the dog, Raq, in our 1938 Morris 8 to travel from Hartlepool to Rickmansworth to stay with Uncle Charlie and Aunt Sally Charters who had the grocery shop in Norfolk Road (number 55, I think it was). It was a huge adventure every year, setting off at 6 a.m. and travelling down the A1, stopping for tea on the cobbles at Biggleswade, just beneath the house martins' nests on the front of the hotel and shops. We would arrive at about 8 p.m. to a meal of Uncle Charlie's home-cured and boiled ham which was always in great demand from his customers.
I played with Nobby who lived across the road and his friends, usually fishing for tiddlers in the water splash or trying to catch fish in the canal at the end of the road. The water splash was always warm and clear, awash with fish just asking to be scooped up in our nets and popped into our jam-jars with string tied round the necks as carriers. Invariably we'd take them back to Norfolk Road and set the fish free in the canal, having climbed over the road-end wall, or drop the fish into the little beck ( I suspect it was just an overflow from the canal) which ran down the end of Uncle Charlie's garden. Someone had told us that the fish in the canal could be lured by bread soaked in geranium essence and we spent ages trying to get up the nerve to buy some at a chemist's on the High Street, because we had also been told that only adults were allowed to fish with geranium essence !
Uncle Charlie used to deliver boxes of groceries from the shop in Norfolk Road to people in Croxley Green, cycling there with his delivery bike piled high, just like Granville (Open All Hours). In 1954 he managed to buy an Austin Ruby which made his job a lot easier.
We would stay in Ricky for a fortnight, often visiting London and, every year, a warehouse on the Edgeware Road to buy household goods because they were much cheaper at trade price - retail price maintenance existed then. I can still remember the frilly chintz eiderdown which chafed my neck at night !
One of the highlights of visiting Ricky was the leaving ! Aunt Sally always gave me an Oxo tin totally filled in Uncle Charlie's immaculate packing style with chocolate bars, sherbert suckers, Spangles and other delights to keep me well nourished on the ten-hour journey back home.
None of my friends at home had ever heard of Rickmansworth, nor had visited London, so I always had lots to tell when I got back and could cope easily with the "My Summer Holiday" story we had to write when school started again in September.
How I looked forward to the next year's holiday with the same adventure and delights ! Memories, eh !