Recalling a child's life in the late 1920s to the early 1930s

People made their own entertainment, and there was plenty - often centred on the village hall. Here there were evenings for plays, whist drives, jazz music (my father played the drums and saxophone) and dances, sometimes in fancy dress. Though small, we actually had a sprung dance floor in our house. On a grander scale was the 9 to 90 ball (I must have been 9 years old or over), where I remember a lady in a simple red dress held up from behind the neck, that when she bent over revealed her comely breasts. At that age I thought that it was rather disgusting. And there was the occasional ball at my grandfather's 18th century Strathfield Saye vicarage where, being gauche and young, I untied the bows on the dress of a girl I fancied. That was not the thing to do.

Foreign governesses, to educate and look after us children, came and went. One in particular hailed from Switzerland and became a family friend. I was staying with her family in Vevey when the war was eminent, so was put on a much overcrowded train and returned to England. 

We took part in plenty of other activities, too. We gave tennis parties, our grass court being so good that we children were often given a prize should we find a weed on it. 

Home-made lemonade was the thirst-quencher, dispensed from the shade of a wooden shelter that could be rotated as desired for sun or shade. There was the Schneider Trophy along the Solent to watch, where seaplanes of several nations raced. The British aircraft were powered by the newly-developed Rolls Royce Merlin engine, later to power many of our fighters and bombers in the upcoming war. The King's Cup air race sometimes took a course above our house. The mixture of private biplanes and racing monoplanes flew quite low in a handicap race around markers. They made a wonderful and colourful sight. There was car racing at Brooklands where we watched from the Home Banking to see such as Napier Railton and ERA cars race around. But for me it was aeroplanes and flight that fired my imagination. Alan Cobham would bring his Flying Circus to some farmer's field and take passengers up in an Avro Tutor biplane. I went for a flip at 7/6 had a loop-the-loop included.

But that was nothing compared with a flight from Croydon Aerodrome (then a large grass field as London's airport). It was 1931. Kingsford Smith had just flown in there from Australia in an Avro 10 Trimotor aircraft with the Christmas mail. It took a record breaking 17 days, crewed by an all-Australian crew - except that my uncle Wyndham Hewitt was his flight engineer and very much English.

Anyhow, Kingsford Smith's plane had a broken tail skid, so we were taken up (my brother Nigel and I) in a German Klemm Bat monoplane. We sat in the forward open cockpit on a bench, and had to hang on like mad in the wind and the exhaust of its in-line, air-cooled engine. I think it must have been a sales aeroplane with advertising words on its side and, unusually, had a prop boss fared into the streamlining of the fuselage. The type was very modern for its time and was used for training Luftwaffe pilots. It was made in many configurations, and a quantity were sold to Czechoslovakia and the USA.

The excitement and potential danger of flying stayed with me until I obtained my wings in the USA at the end of the war. 

The Silchester house was built next to a Roman road. Because of this it was quite usual for us to find Roman coins in the kitchen garden soil. The coins were of little interest to us as they were found so often, so they were thrown in a hamper. 

After my father died of radium poisoning (Madame Curie's triumph), we sold the main house and lived, mainly for weekends, and me alone in some school holidays, in the re-designed, and then thatched, ex-army sheds situated around the pear-shaped back drive. Much later, after I had joined the RAF and was working as a prop swinger, waiting for a place as a trainee pilot, I heard that the thatched house had burnt to the ground. No one knew quite how it had happened. Perhaps a tramp had broken in and set fire to it, perhaps an electric bed-warmer had been left on by mistake? Anyhow, all the Roman coins had melted away, and only an iron cooking pot and a lump of gold, found below where I had placed my watch in a drawer, were recovered. 

Although now much older and able to become an RAF airman, that was the end of my connections with my youthful existence at Silchester. Its time capsule had now been left behind - some of which I have now remembered in haphazard form and recalled here in print. 

Recalling a child's life in the late 1920s to the early 1930s (part 3 of 4)

With no refrigeration at that time, food that might deteriorate was kept in the larder - a small room on the north side of the house. Game was popular for us, but usually kept until it was almost crawling with maggots. A pheasant was always hung up by its two tail feathers until the rotting bird fell to the floor. Then it was ready to roast and be eaten. And very smelly it was - both before and after.

On certain days the muffin man would come to the village with his wares in a tray on his head. He rang a bell and shouted that he had muffins and crumpets for sale. We would bike into the village for them. But most of our food was delivered to the back door by van - baker, butcher, fishmonger and merchant. When dealing with the wine merchant, all used bottles were left out for him to re-cycle. And it was the dregs in those wine bottles I consumed that must have been the origins of my taste for and later writings on wine.

We also bought from the local village shop, where salt was sold by the block, flour, sugar and such by weight in blue paper bags, and fine bacon, which was sliced from the side of a smoked and boned pig by a circular, hand-turned blade. Its rib bones were much prized for flavouring soup. Butter was prised from a  large lump by wooden paddles and patted into shape before being wrapped in greaseproof paper. It was used for most cooking instead of oil. Olive oil was only obtainable from the chemist.

Although not encouraged to mix with the village children all joined in as players or spectators when our cricket team played at home. We children loved it, as there were plenty of wild strawberries to be gathered from around the boundary, and a stream nearby where we could catch minnows.

The local carpenter would take me fishing for chub on the river Kennet.

The village garage was an essential in those times when machines tended to go wrong or engines not to start. It was owned and run by "Uncle Sid". The floor was thick with oil and grease as engines leaked a lot at that time. It smelled of oil and battery acid.

On our bicycle route to swim in the mill pool at Aldermaston, we would pass the garage, then where our bread was made in an oven fired by faggots, and then stop to pick blueberries in a wood. At the mill was a sign that said: "Please pay before you bathe or else you will be...." That part of the sign had been broken off, so we never knew what punishment might befall us if we did not pay.

Should we ever bicycle by night, we had an acetylene/carbide lamp to rather warn others then light our way. Carbide was placed in the bottom of these lights and water allowed to drip on to it, creating acetylene gas, which was lit by a match.

For family transport and delivering eggs to market, we owned an open bullnose Morris car with a Dicky seat, which was great fun in dry weather and in the summertime - when it worked. On a nearby hill we had to get out and help push it.  

The town of Reading was about 10 miles distant - a long way for a child. I loved it when we  went there, mainly because it had a gun shop where I could spend my pocket money on lead pellets for my air gun and .22 cartridges for my garden gun. We went to Reading once just to see King George V's funeral on a newfangled television set. 

And at another time I stopped on the pavement to look at an African man on the other side of the street. He was the first one I had ever seen.

Bicycles were our main mode of transport, and when the hunt met nearby we knew pretty well where the fox would run to and be there on our bikes before the hounds and horses arrived.

The meets were a fine sight with the ladies sometimes astride on their horses or sometimes riding sidesaddle.  The men and master in pink (really red), the barking of the hounds and noise of horses and their hooves the greeting of fellow villagers, neighbours, and strangers, the handing up of sloe gin to the riders, made for great fun. But having a chicken farm meant that foxes were our enemies, so the more dealt with by the hunt the better. And you did not shoot the hunt's foxes. Nor should you shoot partridges out of season, as I once did with my garden gun when very young - bad form.

There was a hunting ritual called "blooding". This was an initiation into the world of the hunt. Ordinarily for those on horse, somehow we children, too, were blooded. It involved having a fox bloody skin rubbed over one's face, and to keep the blood on the skin unwashed for a period of time. I don't know quite how we youngsters qualified - possibly because we may have known the Master of the hunt.