Our house was provided with light from a lovely, ticking gas-making machine. Petrol was poured into it and a weight that pushed the gas through copper pipes into the house was powered by winding a lump of concrete to the top of a tree (trees were obviously useful). To ignite the gas, a mantle had to be fitted to wall-hung sconces. These mantles were of soft material, like a small bag, attached to a ceramic ring. Fitted to the gas supply and before turning on the gas, the mantle had to be lit. After its flame had subsided the gas could then be turned on and the now very delicate mantle, lit. The light given off was soft and very pleasant.
There was never any shortage of water as my father was an expert water diviner. He had selected two sites for wells from which the water was pumped up to a tank in our roof by a Swift car engine that had been bolted into a slab of concrete. But as the engine often failed to work, we all took turns to pump the water up by a hand pump in the kitchen.
The cooking, hot water and irons were catered for by a night-and-day, coal-fired, black-leaded kitchen range, on which was often a pressure cooker filled with water and cabbage. The resultant liquor was thought to be health-giving by my father. The smell was unpleasant.
The kitchen was a focal point for us children, especially in winter. Connie, our maid (charming, but smelling of carbolic soap) made wonderful cakes there and allowed us to lick out the mixing bowls. The range also provided us with barely-enough hot water for our baths and hot water bottles that we took to our freezing bedrooms by candle light to warm our beds. There was no central heating in those days.
Connie, who lived in a room near the back door, had a boyfriend who was the local steam roller driver. He would leave his bicycle in bushes and climb into her bedroom through a very small window - when just around the corner of the house was a much larger window, which would have been far easier.
I once visited Connie's parents house in Tadley (where the gypsies came from) and when the door was opened, there in front of me, was a vast black pig hanging from a hook on the wall. I suppose that it was about to be cut up. I was impressed.
A man whose job it was to be in charge of a section of road, was called a length man. He mended pot-holes, trimmed hedged and cleared drainage ditches. I'm sure he also needed the services of Connie's steam roller boyfriend. Anyhow, our local length man was a friend of mine and I would sit on the verge of his road, sometimes to share his cold tea, bread, cheese and raw onion - I imagine much to my parents' displeasure.
To get into and out of our village, it was usual to cross over streams by a ford. Whether length men were in charge of keeping these in order I do not know.
Beside an adequate supply of eggs and chickens from the farm, we were almost self-supporting in fruit and vegetables. My father was an agriculturalist and very proud of his kitchen garden, from which we had many vegetables and much fruit - a lot of it being preserved as jam or in glass jars for the winter. At one time, when he was very pleased with a fine crop of giant gooseberries, we woke one morning to find that the whole lot had vanished. The gypsies had penetrated the hedge that separated us from the road and stolen the lot - every one, and at night. I'm sure we called the local policeman, whose name to us was "not good enough".
I was not meant to play with the village boys, and at one time when I went with them to catch newts, and thus gone missing, "not good enough" was called to find me.
When I went to the local pub to collect beer in a jug for Mr. Beer, I would pass by where the newts lived and left them and the village boys well alone.
Going to church on Sundays was a must. We walked there along a Roman track, crossing a pre-Roman fosse, and where a toad lived in his hole. Near to it was where long-tailed tits tended to build their lovely nests of moss and lichen. Then we passed through where there had been an entrance to Calleva Atrebatum, the Roman town. In our designated pew in church we had to listen to long boring sermons and in an atmosphere that smelled strongly of death-watch beetle spray. It was a great relief to retreat afterwards to enjoy Sunday lunch, cooked by Connie as we were supposed to have communed with God.
