大象传媒

I spent much of my very early years as an evacuee.

鈥淭hey bloody Lunnoners" - that's what they called us when we arrived among them. But we soon got to know each other well in those Somerset days of my childhood. My elder brothers had been there for some weeks, having been labelled, gas masks ready and food for the journey, not really knowing where they were going! They were billeted in a hostel before finding homes in our Somerset village with the lovely name - Shepton Beauchamp.

I remember visiting them with Mum when they had a garden fete. In the corner of the garden was a tent with the magic words "Water Otter" on the sign outside. As a four year old fascinated at the chance of seeing one of these creatures - something a 'Lunnoner' did not often get the chance to see - Mum let me go in. What a disappointment! Just a boiling kettle in the corner!

I remember those days when we used to pinch the walnuts off the big tree behind the Village Hall - and got our fingers brown from peeling the skins.

I remember throwing old bottles against a wall, knowing I shouldn't, and getting paid back by getting a cut on the finger from an already broken bottle, the scar is on my finger still.

I remember a horse and trap outside my Aunties, they were all Aunties then, and the driver dropping his hard won Woodbines in a puddle and picking them up in the hope that they would dry-out!

I remember the day when our hearts were raised, the day when one of the villagers said to Mum "It'll soon be over, the Ities have surrendered". But it went on for some time after that!

I remember the lorries and the tanks, and the Americans who stopped in our village, resting before going on to somewhere. It must have been D--Day. Anyway, they had plenty of gum which pleased us kids.

I remember the magical tin given to me by the Red Cross lady, taken from a parcel from America. I played with it in Big Lane, rolled it away - and somehow it always came back to me. I wish I still had it, perhaps I could find out how it worked!

I remember Greta at the village school. We were going to kiss in a school play! I'm glad Mum decided we could go home to London for a while because I didn't want to do that!

I remember the cuff around the ear the village schoolteacher gave me because I got my sums wrong. She didn't wallop me because of that, it was for turning her crosses into Swastikas!
I remember being the talk of the village - for being a bad boy. Some farm workers had dropped a box of matches near a hay rick, Some of us 'Lunnoners' found them and decided to have a bonfire. Try as we might, by stamping on it, throwing earth on it, even peeing on it, we thought we had put it out. Bernie looked back as we walked away from the field, "The rick鈥檚 on fire" he shouted! I didn't stop to find out what else he might have said, I ran! It is likely that Roger Bannister need not have bothered all those years later! I know I ran into the biggest hiding Mum could give me. The policeman took the colour of my eyes and everything. But the Rector, who we were staying with, told Mum "The villagers are battling for front seats up there at the fire. They haven't had such excitement for years". Which seems odd when the rest of the world was at war!

I remember fields of golden corn, the threshing machines, the death chase of dog after rabbit, of cider and fresh baked bread beside the field in the glowing autumn days, of horse drawn harvester machines, no tractors then, and stooks of corn thrown on the haycart with pitch forks, of rides back to the farm on swaying carts.

I remember telling Mum "Look, that cow's giving that bull a piggy back!" There was a lot for a very young Londoner to learn!

I remember the building on the farm where the butter was made, and the fresh baked bread that came for tea. Of Sunday dinners packed on baking trays, taken to the village baker for roasting in his hot oven.

I remember my first visit to the pictures, watching the men put up the screen in the Village Hall, sitting on a window ledge to watch Sabu the Elephant Boy. And my friend who asked his Auntie if he could go to the pictures with me. "You watch them pictures on the wall" she said. "But they don't move" said he. "I'll soon make the b.....s move if you don't shut up".

I remember the dimly lit rooms in cottages, strewn with Balaclava helmets and knitted gloves made for the serving soldiers, rooms lit only by tubed oil lamps and candles. The electrics didn't arrive in our village until the Queen was crowned.

I remember the Italian prisoners of war making rings from our threepenny bits, helping in the orchards, of Morgan Sweets, how I wish I could have one of those apples now.

I remember fields of buttercups among the cow pats, banks of primroses and violets in the Spring and, in the Autumn, armed with crooked sticks and jam jars, collecting blackberries from the hedgerows, and hazel nuts.

I remember my Auntie giving me what was, perhaps, my first Mars Bar - or something just as tasty.

I remember the beautiful village church, as big as a cathedral it was to me then, where harvest festivals were safely gathered into the church, you couldn't move for sheafs of corn and produce from the fields. Of the church organist who rushed the final hymn so that she could get to the bakers to collect her Sunday roast.

I remember these things as though they were yesterday. Of a time when our country was on the brink of devastation but my childhood was whiled away in tranquillity among such splendid hosts.

They remembered too. Some twenty five years after the war I went back to my village for the first time. Big Lane, so wide in my childhood, now a narrow winding way. Pavements, which had appeared so high, were as nothing. My cathedral church, now so small, was visited and there, after all those years, was Mrs. English, my brother's Auntie.

"You're one of the Hegarty boys. Aren't you John?"

"No, Ron" I said.

But I am glad she remembered.

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