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"It has a nice village green, surrounded by some old properties: cottages. There was the local baker, and next door to his little shop was the little post office, and his sister used to run the post office. A few houses along from there was a lovely big house, and Gordon Selfridge, the owner of Selfridges store had it as his country house. There was a very pretty little church there, in fact Keith and Marianne were married at that church. There was a lake [corrects self] a pond rather, there, a little children’s recreation area, swings, see-saw, things like that. The local cricket team - Norwood Green — used to play there on the green. Each year there was a fete. The village hall there was used quite a lot for parties and wedding receptions and things like that. It was the real, old village green. Real, old village really. Then they gradually started to build new properties. You could go through the lane off the green to Osterley Park, which was another lovely open area, with the lake and everything like that, and lots of people used to go there for picnics, but there were lots of walks there, you could go for a walk, cover a big area and come back to where you started sort of thing. The next village up was Heston, and that used to have its May Queen on the 1st May. It was devoted to country dancing and that sort of thing. It was quite a nice village community."

During World War Two

"The Bomb Disposal Unit was stationed in Osterley Park, and they had civilians attached to them as well. They used to come into the little local pub called The Plough. Sometimes all they had were mineral water and things like that in the pub, because beer was almost rationed at times. You never saw anybody drunk and disorderly or anything like that. They were very good the soldiers. Often they would come on to the green and bring sweets with them to give to the children from their sweet ration, which to the children it was like handing them the moon [laughs]. There was so much military around. Heston airport that was, is now part of London airport — so of course the military areas there. Bomb Disposal Unit was in the park. So there were people coming and going, various services, training for pilots in the — I forget the name of the area now. But you could walk, country lanes that lead right out to the Great West Road, which of course now is the, I am sure it is the M4 or something like that. People walked more, well there weren’t buses like there are now. People got used to walking. There was the local pub where they used to congregate; people made friends with people and that sort of thing; and some of these service personnel that were in training from other countries. People used to invite them home to their own houses and share their meagre sort of rations with them. It was a great sort of, get-together spirit, which helped. [In the village hall] they’d have little things there, and now and again you’d get a speaker there, there would be someone there to show people how to make their rations go a bit farther round, and that sort of thing. That was helpful. A section used to go there and sew: ‘Make Do And Mend’ as it was called. People did, they had to repair things. Perhaps if a child grew out of something, they’d take it to pieces and the younger one in the family would wear it. Because, all that, because clothing was on coupons. Even sheets, pillowcases, tea towels and everything. You still had to surrender your clothing coupons for that. I think it made people thrifty, totally different to today’s way of going on. Amazing really."

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