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One day when we were at tea in the kitchen at Pontlands, and the five of us were laughing somewhat immoderately over our innocent banter, and Libby was actually sitting on my lap, Mrs. Foster suddenly looked in at the door, and made some remark like, So this is what goes on! I think she required the billeting-officer to find Sidney and me new billets and to find her a couple of younger evacuees, and so on Tuesday February 13th I found myself trudging along with him in the snow, pushing my bicycle, to my fifth billet, with Leonard and Phyllis Rippon, Little Paddocks, Chelmerton Avenue, Great Baddow.
Contrary to what my post-1999 readers might readily imagine, none of these journeys between billets was accomplished by car. In this case it was a walk of over a mile through the snow, in the black-out, carrying all I possessed, taken as a matter of course.
Little Paddocks was a large modern house with a grand central staircase, and I had a small bedroom which had been in use as Leonard's dressing-room. There was a games-room with a full-sized billiard-table and a dart-board, a lounge and dining-room, a very long garden at the back, and a garden-shed where I could store my bicycle. There was a small office on the left of the front door, which they gas-proofed by applying thick felt to all possible window and door crevices and installing a door-curtain. Later they had an underground concrete shelter built outside the back door, for although Chelmsford had been designated a reception area, there were vital factories nearby, - Hoffman's, which made ball-bearings, and Marconi's, which made radio and radar apparatus. A German warplane was shot down whilst I was there, and I acquired a metal warning-label from its cockpit. As far as I remember, it read, Achtung nür maschine frei.
During the time when the workmen were constructing the shelter Phyllis Rippon felt obliged to furnish them with tea, but since this was a rationed commodity she used to pour an extra pint or so of boiling water into the tea-pot after breakfast, and pour off the workmen's tea when brewed into flasks. Later they had a loggia, a lean-to sun-lounge, added to the house, and workmen's tea was again produced.
Leonard J. Rippon was a tobacco-importer who had a shop in Chelmsford. His hobby was radio, and he drove a black Jowett saloon-car. About the lounge there were always pink boxes of cigarettes, of 2" square section by 9" in length, printed with the name Rippon Virginia, and their wedding-gift to us in 1951 was an elegant black spherical cigarette-lighter, which we never used.
Phyllis Rippon spent her time playing golf, badminton and tennis, and hosting or attending bridge-parties, driving a Morris 8, whilst Ruby, the maid, attended to the chores. I saw Ruby once, preparing for a bridge-party, cut a large white loaf horizontally into huge slices, applying butter, and cucumber cut very thin, and then cutting them into tiny crustless sandwiches about two inches square. I finished up the crusts. I realized years afterwards that the Rippons were then probably comparatively newly-wed.
My bicycle skidded on some gravel one day, and I deeply grazed the palm of my right hand. Ruby did not produce the familiar iodine-torture, and so I made my first acquaintance with Witch Hazel.
I could walk across fields from Chelmerton Avenue to the tin tabernacle, and on my way I used to cut a 'javelin' from the elders and throw it ahead as I walked, and conceal it in the hedge against my return. One morning Phyllis asked for me to be excused from attendance there and drove me to the golf-course to act as her caddie. She let me try my hand once or twice, but I have never had any wish to take up the game.
They had a cat, and a small dog called Sunday. He was a smallish terrier with a curly white coat, and the first and only dog I ever took regularly for walks. We went either around the nearby lanes or, at week-ends, over the Meads alongside the River Chelmer. He had the habit, when reclining in the lounge, of fetching a long-drawn heart-rending, snuffling sigh, which greatly amused me.
They were very nice to me. I sometimes played chess with Leonard. The latest score I recorded gave four games to me and two to him. I was most impressed by a large electric clock in the lounge, which he had made, and remembered him when about 1984 I made one myself. At the time, Phyllis Rippon was appalled at the amount of food I seemed to need, but later, after I had left, when she had a son of her own called Clive, she realized that I was merely normal. I was surprised by their habit of taking a quantity of butter and of marmalade onto their side-plate, transferring from there to the toast, and probably leaving some unused on the plate. I suppose it seemed to me both messy and wasteful, but no doubt they regarded my more direct method as uncouth. I know they were irritated by my habit of whacking my boiled egg all over with the teaspoon before peeling off the pieces, whereas they cut the top off, as I do now.
Whilst there I bought a season-ticket for the open-air swimming-pool in Waterloo Lane. I used to leave the house about seven a.m. and cycle there, often being the first to break the surface of the very cold water.
I wrote to them whilst at sea, and we exchanged letters annually after the War. Leonard died, and I visited her once in a little house she had built in a plot next to Little Paddocks. She was very pleased to see Daphne and me, and said to a friend who telephoned whilst we were there, Whom do you think I have here today? My evacuee! She liked to attend a big annual bridge-occasion in Eastbourne, and one day called at 63 Terminus Avenue to see us, but I believe only David and a few of his Scouting friends were at home. When Clive married, they presented him with a £10,000 house. He wrote to inform me of her death in the 1980's.
On Sunday March 3rd my parents visited Chelmsford together, and had tea with the Rippons. Travel was restricted, and they had to have a letter, still in my possession, signed by a J.P. vouching for the fact that their journey was necessary. Their return coach-fare was 7/- each. The reception-committee ran a place for visiting parents to obtain snacks or to eat their own food, open from 1100 to 1700.
On the 5th my father, having been put in charge of first-aid at Valence, and taking a turn also as a fire-spotter on the roof at night, was issued with a Civil-Duty gasmask and a steel helmet.
On Monday March 8th we were filmed by the Bruce Grove Cinema camera-man, and this footage must have been shewn in Tottenham because I later complained that they had not let us evacuees see our film, or waited until we got home for the Easter Holidays.
Some of my letters at this time mentioned supplies of sulphur-tablets which I used to take in the hope that they might reduce my adolescent acne, though I did not suffer as badly as some poor lads. However, my self-consciousness on this score led me into the habit of looking down rather than facing up to people who spoke to me, and this habit unfortunately stayed with me for very many years, perhaps into middle life, and perhaps contributed to my difficulty in remembering peoples’ faces.
On Thursday March 25th I went home for Easter, and on Easter Monday we visited the Horlocks in their new abode.
The Rippons took a fortnight's holiday in Eastbourne in March/April, and I lived temporarily with Mr. Charles A. & Mrs.A. Barker (A2,24 & 52) in a rather less grand house called Barry on the other side of the road — my 6th but temporary billet. They had a little car laid-up, as had many others, in their garage, but one day when they had saved up enough petrol to make a journey they took me with them to visit friends in the country. Mrs. Barker knew shorthand, and a young girl called Muriel G. Whiting came to her for lessons. I was very shy of girls, but Mrs. Barker used to tease me about being attracted to Muriel, and so she was the first girl I ever went out with. She lived in a very small cottage in a terrace adjoining The Beehive public house in Beehive lane. We went once or twice to the pictures, the first time on April 26th, and although we spent a great deal of time over saying goodbye at her front gate, I never summoned the courage to offer to kiss her. I was out walking with her once when I encountered our art-master. I was too embarrassed to greet him, and he later regaled the class with the tale of how I had turned a delicate plum-colour. It was this same master who, when I returned to the school after I had left, said, I didn't keep any of your work, though I did think of offering it to the School for the Blind.
I was invited to tea on Muriel's birthday, on Wednesday May 1st, and somebody had iced on the cake a rhyme about us sitting in the one-and-nines, to which we shyly repaired after tea.
On Friday May 10th the Germans invaded Holland & Belgium. I can remember the serious faces of the Rippons on the day when France fell, and from then on we daily expected to see German troops in England.
My grandma Adeline Julia Hill died on Friday June 7th, and I went home on the 12th for the funeral. On June 21st I wrote, I went and saw the remains of the Nazi Bomber that was shot down in Chelmsford. The trees all round were scorched. It came down in someone's back-garden, just between two houses and right across a road. If it had come down about 30 seconds earlier, it might have hit this house. It flew right round over Great Baddow. Mr.Rippon saw it shot down. It had no bombs on board. They were thrown out in Cambridgeshire.
On Thursday July 18th I went home by coach, and whilst there I visited Uncle Lance at his workplace. He was an attendant at the old Essex Road Baths.
From July 26th - 31st I spent a week at Westerham with my mother. In remember two very different swimming excursions. One was to the indoor baths in Sevenoaks. The other was to a small outdoor pool near or in Westerham. The latter was unheated, and fed by a spring, and was one of the coldest swims I can recall.
Strangely, I cannot recall why I left the Rippons. Perhaps Phyllis was expecting. However, on Monday August 12th I found myself at my seventh and last billet, with Mrs. Lockwood, The Chestnuts, New Road, Great Baddow. She was rather tall, with dark hair in ringlets. My letter+ home is full of complaints - tiny room, uncomfortable bed, no stowage, neither electric nor gas nor oil lighting in my room, no place for my bicycle, a piano that wouldn't play, no bath, and the house cluttered and untidy. My sojourn there lasted only eleven days. On Thursday August 15th my mother had an interview with the Headmaster in Chelmsford about this billet, and according to my father's diary, he rather encouraged her to bring him home soon, and on the 23rd I ended my time as an evacuee and went home, there being only forty Tottenham boys left in Chelmsford. All these billets are shewn in Ph5,22-26
On Friday 20th August 1993 I made a tour of Great Baddow and Chelmsford.
I heard that the old Regent Cinema was now devoted to Bingo. I could find no house named St.Helen's in Hillside Grove. However, I spoke to an elderly lady in her garden, who remembered the Wyatts, and all the details I have mentioned. She pointed out the house to me and I took a photograph. Mr.Wyatt had been killed in an accident on the bypass, and his wife had died. She had been nervous and a little peculiar, as I had noted, and had got worse.
In New Road I discovered by the aid of locals that Mrs. Gill's house, number 9, and its semi-detached neighbour number 11, had been demolished to make room for road-access to new houses behind, so I photographed number 7, which was identical. I met the oldest inhabitant, and he checked all my details as correct. Jack Gill had been posted as missing believed lost at sea, but had survived, and had recently revisited New Road to find his old home gone.
I found that Pontlands was now Pontlands Park, a four-star hotel with many additions, a restaurant and a health-farm-centre. We had a very good turkey salad there in the Victoria Bar, - a large room to the right of the entrance-hall, fitted out as a bar and lounge. A stained-glass window near the entrance bore the monogram JTF, a relic of the Thomasin-Fosters, and the date of their building, 1879. I took two photographs in front, and was given a very glossy brochure with more. The iron railings which had lined the drive were gone, replaced by wooden fencing.
In Chelmerton Avenue I photographed number 45, the Rippon's former home, and the small house next door which Phyllis Rippon had built there, having transferred the name Little Paddocks to it. I had not then found nor remembered the name of the Barker's house, so could only conjecture about it.
The old gentleman in New Road also told me which house had been called The Chestnuts, now 54, and remembered Mrs. Lockwood.

(A copy of this chapter was deposited amongst the archives of the Department of Documents in the Imperial War

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