A Village Boy

A Safe  Happy Childhood

   When I read about the bad things going on in this country, some nasty things going on towards children, it makes me feel so lucky to have had such a great childhood. Growing up in the late 60's and 70's for a child it was such a different world than today with no pc games or mobile phones to spend hours on, we were lucky if we had a good football and a safe bike to ride and board games were a real treat only coming out on winter nights or at Christmas.
   I lived all of my childhood in the Hertfordshire village of Ashwell, a large village full of thatched cottages, local shops and surrounded by farmland. There was a village school which we all attended up until we were 11 then it was off to the local secondary school and we even had a youth club which was open twice a week keeping us all off the street corners. Most weekends and summer evenings were spent on the recreation ground playing football, cricket or even tin can bottle washer, don't even ask ! I remember the rec was lined with the most wonderful old Elm trees, they were huge and we would climb them sitting in there branches for hours talking and watching the world pass by. Next to the rec was a pig farm, making the act of retrieving any footballs an exciting one tho I can't ever remember a pig chasing me.
   I was lucky in that my granddad and uncle lived in a big thatched cottage with a very large garden, even the local river ran through it, so you can imagine what fun I used to have. Helping in the garden was great and playing in the river raking old bottles out of the shingle would keep me happy for hours. There were chickens to look after too so egg collecting was one job I enjoyed doing. The cottage was a real hub for the family and other village people, never a day went by without at least two or three visitors having a cuppa in the big country style kitchen, even the old post lady and milk man would grab a few minutes warming up by the range on a winters day.
   Village life just seemed so safe and easy going, we would think nothing of spending some of our summer holidays around the woods building camps or going off on day long bike rides and when we were in our early teens we would be off at 6am to pea pick in a neighbouring village, a gang of us all on bikes with our plastic buckets hanging from the handle bars, a bottle of orange squash and sandwiches our mums had made us, I remember we got around 50p a net but don't quote me on that.
   I remember my first job was as a Saturday boy in one of the two butcher shops in the village, it was a good job, making sausages, burgers and taking out the deliveries on the big old trades bike, there was two of us, myself and Dean, we worked hard and I think we got about three pounds for the Saturday morning. The butcher was an old man and would shut up shop about half one leaving us to wash up, scrub the blocks and clean the floor, but he did let us help ourselves to sausages to take home for our mums, yet to say I'm sure we took more that he meant haha ! I know after we left the butchers we would both head to the local shop where we would spend some of our wages on sweets or the odd small toy, we were only about 12 so it was a big thing for us.
   My mum was a very kind lady, a great cook and a wonderful gardener, she was the kind of person who would do anything for anyone, pity all our family hadn't have been the same. My dad worked in the building trade and worked hard, he was good at his job yet some winters were hard when the snow and ice were around, the building trade in those days would often come to a stand still in winter weather. He was a great dad and still is, sadly we lost my mum when she was only 50, far too young an age to die.
   I don't think I could have wished for better parents and a better mum, well that was impossible, when I think of the things my mum did with me like making cakes and the hand made sweets at Christmas, not to mention putting up with the grass stains on my jeans every day after hours of playing football in all weathers and sometimes all through tough times, but I guess mums did that then, they had to, money was short and they had to make things stretch, yet we always had a dinner there on the table each night and mum always had a smile on her face.
   I think it's thoughts of those hard times back then that put the thought of us being more self sufficient in my mind, which is just what we have started to plan, but hey that's a story for the next blog. I could go on all day telling stories of my childhood but I better get to work, I can always tell them in the weeks to come.
   It's a sunny morning here in the fens and the garden seems to be alive with birds, most feeding their second brood, oh how I love this time of year. I never made it into the garden yesterday so I hope I'll get some jobs done later today.