I think the year was 1959, as I was actually,
in company of one of my brothers, spending the summer holidays
at home. My parents were still doing their first of three
stints in India and usually I would have gone over and spent
the time with them but as it was only a 4 week break, due
to the Ministry of Education doing a ‘Term Adjustment Period’
following everything getting out of whack during the war,
there just wasn’t the time. Anyway Mrs. Thompson was quite
capable of taking care of us and I think she and her husband
liked having the house in use for a while, it must have
been very boring looking after a big cold empty place.
Alas Carol Vickers had gone from the village
(1957 Last Train into Staffords Wood Halt) but most of the
others were still around including Dickie Warner, Mandy,
Dave Wellman, Chris Miles, Barbara Hatson, Tom Eager and
a few others where I can still see the face but the name
is gone.
Thirteen (ish) is a strange age, you are
neither one thing nor t’uther, no longer a small child but
not yet a ‘young man’ you seem to be invisible to adult
eyes and even when noticed it is with a look that says ‘Come
back in 5 years or so’. The females seemed to weather this
time period better, the ‘little girl’ look was fading and
they were starting to fill out where girls are supposed
to fill out, however, they were still a bit on the ‘gawky’
side, you know, all legs and elbows and prone to tripping
over and falling out of the tree they were climbing. Actually
a lot of stuff was changing, but you only appreciate this
fact when looking back from the far future.
More elderly people were residing in ‘Retirement Homes’
in the country. Usually they were sent there by relatives
who now had control of the oldies money and property which
had been signed over to them to avoid death taxes. These
retirement homes were mostly the big old country houses
that had been revamped to take about two dozen guests. The
fees were pretty high as these were not for the common man,
but it did get people ‘out of sight’ and this is what their
relatives (mostly their children) wanted. I guess it’s just
part of the make-up of the human race to dismiss parents
as soon and as cheaply as possible. Oxted had a couple of
these retirement homes close by but in the early years you
seldom saw the residents, it seems they were kept too short
of actual cash to do much gadding about.
There is little doubt that these oldies would have been
very bored and not a little frustrated and angry. They had
been well placed in their community and were now, unloved,
unwanted, baggage in strange places. Their money was being
spent by children and their spouses and kids and that must
have been very hard to take, especially when you didn’t
even have enough money of your own left, to go to the cinema.
The older element from the village itself
had a few other options open to them to help fill in the
day, for the men the most favoured were their Allotments.
This was a funny system that was extremely popular in England.
You got a designated ‘Allotment Plot’ from the council,
each was a bit of land about 100ft by 100ft and you could
use this to grow flowers, vegetables, fruit, whatever you
liked, everybody also put up a small garden shed at one
end of the plot to house spades, forks and other equipment.
It would be in a much larger area of allotments, there could
be a hundred or so in any one designated area. Now, although
these were supposed to be used to help people be self sufficient,
a secondary result was that it gave the men a place to which
an escape could be made. Many sheds held more than a few
bottles of ale and there was a deal more pipe puffing, storytelling
and ale supping than actual cultivating.
A couple of men from the ‘Everest’ retirement home applied
for allotments, initially they got refused as they weren’t
actual rate payers but there was such an outcry from the
villagers that the council had to reverse its decision and
6 plots were allocated to the home.
By the time I got home for the short holiday
the retirement home mob had been cultivating their assigned
allotments for around a year and they looked just grand.
Three were mainly flowers and three were taken up with vegetables
and shrubs of some sort. I had heard that the rodents that
ran the home at first refused to let their ‘guests’ have
the allotments, however this changed after a visit from
the local constabulary in the form of Bert Bonney and Sergeant
Benbow. They had decided to erect two large huts, rather
than 6 regular size small ones and I guess it gave them
a place to meet away from the home. There was one difference,
usually it was the village men who tended the plots but
with the oldies it was a mixture of men and women and together
none worked harder.
Now, unbeknown to the retirement home staff,
the oldies were actually making a few quid by selling produce
to the fruit and veg shop in the village, they asked a reasonable
price and got the business. Selling a few fruit and veg
wasn’t going to make them rich but it did give them a limited
amount of money in their pockets and to them money meant
freedom. They also started to make a few fruit pies which
they sold to The Green Jug Tea Room; actually business was
quite brisk as there were extra police in the area trying
to get information about dodgy brandy that was turning up
in the area. It was good stuff but not legally imported
and that made the powers to be a bit miffed. Dad’s delegate,
as the acting local magistrate (only a part time role) got
involved as he was supplied with all the information from
the police, they had to keep local magistrates in the loop
and fully informed about progress. Now, the irony of the
situation is that my family right up to the Second World
War had been very active in the smuggling trade, indeed
they had been since around 1790. Brandy, or rather Cognac,
wine and later tobacco - all run in the dead of night between
France and the Sussex coast, where we just happened to have
a holiday house. Even then a family member was the local
magistrate so the chance of getting caught was very slight.
Only one mile from the centre of Oxted
was Old Oxted which consisted of one street running up a
hill. On this street could be found five pubs, not bad for
an out of the way place, but the road had once been the
main link between London and the coast. History has it that
in the 15th Century a mayor decided he did not want any
pubs in the town so he sent them packing (later, one dark
and windy night, he disappeared- funny that) As a consequence
the four pubs concerned moved just down the road to their
present location, joining the Old Bell which was already
there. All five pubs had survived a dozen wars and were
again flourishing, this was a time when the licensee was
born to the trade and the pubs handed down father to son
- naturally this also made them a bunch of rogues but of
the nicest kind.
Now it appears that there was little doubt
that the local pubs were flogging dodgy brandy but proving
it was something else again, the stuff was turning up for
miles around and neither the pubs or the customers were
complaining; it was cheap for the pubs to buy as there was
no duty on it and this, in turn, made it cheaper to customers.
So, apart from Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise bods, (who
nobody cared a fig for anyway) everybody was happy.
All the pubs had bottles taken away for testing to see it
it was genuine or dodgy and all came back as genuine - the
fact that the pubs had a nationwide spy system and knew
days before the cops turned up that there was to be a raid,
just might have had something to do with it. For me and
my mini-cohorts it was an exciting time, police cars and
strange men in suites moving around the place, just like
in the movies. We spent most of our days camped on the footpath
of Old Oxted watching the drama unfold and getting more
than a few chuckles out of the situation - somebody should
have told them that, in places, the road was too narrow
for two police cars to pass each other without severe paintwork
and bodywork damage; shame on you Constable Bonney and Sergeant
Benbow ...
It was hard to be torn away from action to return to school,
but it had to happen and I had to leave just when things
were getting interesting. By mail Mandy kept me informed
of developments but it appeared that the big investigation
had gone cold and things had almost returned to normal.
What a long term that seemed but at last it was over and
as my parents were back in England for Christmas, I was
again going home.
I had left with most of the leaves still green, now the
trees were bare, the ground frozen and hoar frost whitewashed
just about everything. On the first day I sat in McGregor’s
munching sausage filled buns with Mandy and Dickie. By now
all the police had gone back to Croydon leaving an unresolved
case and that made everybody very happy. However, things
were about to change and not for the better.
Most of what follows I only learned from
parents (listening in to conversations) and other village
kids. Some of it took a couple of years to become clear
- but never advertised.
About a week before I got back the ‘Everest Retirement Home’
was burgled and a lot of the oldies stuff was taken. People
were outraged at such a callous crime and the hunt was on.
Two days later a black Hilman car suddenly caught fire while
parked at the Village Green end of the main street. Nobody
was in it so it was all a bit of a mystery but the opinion
was that the engine must have been left running to keep
the heater going. However, when the volunteer fire brigade
got the fire out the boot was opened and there was all the
loot from the break-in. The owners of the car were three
men staying at The Hoskins Arms and they were soon in custody,
after all you can’t get much more caught than they were.
Naturally they denied everything but as they all had criminal
records it was ‘case closed’ even before the trial, (which
only lasted a day) and they got put away for 6 years.
Things started to return to normal, the Everest Mob now
had two very nice vans which they used to deliver fruit,
veg, flowers and a mixture of pies, not only in Oxted but
to surrounding villages. The oldies were now an integral
part of the village and it would have seemed strange without
them, they were such a cheery bunch, always at the pubs
or cinema or at Aggies for the dancing, yep they were real
goers and it was reported that the home itself was now quite
the ‘place of carnal sin’... go oldies.
Then, about a month after the trial, something
very nasty happened. Mavis Seal (one of the oldies from
the home) was delivering some pies to the Green Jug when
a car screeched to a halt and a chap got out waving a revolver
and forced Mavis and Miss Haley (the shop owner) back into
the tea room. It was thought that it was a robbery but that
was never quite (to the public) determined. What is known
is the Miss Haley (being a special constable) wasn’t putting
up with any guff from a two bit thug, neither was Mavis.
The Green Jug had a nasty counter, one of those where a
flap lifts to let you move in and out from behind it. It
was open when ‘The Thug’ forced the two ladies through but
when he followed a quick flip if the wrist by Miss Haley
had it crashing onto his head and it was a very solid and
heavy flap, all the villagers knew to keep well clear. This
resulted in the gun, as it was dropped, going off but only
into the floor. The robber then ran back to his car and
took off - but this was not his lucky day. The incident
of the ladies being forced into the shop had been observed
from Boots the chemist and by the time the car shot off,
Sergeant Benbow and one other were in hot pursuit in the
police car, no siren but it did have an electric bell which
was just as good. The two cars shot out of the village and
then took the small road north. Up onto the Downs and then
in an endeavor to throw off the police the thug took a left
onto the small track that led to the Chalk Pits - boy was
that a bad move. He never even slowed down when the track
ran out, just sailed into the air for a few seconds, until
gravity took over, then plunged into the old quarry - my
Oxted was becoming an interesting place again after slumbering
for a hundred years or so since the time of highwaymen.
Needless to say the chap was very deceased.
There things would have ended as far as
I was concerned but at the age of 17 my parents were killed
in a coach accident in France and as my two brothers were
overseas, I was left to go through all of Dad’s papers and
stuff. Most of it I simply passed to the family solicitor
Mr Turner of Turner, Turner and Farquhar but one file I
kept hidden and later read with so much joy that the pain
of the hour was diminished. I won’t put down everything
as there was a lot of legal stuff, just the core material.
It had all started with 6 allotments being
assigned to the oldies from the ‘Everest’ retirement home.
You see, people didn’t take the oldies very seriously this
was the first mistake. Within the home were ex civil servants,
some from high positions, High ranking military officers,
High ranking ex police officers, Ex company directors and
company owners, artists, accountants - well you name it,
they were there ... and they were pretty angry at the world,
the way the people that run the home treated them and their
relatives. However, all that expertise could never be left
dormant for too long before the tiger awoke. The allotments
were just the first step of a plan that just grew and grew.
The first six plots grew to 10, then to avoid any questions
they got another six in another council area using real
rate notices as proof of residence, borrowed from the legitimate
owners for a small fee.
They started off small, fruit, veg, flowers,
which got sold to shops within about a 6 mile radius. From
this money they started to ‘acquire’ brewing equipment.
One of the home residents had been head distiller for a
large English gin producer and knew the job backwards. One
of the two original sheds was set up with three kettles
(I think that’s what they’re called) the other for bottling.
At first it was pretty small time but the produced about
50 cases a week under the name of ‘Alpine Gin’ - a joke
or code as the home was called Everest, which also had two
meanings. At first they only had one van as it was all small
time, but later this grew to six - but only two sets of
duplicated number plates so that it appeared they only had
two.
Then a great stroke of luck sent a new resident to the home
who, before his kids got it away from him, had run 4 fishing
boats on the Suffolk coast. What his kids disliked was that
these boats were heavily into liquor smuggling (if you stick
to fishing you stay poor) - they liked the income but being
jumped up little snobs didn’t like the business, or their
criminal father.
Once this chap was a part of ‘The Gang’ they could expand
and not be restricted to selling their gin in the local
area. They sent ‘Elite English Gin’ to the continent and
in return got real Cognac, this, although beautiful to drink,
was little sold in pubs due to the price once all the taxes
and duties were loaded onto it. Then, just to keep the cargo
holds full they also brought in cigars and cigarettes.
Naturally, while all this was going on, the legitimate trade
in fruit, veg, flowers and pies still went on and in fact
kept expanding. They didn’t actually have anything to do
with the boats running to and fro this they left to the
professionals in the form of the old fisherman and his ex
cohorts. Now all this took a lot of organization. The bottles
came from 6 different companies, the cardboard cartons arrived
blank and were stenciled in the sheds, labels they designed
and printed themselves. Then there was distribution, fuel,
marketing (very tricky), transportation, payments made here
and there to ensure silence - yes, a hell of a lot of organization
and who better to do than a bunch who had been doing it
all their lives. Rejects from society that decided to form
their own. A new retirement home opened up about 7 miles
away and guess who owned it - right, the Everest Mob. This
they called ‘Longhurst’ and used it to undercut Everest
which went bad and had to be sold - guess who bought it
- right again.
All this had to attract unwanted attention;
for a start the London Boys were losing out on trade in
liquor and they wanted to know why. Being ‘in the know’
about things they soon got onto the Everest Mob and three
men were sent down to put the frighteners on the oldies.
This they did but during the night after the encounter the
home was burgled and all the loot turned up in the boot
of their car, which just happened to draw attention to itself
because it caught fire in the main street - strange that.
Next, two (not one) men were sent down to get nasty and
we know what happened there. It was always reported as one
man but there were in fact two of them in the car, I guess
one stayed in the car as driver ready for a quick getaway.
Now, let’s get real. There had, in local
circles, been suspicions about who was running the smuggled
liquor show for quite a while. The local police and Dad
weren’t fools but it wasn’t until things got nasty that
they decided to ‘unofficially’ do something about it. Sergeant
Benbow (in plain clothes) and dad went to see them at the
home and explained their future if they didn’t put a halt
to certain activities. It was made quite clear that they
had reached the end of their rope and unless they complied,
official action would be instigated. So that was that -
the smuggling and distilling stopped and they just reverted
to putting all their energy into the legitimate side of
the business. Actually it was no big deal as, by this time
they owned four homes and two hotels. Plus they had a small
20 acre farm which was used for produce to keep things running.
They were allowed to keep their illegal egg trade going.
Let’s face it, the government might instigate a law that
said all eggs must go through the Egg Board, but this meant
that eggs were about a week old before they got into the
shops and with about 40% added to the price. Everest Eggs
were in shops the following day (with a fake Egg Board Lion
Stamp on them) - Oh well you can’t get all the criminal
element out of such a scary gang.
Really nobody should be surprised at this
sort of operation. The English village has really only been
a peaceful place since the mid 19th century. Prior to this
they were all into something or other and bandits and highwaymen
ruled the roads - that’s why the big fortified houses were
there as a protection.
Plus, when people who have been honest and hard working
all their lives, suddenly find that it has availed them
nothing, the incentive to be honest rather thins. Good people,
left with nothing in a society that doesn’t give a dam.
I can understand perfectly that some crime becomes very
acceptable.
There was one other thing in the file I
found quite amusing. In the allotments could be found certain
large plants that the oldies explained were Indian Sunflowers
- I bet they got a big chuckle out of that. Dad knew what
it was as he had spent many years overseas on Indian and
other Asian stations. Today we call it Marijuana - no wonder
the oldies were always so blasted happy.
|
