I must state, right up front, that, although
I was there, some of this I have had to guess at as at 10
to 12 years old you don‘t figure out a lot of ’grown up‘
stuff until you look back from the future and then things
either become more clear or get a different slant. Plus,
having had recent contact with some of the players from
these times and who remained in the area I have been able
to glean what developed
I think it was Agatha Christie who said
’Move any rock in a quiet English village and something
nasty will crawl out. I believe she got this very wrong;
I would put it as "Move any rock in a quiet English village
and something that reveals it as nothing more than part
of the larger world will crawl out".
Now Surrey being the Southern County and
famous for being very upper crust and populated by a bunch
of snobs, was actually anything but. For a start the County
had a lot of working class folk, who else could run the
farms, shops and small industry that was scattered around?
Actually, those that were classed as ’upper classes‘ were
just that and you don‘t really find snobs in the true upper
classes, snobs were made up 95% by the ’new money‘ people
and even here the women were the greatest offenders. Born
into working class and even lower working class families,
these women, who got money from husbands that either made
money on the black market or in that most despicable of
trades ’the film industry‘, were the very worst that human
nature could produce. Put it this way, they never got invited
to our house, not because of their backgrounds but because
they were thoroughly ’unlikeable‘. Those that acquired large
houses could never keep staff (well we had staff, of sorts
- but these viragos liked to say they had ’servants‘) because
they had no idea how to treat people apart from bullying.
Naturally the true village women had no time for them.
There are only two types of people who absolutely don‘t
give a toss as to what others think of them - tramps and
the aristocracy, both, you will find sitting in the gutter
eating a bacon sandwich ’coz they just don‘t care‘.
Although I didn‘t realise it at the time,
the village was suffering from the malady that was Britain‘s
post war curse, that of a surplus of women. Later I discovered
that the national average was around 2.8 females to every
male, in our little domain it was about 3.5. So many of
the young men had become flyers, mainly young men 18 to
25 and over 50 of them never made it through the Battle
of Britain.
Then there were those that served on land and at sea; I
guess it‘s the penalty for being an area steeped in military
history. The result being that there were simply not enough
men left to go round and that made things quite tricky.
I remember the day that shook the females
in the village to the core. As you can imagine there was
a fair amount of competition between them to get their hands
on any available male and I been told that this, at times,
could get very nasty.
I was in one of the two main streets and all the women were
talking about the new nursing sister at the little cottage
hospital. Any new woman entering the village was seen as
additional competition and not overly welcomed (Unless she
brought a husband or adult son with her) but it appears
that this one was very exotic because she was ... black -
and I don‘t think anybody in the village, and probably not
many in the county, had ever seen a black person. I confess
to being a bit confused as the only black people I had ever
seen were in ’B‘ grade movies; they all seemed to have names
like Umbuto or Massamanna and spend their lives chasing
either white men up a river in small canoes shooting arrows
or darts at them, or white women through the jungle with
very evil intent. Now we had one in the village and that
had our good village ladies very worried, this was a new
type of competition. Her name, it transpired, was Clara
McDonald ... that was weird.
Now, as it happens, two days later Tony
Chowler shot me in the top of the back of my right leg with
an arrow. Not a real arrow, it was just a stick with the
end shaved to a point and fired from a homemade bow. Poor
old Toney, he hadn‘t been shooting at me but at a target,
being ’not very good‘ at it, he missed the target by about
ten miles, the arrow then deflected from a small silver
birch and ended up in me. This was no great drama, I pulled
the thing out, there was very little blood and we went on
with what we were doing. However, later that afternoon while
having afternoon tea, I asked my mother for something to
wash the wound with as it was getting sore. Usually she
would have just slapped some surgical spirit on it (that
really smarts) but this time she thought a trip to the hospital
was required (now I wonder why)? So, I was the first kid
to see our new sister. She was very black, very ’plump‘
and nothing at all like the Jungle Goddess‘ from the films.
I could see that my mother was going to take great delight
in letting the village ladies know that she was no great
threat of any kind. Clara also had a broad Glasgow accent
so that destroyed any remaining vestige of the ’exotic‘
kind. Let‘s be clear on one thing, it wasn‘t colour that
made Clara a threat, it was simply that she was female.
Discrimination was a word that wasn‘t to rear it‘s head
for decades.
It‘s no wonder that all the delivery men
had big smiles on their faces, butcher, baker, milkman,
postman, all must have had a massive female buffet from
which to choose. It also probably explains why the time
it took to complete the daily deliveries varied so much.
Mr. Freeman the postman probably had the best run of all,
his morning round took him to houses between about 6 and
9 am and it appears that this was a preferred time for ’The
Women‘. You have to remember that most of these ladies were
in the 21 to 40 age group and their chances of finding new
husbands to replace those lost, were very slim. It was the
same for those who had never married; romance was something
they were probably never going to encounter - But then there
was Maud.
At a healthy 18 years old and counter girl
in Boots the Chemist, Maud was probably the closest thing
that the village ever had to a ’Professional Lady of the
Night‘ although she certainly wasn‘t that. Maud was just
.... Maud. Not bright in any way, indeed she was like a child,
always attracted by shiny beads of all description. There
again she didn‘t have to be bright because she was a ’right
smasher‘ to put it in local terms and she really did have
that special ’it‘. Even with so many extra women around
Maud could generate jealousy in the local males to a quite
extraordinary extent and this led to an incident that, I
am very pleased to say, I, in the company of a couple of
friends, witnessed first hand.
To set the scene I have to explain one
further thing. Oxted had its own bus company but also the
village was at the end of one line for the big company "Greenline
Buses". Whereas little Oxted Buses just serviced the local
area, Greenline covered most of Southern England. As you
can imaging there was little love lost between the two companies,
or their drivers, as Greenline had been granted permission
to pick up from any Oxted Buses bus stop if the passenger
was going further that the Oxted buses area. The problem
was further compounded because a driver from each company
was also after getting his little mitts on our Maud and
she was strictly village property.
On the day in question an Oxted bus driven
by say ’Bert‘ I forget his actual name, was at the bus stop
at the bottom end of Station Rd East. Bert was having a
lovely chat to Maud who was standing on the pavement. A
large impressive Greenline Bus loomed into view driven by
say, ’Alf‘. At first he was just going to pass the Oxted
bus as there was nobody else at the stop but on seeing Bert
and a giggling Maud in conversation he suddenly swung his
bus to a halt, almost in front of the Oxted bus, the two
vehicles in an arrowhead formation. Now there was one slight
problem to this, poor old Mr. Bickerman, our vicar, was
trapped at the pointy end of the arrowhead. Luckily he was
a very slow driver and able to stop in time, but the small
gap left between the two busses wasn‘t sufficient for him
to drive through so he was sort of stuck as the reverse
gear in his car hadn‘t worked for a very long time. The
driver of the Greenline bus opened his door and started
to yell obscenities at Bert, who, naturally responded in
kind. This prompted ’Alf‘ to leave his seat, hop out the
door and have a go at Bert through the small drivers window
- However, to do this he had to stand on the bonnet of the
vicar‘s car, which, (I think) was an early Morris Minor
with a fold down top, and folded down it was on the lovely
summer‘s afternoon. The vicar was yelling something like
"Gentlemen, gentlemen, I beseech you, dignity, dignity".
This only made Alf more angry and he said "Shut you gob
vicar or I‘ll dong ya", and he leaned over the windshield
and pulled the vicar‘s hat down over his ears until the
eyes disappeared and only two protruding ears and a nose
(rather a large on) was showing.
At was at this stage that another player
in this comedy arrived on the scene; his name was Winston
and he was a very large and very gentle Irish Wolf Hound.
Winston (Winnie) lived with the Sutcliffe family behind
the men‘s outfitters but he regarded the whole village as
his own and constantly patrolled the streets, particularly
close to the butchers and bakery. Now Winnie didn‘t like
raised voices, it upset him and hearing the altercation
between Bert and Alf just sent him bonkers, jumping into
the back seat of the vicar‘s car he started to bark and
snarl at the two antagonists. Unfortunately, to do this
he had to stand with his front legs on the vicars (by now)
hunched shoulders, his fang like snapping teeth about two
inches above the vicar‘s head, which now resembled that
of a turtle trying to pull it‘s head right in - all that
could now be seen was the collar, hat and beaked nose.
You would have thought that things couldn‘t
get much more hectic but it was at this stage that the fire
siren sounded ... Oxted in those days only had a volunteer
brigade with one ex London, ex blitz, fire engine. The engine
worked quite well, even if it was manned by, shall we say,
less than properly trained personnel (perhaps another story).
The siren was the problem; it was the old air-raid siren
that had, in more troubled times, on many occasions announced
the arrival of bombers. In itself the siren wasn‘t the problem,
that came in the shape of old Mr Addison.
Mr Addison had been gassed in WW1, so unfit for active service
during the encore. To did his bit he had gone up to London
and become an air raid warden, patrolling the streets, yelling
at people to "Put that light out" and then helping with
the mess after the raid. I think he had simply seen too
much as his mind had gone doo lally tap. Most of the time
he was fine but when the siren sounded he snapped back to
the streets of London. Grabbing his bicycle he would tear
up and down the village streets yelling : "Get to the shelters,
get to the shelters, the bombers are on us".
He appeared now, that rusty old bike of his creaking down
the road as he tried to get us all to "Get to the shelters"
... on arrival at the buses he had a problem, Oxted streets
were not wide and there wasn‘t room to go around; no problem
to his mind, he jumped off his bike and dragged it over
the vicar‘s car (even the dog took cover and kept quiet)
between the buses and vanished up the road still announcing
that "The bombers were on us".
However a larger problem then developed,
the fire engine screeched to a halt, the buses were blocking
its way to the fire (or whatever the problem was). The six
man team dismounted and tried to get to the two drivers,
in this endeavor they were hampered by the vicar‘s car with
its large snarling dog. Their confusion caused a bit of
merriment and jibes from a group of men from the gasworks,
who were, (fortified by a few ales from the George and Dragon)
finding the whole thing a bit comical. Now the firemen,
actually local shopkeepers including one from the men‘s
outfitters who knitted and sewed in his spare time, took
exception to this and quickly a few scuffles broke out.
Dear me, we were getting into a pickle.
I should, at this time, mention that I
was watching this while sitting on a low wall outside the
bicycle shop. Carol was with me and so was Dickie Warner
another school friend. We were licking ice cream cones (rapidly
before they melted) and really enjoying the show, grown-ups
were such funny people.
At was at this stage that the law approached
from two different directions. First, Miss Haley from the
’Green Jug Tea Rooms‘, (and a special constable), came running
down the street - although she was blowing her whistle and
wearing her police hat, the effect was somewhat diminished
by the fact that she was still wearing her ’tea rooms‘ apron
and carrying a small platter of cakes. Not to worry, Sgt
Benbow (I can remember that name as it was the name of Jim‘s
Mother‘s Inn in ’Treasure Island‘, arrived in the very latest
thing in the village - a real police car. I think it was
a Wolseley not sure about that, but it had a light on the
top and a bell ... this was big time stuff.
This was just a day of bad timing and worse
luck. The arrival of Sgt Benbow and his shiny new car, coincided
with Alf, now tired and probably a bit worried about things,
jumped back into his bus and started to reverse to give
himself extra room to swing around Bert‘s bus. It was a
very positive ’Crunch‘. Even with solid vehicles, as they
then were, they could still get very dented and crumpled.
Our lovely new police car now had the arse end of a big
green bus stuck in its grill and the Sgt definitely wasn‘t
happy.
I think it would be safe to say that at
this time, everything went very silent. The fighting stopped
and even Winnie crouched soundless in the back of the vicar‘s
car. The two busses were parked in a side lane and the two
drivers taken away. The fire brigade did go on to the grass
fire (as it turned out to be) but got sent back in disgrace
as the unit from Godstone (a rival village) got there first
and put the said fire out.
As to Maud, well she had already left to go to the afternoon
pictures with Mr. Freeman the postman, something Carol,
Dickie and I also did a few minutes later (Invaders From
Mars, smashing film). Maud must have really got scared as
I distinctly heard her scream something a few times.
I believe the vicar took a weeks absence to ’calm himself‘
I also believe he did it in the company of Miss Haley (he
was single) - perhaps he just liked ... cakes, or maybe ...
buns..
The three of us left the cinema (Oxted
Plaza - it‘s still there today) at about 5.30pm. Being summer
it was still daylight and this would linger, only very slowly
fading, until about 10.30pm. Because of this we decided
to walk back to Hurst Green, which was about 4 miles away.
There was now no sign of the earlier altercation, except
for Winnie, he was standing hopefully outside the Butchers,
apart from that the place was deserted.
On the way we stopped at the back door
of the ’Carpenters Arms' for a glass of Tizer, which we
shared as all our money had gone into paying for the cinema.
Still, Mr Blake who owned the pub did shout us to a free
packet of crisps and, as he said, these must of made us
thirsty so he gave us another glass of Tizer ’on the house‘.
All in all it wasn‘t a bad place to spend
the early years.
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