Yes please..... Maggie Some of you may remember reading bits of My Story before... Born in south London, and an only child, I was brought up in the Hampshire countryside 4 miles south of Winchester. Our home was a detached house of brick built in 1922, and bought by my father for the very reasonable sum of £660 and we moved there in 1927. It was a typical bit of between-the-wars ribbon development along one side of the main road to Southampton. It had two good-sized living rooms and a kitchen downstairs, and two and a half bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. Each room had its fireplace, the one in the living room notably inefficient at heating the water in its back boiler and given to smoking badly, especially when easterly winds blew. Lighting and cooking was by town-gas; electricity didn't come to this rural area until after World War II. There was no television of course, so an electricity supply wasn't seriously missed. Dad made our first ‘wireless' set in about 1930, a cumbersome thing fitted into a narrow cupboard bought for the purpose. It was battery-driven, as were its later boughten successors, and one of my childhood duties was to carry the small glass-cased lead accumulator every week or so the mile over the downs to Shawford, where it seemed all the lead accumulators of the district were re-charged from a dynamo in an abandoned watermill on the River Itchen. Facing us on the opposite side of the road were several much more imposing houses that had been built at the turn of the century and which were now mostly hidden behind tall hedges. Here lived retired admirals, Indian Civil Service wallahs and similar crusty personalities, all moderately wealthy and keeping themselves very much to themselves. Companions of my own age had I none until, in 1929, I started at the little Church of England primary school in the small village of Compton, a mile north of home. The enlarged society in which I suddenly found myself was not easy to adjust to, and this was apparently not helped by my more ‘refined‘ accents. Miss Durrant, the teacher of the infant class, even suggested to my mother that I should try to adopt the more rounded Hampshire vowel forms. (Having since heard myself many times ‘on tape', I do wonder how I acquired my ‘Received Pronunciation' accent — or, rather, how my parents did, for obviously I mimicked them. Yet, even in later years I never heard a trace in them of the London accent which marked my various aunts' tones.) Compton, now a rather up-market commuter adjunct to Winchester, was in the 1930s still largely agricultural. There were a few ‘posh' houses, but two large farms provided the principal employment for the locals. An abiding memory of those early school days was at harvest-time when huge horses hauled the laden carts back from the outlying fields. The school was small — perhaps 40 pupils, in just two classes, almost all the children of farm workers. With an all-through age range of 5-15, the eldest were expected to help teach the juniors. Mine was Norah, a rather large cheerful girl of the great age of 15. Memories of the traditional games learned in the playground were later rekindled by Peter and Iona Opie's famous books. And yes, we called ‘scribs' for a truce. (My mother, a Londoner through and through, cried ‘fainites'.) Amongst other skills learned was how to drink from a tap without getting one's face wet, for the only water accessible at playtime was a tap by the school wall. The toilets were even more primitive; bucket privies for both sexes plus, for the boys, an iron trough filled with peat at the beginning of each term — and expected to last! I walked the mile to school and back every day, alone and mostly alongside the main road. It had little traffic in those days, often not a vehicle in sight for minutes on end, but since transformed into the unbelievably busy M3 which passes just behind my old home. As an alternative for part of my route, I could walk over the Downs, the last chalky escarpment before the gravels and clays of Southampton through which, down at Shawford, the Itchen had carved its valley. These Downs, and their narrower companion strip above Compton, became my playground, a favourite hawthorn tree being in turns a pirate ship and a den. For most of those primary school years, my principal companion was Betty Pritchard, some 2½ years older than myself, who lived with her ‘uncle' and ‘aunt' in one of a short row of workers' cottages just down the road. I say ‘uncle' and ‘aunt', for I now suspect she was in fact the child of one of their own daughters, then in their 20s. Betty was, perhaps fortunately for me, a bit of a tomboy and we got up to quite a number of scrapes, thereby incurring sharp words from her ‘uncle'. At the age of 6, I caught a very mild dose of scarlet fever and, in accordance with the health regulations of the time, was promptly packed off by ambulance to spend six weeks at the Isolation Hospital on the downs a couple of miles east of Winchester. Betty had gone there, too, for the same reason. The Hospital was a typical construction of corrugated iron, painted the pale yellow colour of such places. Not feeling particularly ill, we had the run of the place and its bare open grounds. The food was memorably awful, and I owe a life-long distaste for custard from the cold stiff yellow goo they served there. I also learned one shouldn't chew ones nails, for “the bits could turn into worms in your tummy”.. (True, from the eggs that might lurk under them.) I remember, too, the chuffing and clanking of a huge steam excavator nearby that was making a start on a deep cutting for the Winchester bypass, now part of the M3. As a family, we were fortunate — and exceptional — in having the use of a car. My father, now a sales representative working from the Southampton office of the Anglo-American Oil Company (which became Esso Petroleum Company in 1936), had a company car. He progressed in turn from a tiny canvas-sided Austin Seven to a Morris Ten to a Hillman Saloon. As he was allowed to use it at weekend for family purposes, this could make quite frequent trips into the Hampshire countryside, especially to the New Forest and our favourite seaside at Highcliffe. (“I can see the sea!”) We became a two-car family in 1936 when my mother acquired a Baby Austin Seven and learned to drive, which was an exceptional thing for a woman to do in those years. In 1935, with a bit of special coaching from the motherly head teacher, Miss White, I passed the scholarship examination to attend the secondary school in Winchester. And after the first year, when I travelled by bus, I cycled the hilly 4 miles to and from school... [More if you want it!] Howard

Yes please Howard .... very interesting Caroline and John Yes please..... Maggie Some of you may remember reading bits of My Story before... Born in south London, and an only child, I was brought up in the Hampshire countryside 4 miles south of Winchester. Our home was a detached house of brick built in 1922, and bought by my father for the very reasonable sum of £660 and we moved there in 1927. It was a typical bit of between-the-wars ribbon development along one side of the main road to Southampton. It had two good-sized living rooms and a kitchen downstairs, and two and a half bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. Each room had its fireplace, the one in the living room notably inefficient at heating the water in its back boiler and given to smoking badly, especially when easterly winds blew. Lighting and cooking was by town-gas; electricity didn't come to this rural area until after World War II. There was no television of course, so an electricity supply wasn't seriously missed. Dad made our first ‘wireless' set in about 1930, a cumbersome thing fitted into a narrow cupboard bought for the purpose. It was battery-driven, as were its later boughten successors, and one of my childhood duties was to carry the small glass-cased lead accumulator every week or so the mile over the downs to Shawford, where it seemed all the lead accumulators of the district were re-charged from a dynamo in an abandoned watermill on the River Itchen. Facing us on the opposite side of the road were several much more imposing houses that had been built at the turn of the century and which were now mostly hidden behind tall hedges. Here lived retired admirals, Indian Civil Service wallahs and similar crusty personalities, all moderately wealthy and keeping themselves very much to themselves. Companions of my own age had I none until, in 1929, I started at the little Church of England primary school in the small village of Compton, a mile north of home. The enlarged society in which I suddenly found myself was not easy to adjust to, and this was apparently not helped by my more ‘refined‘ accents. Miss Durrant, the teacher of the infant class, even suggested to my mother that I should try to adopt the more rounded Hampshire vowel forms. (Having since heard myself many times ‘on tape', I do wonder how I acquired my ‘Received Pronunciation' accent — or, rather, how my parents did, for obviously I mimicked them. Yet, even in later years I never heard a trace in them of the London accent which marked my various aunts' tones.) Compton, now a rather up-market commuter adjunct to Winchester, was in the 1930s still largely agricultural. There were a few ‘posh' houses, but two large farms provided the principal employment for the locals. An abiding memory of those early school days was at harvest-time when huge horses hauled the laden carts back from the outlying fields. The school was small — perhaps 40 pupils, in just two classes, almost all the children of farm workers. With an all-through age range of 5-15, the eldest were expected to help teach the juniors. Mine was Norah, a rather large cheerful girl of the great age of 15. Memories of the traditional games learned in the playground were later rekindled by Peter and Iona Opie's famous books. And yes, we called ‘scribs' for a truce. (My mother, a Londoner through and through, cried ‘fainites'.) Amongst other skills learned was how to drink from a tap without getting one's face wet, for the only water accessible at playtime was a tap by the school wall. The toilets were even more primitive; bucket privies for both sexes plus, for the boys, an iron trough filled with peat at the beginning of each term — and expected to last! I walked the mile to school and back every day, alone and mostly alongside the main road. It had little traffic in those days, often not a vehicle in sight for minutes on end, but since transformed into the unbelievably busy M3 which passes just behind my old home. As an alternative for part of my route, I could walk over the Downs, the last chalky escarpment before the gravels and clays of Southampton through which, down at Shawford, the Itchen had carved its valley. These Downs, and their narrower companion strip above Compton, became my playground, a favourite hawthorn tree being in turns a pirate ship and a den. For most of those primary school years, my principal companion was Betty Pritchard, some 2½ years older than myself, who lived with her ‘uncle' and ‘aunt' in one of a short row of workers' cottages just down the road. I say ‘uncle' and ‘aunt', for I now suspect she was in fact the child of one of their own daughters, then in their 20s. Betty was, perhaps fortunately for me, a bit of a tomboy and we got up to quite a number of scrapes, thereby incurring sharp words from her ‘uncle'. At the age of 6, I caught a very mild dose of scarlet fever and, in accordance with the health regulations of the time, was promptly packed off by ambulance to spend six weeks at the Isolation Hospital on the downs a couple of miles east of Winchester. Betty had gone there, too, for the same reason. The Hospital was a typical construction of corrugated iron, painted the pale yellow colour of such places. Not feeling particularly ill, we had the run of the place and its bare open grounds. The food was memorably awful, and I owe a life-long distaste for custard from the cold stiff yellow goo they served there. I also learned one shouldn't chew ones nails, for “the bits could turn into worms in your tummy”.. (True, from the eggs that might lurk under them.) I remember, too, the chuffing and clanking of a huge steam excavator nearby that was making a start on a deep cutting for the Winchester bypass, now part of the M3. As a family, we were fortunate — and exceptional — in having the use of a car. My father, now a sales representative working from the Southampton office of the Anglo-American Oil Company (which became Esso Petroleum Company in 1936), had a company car. He progressed in turn from a tiny canvas-sided Austin Seven to a Morris Ten to a Hillman Saloon. As he was allowed to use it at weekend for family purposes, this could make quite frequent trips into the Hampshire countryside, especially to the New Forest and our favourite seaside at Highcliffe. (“I can see the sea!”) We became a two-car family in 1936 when my mother acquired a Baby Austin Seven and learned to drive, which was an exceptional thing for a woman to do in those years. In 1935, with a bit of special coaching from the motherly head teacher, Miss White, I passed the scholarship examination to attend the secondary school in Winchester. And after the first year, when I travelled by bus, I cycled the hilly 4 miles to and from school... [More if you want it!] Howard . . "IS THE SUBJECT LINE STILL RELEVANT? If not, PLEASE change it." ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message