wedlakewhentimewalked Page 3.

Part 2

The significance of the stipulation re the precedence of shaving, was that a boy going for his

monthly haircut could find himself with a long wait if the once-a-week shavers took his turn;

this left him exposed to the gossip and banter of the men who made the occasion a social

one. They talked gardening, and the war. I particularly recall them discussing the Battle of

the River Plate between 3 British light cruisers and the German pocket battleship Graf Spee

in the south Atlantic in December, 1939. They talked sport and they talked women. I

remember a discussion that concerned a prominent, rather glamorous village lady who,

rumour had it, had had her hair burnt whilst under the dryer.

It was several years before I realised why the comment of one old seafarer had caused

such guffaws and mirth from Mr Hurley and his customers. After your haircut, Mr Hurley

would give your scalp a fierce brushing with two stiff brushes. Completing this for one old-

timer he asked him, “Let me see, Tom, which side do you have your hair parted ?” The

distinctly tetchy reply “Oh, I don’t know, Stanley, I don’t know. You done it last.”

Although as the years passed and Mr Hurley acquired electric clippers, he never actually

increased his prices, though some customers did pay more. This eventually earned him a

double-page spread in a national daily. Mr Hurley died in 1953, aged 72.

Opposite his shop was one of the Sunday afternoon stopping places for the Salvation Army

band to play their hymns and preach their message to the empty street. Because some of

my friends were members, and because I liked dressing up, during the 1930s I joined the

choristers at All Saints’. Sunday services were 11am to 12 noon (when the pubs opened),

alternate Sundays being Holy Communion and Mattins, Evensong 6.30pm. The Organist

and Choirmaster, a long-suffering old man came out from Bristol. For Friday choir practice

there was a convenient bus arriving at 8pm, just time for a glass of stout, and after an hour’s

going over the psalms, canticles, hymns and anthems, he got the last bus to Bristol at

9.30pm. He also played for Sunday afternoon Catechism.

Of all the music which choir membership afforded me, it was Anglican chant which most

firmly held me in its spell. Although the chant, really a development of the ancient plainsong,

had come into use at the Restoration, it wasn’t until the Oxford Movement in the mid-C19

that it was generally used; after a good deal of opposition and even disorder it reached

down to the village churches.

My absolute fascination with all the improvisations and variations that could be performed in

the chants – single, double, triple and quadruple – I knew, and know, nothing of the

mechanics of inverted chords and cadences, of the mutations stop or the mixture stop or the

harmonic flute stop. I just fell totally for the exquisite sounds. Nowadays, I visit cathedrals or

tune in to broadcast services hoping the organist will oblige with the most ingratiating

harmonies, there being no music – not even Beethoven or Chopin in C sharp minor - which

can so swiftly transport me into speechless isolation from all the familiar world.

More of the science of music might have been revealed eventually if Miss M had lived. Miss

M was an elderly, stoutish lady, in calf-length dress, broad-brimmed hat, and rimless

glasses, and slightly stooping, who had taken it upon herself to teach a couple of us the

basic theories of music. She was an accomplished organist, and we met her in the nave of

the church for an hour a week. Very sadly, she died in January, 1936. Although the base is

now breaking up, hers is still the most elegant memorial in the churchyard. Other funerals in

January, 1936 were those of King George V – there was a service in church on the occasion

of his funeral – and for Dr Maxwell, whose family asked the choir to stay on for his service,

which immediately followed the king’s. Dr Maxwell had lived at Yeomans,where he had had

the roadside outbuildings converted into his village surgery.

For our choir duties – Friday practice, Sunday morning and evening – we received 2/- to

2/6d per quarter (absenteeism brought deductions). It was rumoured that the top boy

received as much as 4/- per quarter, but then he was as far removed from us as the prime

minister is from a parish councillor, so it was no business of ours. For Sunday catechism I

had sub-contracted the organ-blowing from Mr C in High Street, to allow him his Sunday

nap, and for which he paid me 6d.

On sultry summer afternoons, it was not uncommon for the old organist to fold his arms and

rest his head on the console and take a brief nap, and I would rouse him before going to my

box; I don’t think the vicar once noticed ! We would sing some of the lovely old children’s

hymns – “I love to hear the story”, “It is a thing most wonderful”, and all that, and the sun

always shone warmly through the stained glass. After church we would sometimes walk up

Lime Kiln lane past the quarry and on up the hill and round Wrington Warren, back down

Bullhouse Lane and home to tea, back at 6.30pm for Evensong.

When my treble voice went the way of all trebles, I became the full-time organ-blower. At 1/-

per hour this was a well paid job. Once a quarter I took my account book to the

churchwarden at his farm in Havyatt. He paid me and taught me to receipt the book.

Looking back through the book, I see that, for the quarter ending 24^th September, 1939, the

total earned was £1.19.9d. Generations of organ-blowers had carved their initials in the

organ case, but, seeking a more permanent memorial, I carved mine with the date 1.1.39

into the freestone of the north wall. This has long been obscured by the electric blower

mechanism !

This job went without a hitch for several years. I had never been late, but it transpired that,

one Easter season, without alerting me, the organist had required me earlier, to play

something more elaborate and longer. He never grumbled at me, and I was unaware of the

incident, but on Monday morning, my employer’s wife took me aside and gave me a

thorough dressing-down for thwarting the organist’s programme. I decided quickly thereafter

that, to have a Sunday job, however enjoyable, which caused grief on Monday was not a

good strategy, and I swiftly recruited another blower.

The 1930s was the great era of pioneer aviators. Everest was flown over for the first time,

and there were all the famous and extremely daring flights – across the Atlantic, to Africa,

and Australia’s famous fliers like Ross, Alcock and Brown, Amelia Earhart, Jim Mollison,

New Zealand’s Jean Batten, and, most famous of all, Amy Johnson, who had a song written

in her honour “Amy, wonderful Amy”. She was the first woman to fly solo to Australia – one

engine, open cockpit, no navigational aids - an unbelievably courageous and skilful

achievement.

We were used to seeing the occasional aircraft fly over and we would sing out to it “Amy

Johnson, that’s you !”, but we had never seen an aircraft close up. A boy might say to

another “’ave ‘e ever sid one pitched ?” translated: “Have you ever seen one on the

ground ?”, and none of us had. I didn’t know if any of these great fliers lived to draw the old-

age pension. Amy Johnson was lost on a war-time flight from the north of England to

Oxford, a short hop for her, but even she was undone by the winter weather. She was lost in

the Thames, and her body was never found. There is an old flier’s adage: “There are old

pilots and bold pilots but no old, bold pilots.”

Most of us had our first sight of an aeroplane ‘pitched’ when the coach driver, returning us

from the annual Sunday-school outing to Weston brought us home past Weston airport by

way of a little variety.

The Sunday-school outing to Weston ranked second only to Christmas in our calendar. After

1933, when the railway passenger services ceased, we went by coach, usually two, orange-

coloured coaches from Blagdon – a Guy and a Ford. Some of us, keen on buses and driving

– would try to board the Guy, which had twin rear wheels and was bigger. We would sit as

close to the driver as we could, and if we were lucky, our mothers would be in the other

coach and we would feel older and bolder !

If it ever rained on these days, time has erased it from memory. Canon H would visit us in

the tea-room in High Street in the afternoon. One year, I recall, he had to return to the

village early for the funeral of a little girl who had died of TB. About 7 children died in these

years from pneumonia, diphtheria, typhoid and meningitis.

A lady whose father was churchwarden at that time says that her father thought that Canon

H was a most caring, even saintly, priest. He left the parish in 1935 and was replaced by

Preb. H who was sent to us by the Society for the Maintenance of the Faith, who had

inherited the advowson. He was a man demanding high standards of himself, the

congregation, the choir and the organist. Few informalities were allowed. There was no

chatting in the sanctuary, no loitering in the chancel; at one stage we had the harmonium

removed to the west end so that choir practice could be conducted there.

Mass was said every morning – Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7.30am, Tuesday,

Thursday and Saturday at 8am, Sunday 7am and 8am, sung service at 11am, Catechism

2.30pm, and Evensong at 6.30pm. The 7.30am services were early enough to permit an

altar boy or server to get to school at 9am, and my day was Friday. The Rector was already

at his prayer desk when I arrived. The congregation consisted of two or three genteel

spinsters. At 7.30 I would ring the bell – 3 times, 3 times, 9 times, and 33 times, one for

every year of the life of Christ. At the consecration, one of the ladies rang it.