I wonder now what significance most of the village attached to this. One morning, a cyclist

said to me “Don’ ‘e ring’n too early my son, boss goes by ‘n”. After the service, a little nod

and a smile from the priest, and home to my dear mother and breakfast. At 12 noon and

6.30pm the priest was back in church, and the ringing of the Angelus bell echoing the

earlier church. We had, it seems, become a little salient of Anglo-Catholicism, and

whatever one makes of it, once one has felt its zephyrs and learnt his Hail, Marys,

Not everyone was so staunch in this tradition, and I remember well one Sunday morning.

In his sermon, the vicar had just remarked that he thought that, for the duration of the war,

the church should come under the authority of the Pope.. There was a sudden crash and

clatter from the nave. Easing back the curtain that concealed the blower from view, rather

like the proverbial suburban housewife, I saw that one man had crashed together his south

aisle pew door, and left by the south door, giving it a hearty slam. At the same time, an

elderly man in a pew in front of the pulpit stomped out and slammed the north door. This

man, I knew, had a Humber saloon and liveried chauffeur awaiting him. His wife, a very

elegant lady, in a round blue hat and veil, looked down and smiled to herself. Under the

One summer evening in the late thirties, because of Evensong, I missed a rare bit of

excitement. Along with many others, my family saw the German airship Hindenberg. She

had cruised in from the south-west and curved gently round just north of the Mendips.

When I got home there were one or two RAF biplanes flying back north. The Germans

claimed it was a navigational error. Given that it was a sunny evening, and that the Bristol

Channel is not an insignificant landmark, and given the tensions of the period, those who

thought that there might have been some busy cameras on board Hindenberg, may have

Attracting much less attention on weekday evenings in summer, there was a small airline

which flew quite low over the village from Bristol airport Whitchurch, to Weston and on to

Cardiff. It had about 8 seats, was a biplane with long, tapering wings. Two Gypsy 6

engines and fixed landing gear. It was a pretty aeroplane and there was at least one still

flying in 2008. It was the De Havilland Rapide WDH89A. It never occurred to any of us that

it might be fun or interesting to get involved with this activity. Flying was still too way out,

These were the days of increasing world tension and re-armament. The schoolmaster said

the future looked bleak for us boys. Each budget brought increases in taxation. One day a

driver went into the local garage to fill up, and expressed his dismay to the attendant that

petrol had increased from, I think, 1/- to 1/1d per gallon. “Well, it’s the budget,” said the

attendant, “thee ‘s’ know re-armament and all that.” “Rearmament,” said the man, “I don’t

All this remote, horse-drawn, home to lunch, self-contained village of my formative years is