Recollections of Bygone Days part 2

1930
It is interesting to recall the people amongst whom we lived during the eleven pre-war years. Our immediate neighbours were Mr and Mrs Gomersal always called "the Gommies" at his request. We discovered why after a year or two when he was charged with driving through a red light in Norwich soon after they were introduced, Mr Luther Gomersal. Luther was a religious reformer in Germany and Gommie was not all that religious. From what little he said his family came from the village of Gomersal where they were the local 'big wigs'. He had spent some time at the Royal College of Music and then emigrated to South Africa where he became a mining engineer. He served as a Major in the Boer war. He came back to this country in 1914 and joined up as a sapper in the Engineers. He was very badly knocked about in France. He proposed to the VAD who nursed him and to his surprise she accepted him, because, to quote him, she didn't think he'd pull through. When he told me he said with a grin, that she hadn't allowed for Yorkshire obstinacy; he recovered and whatever had happened to him there were no external signs and they were very nice neighbours. Gommy had played football for S. Africa and had a S. African sweater with a green and black stripe around the V-neck and the S. African badge, a springbok, on the left breast. He insisted on lending it to me once when I was playing in a tennis match and I was scared that I might soil it. He brought it over to the old bungalow in a big cardboard box between tissue paper. He had to see it on and admire it. Somebody asked if I believed he had played in first class football. I had seen him kicking a ball about on the beach and I know enough about the skills of the game to know that he had certainly played the game before.

We were away from Kelling throughout the last war and when we came back things seemed very different. I met Gommy one day soon after our return from Wiltshire in his little Austin. He told me that he'd been given only a few months to live- cancer of the throat. When he died Mrs G. clearly missed him. She used to go abroad with her unmarried sister but she was getting old. When we were at Kelling church attending the nuptials of a Rebbeck and a Hancock on a lovely October day, we saw Mrs G. in the church. She had cycled down to the church so Lena's sister, Pat, went and invited her to the reception after, which pleased her. When I think that we had 28 people and a piano in that room! One thing Gommy used to do when we lived in the old shack and went down to Portsmouth five times a year. During the colder periods he would put hot water bottles in our bed on our return days.

One interesting story that he told us. When he had a week off he used to pack a horse and ride off into the outback. He would shoot something for the pot and put a record on his portable gramophone. When he put Mme. Melba on, the monkeys all around drowned her voice with their screeching, but they sat enraptured when he replaced her by Caruso. How's that for sexual discrimination.

1931
My sister Olive had a sister-in-law who was a ladies hairdresser and had a husband named Harold Newbury who had been, I believe, a gents hairdresser. Harold had a nose for money - he acquired a house in the country outside Southampton with plenty of ground and covered it with chalets each equipped for hairdressing. It was very successful and when Hitler began to threaten and we began building aerodromes Heralds financial muscles began to twitch. He bought a lorry, then several more and became a haulage contractor on the sites in that area. One autumn he thought he would like to see the Blackpool Illuminations so he bought an old banger, picked up my sister and her husband Bob and off they went. I don't know how many days they spent In Blackpool, but whilst there he had a brainwave. He had very little knowledge of geography and Norfolk was up there somewhere so why not take Ollie to visit her brother? He didn't use maps or AA routes - I think he drove by compass. Anyhow, in due course they arrived at our wooden shack.

Next day there was a bit of a discussion going on after breakfast "You ask her" "No, you want it, you ask her."
"She's your sister-in-law, she'll do it for you."

"All right. Harold is very fond of parsnips and he's got one out in the car that he found on the roadside. He wonders, if you're cooking, if you'd cook it for him?"

I told him to go and get it, which he did. It did look like a parsnip, straw coloured, about three inches in diameter tapering over about nine inches to almost a point. Lena looked at it and then looked at me and smiled. We recognised it; we often had to dodge odd ones that had dropped off sugar beet lorries when motor cycling. Yes sugar beet. Poor Harold, but it added to the sum total of his knowledge - I don't think he'd ever heard of sugar beet let alone seen one.

To this little story there is an interesting sequel. Sugar beet vary greatly in shape as do parsnips, some like a carrot and some more round with a root. I think Harold's must been like the second. Anyhow the long slim root was cut or broken off and the round part finished up in the vegetable box. Lena made a stew one chilly winters day and seeing what she thought was a turnip, added a little to add flavour. It did but it wasn't. It did add flavour but it wasn't turnip and it wasn't parsnip and the flavour was 'very sweetness'. We couldn't eat the stew - when you are expecting saltiness and you get sweetness. I believe we tried some bits of the meat but it wasn't very successful. There is a lot of difference between sweetmeats and sweet meat.
We did find a use for sugar beet however. Rationing continued long after the last war, so to make chutneys - clean sugar beet, cut quite small and boil it in with the other ingredients, apple, rhubarb, gooseberries, or what have you, spices, vinegar etc. and save on the rationed sugar. It was quite a brain wave.

1933.
Once a quarter, in days long gone, the local police used to hold a trap on the main road out of Holt. I rode a Norton in those days and my back brake was getting a bit dodgy, very dodgy to be truthful but as it was only a week to the Easter holidays I decided to leave it until the holidays as it was a messy job. In the meantime I did the quicker job on the front brake and got that so that it would pull the bike up from about 30 mph with little effort. Sure enough next morning the police were out in force. First of all documents; everything in order. "Now we'll test the brakes". I hoped that he meant front brake, as they were usually suspect. He did. He took great pains to see that I kept my feet away from the pedals. I let them slide a bit as I was holding the bike's weight and he thought I was trying to get at the brake. I fidgeted about a bit to make him suspect but finally got down to it. The front brake was worked by a lever on the handlebars and at last we got down to it. I put the brake on; the constable (who was our local Kelling cop) got round the back and attempted to push the machine forward. Of course it wouldn't move. 'Pretty good' he commented, "of course it's good" I said "this is a Norton, not an old BSA" - he rode a BSA. Apparently he had booked more than a dozen already and it was only 8.30 am.

I was going to Reepham along the Norwich road and suddenly rounding a gentle curve found a flock of sheep occupying the full width of the road. I pulled up with the leading sheep sniffing at the tyre of my front wheels but we did pull up, the front brake worked. Don't tell me animals act from instinct, they don't - they think. Our next-door neighbour kept a goat, as did several friends in the locality when we first came to Norfolk. He had recently bought a new nanny and she was a trifle fractious. When he came out to milk her she would not tamely submit but persisted in ambling off out of reach and he had to chivvy her along the path until she finally gave in. So one morning he cut a thin switch from a birch tree (the origin of the word Birch as a punishment?) and when she started her "soft shoe shuffle" he gave her a few whacks. It worked or so he thought as he finished milking her and bent down to pick up his stool and milk can. It had been raining during the night and when he found himself sprawling on the path he thought he had just slipped on the muddy surface but then he realised what actually had happened. The goat had waited until he had bent to gather the can and stool and then gave him a gentle nudge. She hadn't butted him - he said he hadn't felt more than a toppling push but with mud on his clothes and the milk all over the path he was furious. He grabbed the switch and advanced on the poor nanny who was quietly cropping grass. He looked at her little beady eyes as they looked up at him. There was a certain look in them and he paused in his anger and said "all right you old B.... fifty-fifty quits" and he had no more trouble from then on. I wonder where the phrase "acting the goat" came from?

1934
We must return to that inimitable headmaster at Fakenham. I went across one Saturday morning to see Fakenham play Wells at football. Wells were easily the superior side and were all In the Fakenham half of the field, with only Jack Tooley on the halfway line. Suddenly a long clearance came his way and he fastened on to it and dashed off down the left wing. After a moment he realised that he had nobody of his own team in support so he cut in towards the goal. The goalkeeper cleared his shot but Frankie dashed into action

"Tooley, come here, boy, what position are you playing in?."

"Outside left, sir"

"And where is that?"

"Down there, sir" says Tooley, indicating the left side of the field.

"Then what were you doing in there?"

In view of the fact that the boy had done the right thing, one of the staff who was a Norfolk county player felt that he must stick up for him. He said that the lad had done the right thing - when a player is not supported by a team mate he goes for goal, the object of the game is to score goals.

"Rubbish," said Frankie "If that were the case they'd have made the field octagonal"

I once heard a real Norfolk man say of another "He know as much about football as a cow know about Christmas." He could have been talking about Frankie.