Born 6th May 1916.
My first memories was when I was living at Ivy Farm Sidestrand. One night there was a hell of a storm and there was a clank, clonk, clonk and my mum and dad were talking down stairs and my father said that’s the soldiers coming back from the war. They had got off the train at Trimingham and then were marching back to Overstrand or wherever they was I don’t know. I went to school at Trimingham for two years, then we moved to Southrepps in 1921. We lived at Southrepps for two years and then we moved to Great Ryburgh, the Railway Tavern pub. While we were ay Southrepps there was a Bowling green opposite the Vernon Arms pub where we lived and I use to go on the bowling green along with another boy wiping the bowls and then hand it to the players.
When my father was coming to Ryburgh on the train to see the pub before we took it over, I said can I come with you dad and I’ll buy you a bottle of beer on the train. Cause I use to get 2 pence each game and I saved up, so I could buy him a bottle of Tolley and a lemonade for myself, cause we would have to get on the train at Gunton to Norwich, then from Norwich to Dereham and then Dereham to Ryburgh. Then we had a look at the pub and then cause we moved there. There were four pubs in Great Ryburgh at the time, the Railway Tavern, the Marine Tavern, the Boar and the Crown. I also remember there being a post office, Nelsons shop, a couple of sweet shops, a farmers foundry and the Maltings. Them Maltings in them days were the biggest maltings in the world in one block. Ryburgh had two football teams and when they come up against each other it was a slaughter, you didn’t play for the ball them days you played for the man. I remember one match when they was up against one another Sid King got his leg brook, I heard it crack and I was stood over the other side of the field, a chap Guy Savoury done it. We also had darts teams, Quoits teams and bowls teams.
Sam Howe use to come and empty the bins on a Saturday and he use to do the night cart as well. I remember one night my father was working in the maltings, my mother come into my bedroom, (this is not long before I left school) she say there’s somebody just walked round the corner of the house and they’re round the back now, well I looked out of the front window and there stood the night cart.
I was eight years old when I started school at Ryburgh and the schoolmasters name was Mr Foster. The school was like a museum, all along the walls there was shelves what the old man had put up, there was stuffed birds in cages, old guns, old uniforms donkey years old and in the gable end there was an elephants head. That eventually come down while I was going to school, whether it is true or a lie I don’t know they recon it had to come down cause it was full of fleas and that’s why it had to come down. He retired and there was a sale and all his gear was sold off. I went to school with Dick Joyce and his brother Jack along with Jack Harris, Alfred Harris, Frank King, Leslie Howard, Will Howard, Hank Fenn. I remember the school was a church school and the reverend Tatham would come and call the register once a month.
One day Jack Fox and I went down the steps which the man with the night cart used to empty the toilets, we then put a stinging nettle into the girls toilet and stung Leta Abbs’s back side. One of my mates Noel Toll had a long nut stick and had a rabbit sneer on the end. He would go down the river and if he could see a Pike there he would put the sneer in well up the front and bring it down about mid way, then whoosh he would pull the stick up with the Pike hanging on the end. Mr Salisbury from the mill cottages use to lay lines out to catch eels and bring some of them to my father, my father would then get an old fashioned table fork and put it through it’s head into a linen post, then run a knife round it and pull the skin off.
During the summer there would be two or three men come down the river in a flat-bottomed boat cutting the reeds and then they would have a net across further down where they would pull them out. There at Ryburgh Bridge they use to pull this old boat up on to the meadow. You had got the main river and a main drain which would drain all the meadows, all in the matter of a hundred yards. The water would go through the gush to drive the mill and then out the other side where the main drain came into the river. A mate and I along with Margery Eggerton and my sister Helen, we dragged this old boat and got in the main drain which flowed fairly fast, Cause once we got in the river the water from the gush took us down the river so fast, we was going to turn round and come back but we hadn’t got any oars or nothing, how the hell we thought we were going to come back I don’t know. On the meadows they would keep cattle and there was a bridge for the cattle to cross. Well the water was a foot of the bottom of the bridge, I said we’ll have to jump, which we did. The boat went down there, hit the bridge and smashed into smithereens, we scrapped out and ran across the other side of the village like the clappers. We never did hear anybody making enquires about what had happened to the boat, I don’t think they ever know where the boat went.
One day I was walking home from school up the doctors hill and the parson’s wife and his daughter was coming down the hill, unknown to me my father was coming behind me on his bike and when I got home I got wrong cause I never touched my hat. He said when you see a lady come you raise your hat, he always did.
I also remember when I was at school, we use to go to Tittleshall because the hunt use to go from there. One time the prince of Wales was there.
I use to go to the Wesleyan chapel, I got the books now that I got for attendance.
I eventually left school and my schoolmaster come from Fakenham, his father was a Tailor in Fakenham, next to the Crown his name was E G Saunders. He was the master there all the time I was at school. He had an old motorbike. In the last year at school all Jack and I done was clean his motorbike.
When I left school at the age of 14 I come to work for my uncle and live in the house at Attleborough, Dingles of Attleborough which is the firm that is still running there. That was my uncle, he started the business just after the 1918 war, and well his grandsons are still running the business at Attleborough motor works. I was a lorry driver and all sorts. My uncle George Dingle he was a fireman at Attleborough.
The car was an old Panard Levester car that had been converted to tow a trailer pump. The car use to belong to Major Kennedy, who lived at Ellingham Road at Attleborough.
I eventually became a fireman myself and when I got married on the 29th of July 1939 we had a Firemen’s Wedding at Attleborough church and then a reception at the Royal Hotel in Attleborough. With between forty and fifty of us sitting down at our reception. We did have a week off and we did have a honeymoon up at Sibbertoft, I had got five pound in my pocket, coming back we had to change at Peterborough when I went and got a coffee and I gave the girl a pound and she gave me change for ten shillings, I said I gave you a pound, oh no she said ten shillings. A woman stood beside me said that man give you a pound, then she said I am sorry and gave me the right change. We then went back to Trunch where my people lived and had the weekend there and then came the Sunday night, I still had odd shillings out of that five pounds.
After we come back I said I have to go and pay Bill Gooch, that was the man who lived in there then, so off I went down there and he said it’s a bit steep George but there I’ve done it as cheap as I can. I said how much is it and he said fifteen pound, there was over forty of us had a sit down meal for that.
Before the war I carted the tarmac for the roads from Brandon station, we use to have a caravan at West Tofts, we had been out there for a couple of months and we finished up on a Saturday and had a couple or three pints, hooked the caravan on and all the gear. Then coming through the battle area home like the clappers, my mate Tom said the caravan isn’t there. We had to turn round and go back about a mile or so to find the caravan, luckily there hadn’t done no damage.
My daughter was born 12th January 1941 the same year as I was called up and posted to India with 215 squadron. While I was over there I managed to take a number of photo’s although if I was caught with a camera I would have been in trouble. I was in the motor transport section over there tanker driving and in my section there were seven blokes a Green, Brown, Black, White, Green, Primrose well there was seven of us in that section, its unbelievable. When we first went out there we had Wellington bombers and then we went over to Liberators. When we were at Rawalpindi we were training Ghurkhas as paratroopers so they could slide out over the Japanese These Ghurkhas would say No No Neeche Neeche come low I jump, “they did want to parachute. You would queue for your sausage and beans and then whoosh a Hawk would snatch your sausage. I was demobbed at Rivenhall and I got my demob suit at Cardington.
When I got home I went to the old firm for a month or two and then my brother in law who was a farmer at Hockham come over, he said I’m now taking another farm over and said how much are you getting now, I said five pound a week, he say I’ll give you six, a house rent free and all the old furniture you can use. While we were living at Cranberry farm we had an earth closet Toilet which was a hole in the ground with a wooden seat, a large hole one side for the adults and a small hole the other side for the children. I use to empty the ashes down there and if there was a lot of paper I would set fire to it. One day I come round the corner of the house after looking after the cattle, Ann or Dawn shouted Dad, Dad the toilets on fire, well the smoke was poring out, the youngsters had set alight to the toilet. When I was living there I bought my first car, which was a second hand Singer. It was job to get a new car then, my sister in law worked at Wrights of Dereham and said we’ve got a new car coming in and there’s nobody spoke for it, it was an A40 Country Man so I bought it brand new licensed and insured for under seven hundred pound. When I moved my people from Ryburgh to Trunch with a lorry and I had done a couple of trips, I said to my mother I have to get some petrol when we get into Holt so I pulled up to the pump and put 12 or 14 gallons in. She say I’ll pay for that, when she came back she said it nearly cost a pound! I remember when the Tailors on the Walk closed down, they advertised in the press two suits for fifty bob and that was a three-piece suit.
We were at Cranberry Farm for about 9 years and then we move from there to Snetterton Farm Old Buckenham, I bought that farm house and buildings plus eleven acres of land for eleven hundred pounds. Then I went milk tanker driving for Easton of Bunwell, driving all round Norfolk and then I went to work for East Woods chicken Firm, I was there until I was made redundant when I was sixty four. When I went to sign on the man said to me you don’t need to look for a job as you retire in May.
