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John White recalls childhood memories living in Kent.
Mum and Dad had to go to London for a day and a half so Bob and I were taken to Grandma in Elham for this period. On the first day we were occupied with Grandma and spent a good night as we were tired.
Next morning we had breakfast with Gran and Uncle Jack. Although he had a very dry humour, he was always loving and kind, but this seemed to get my mother uptight. I think it must have been the fact that we would take a telling off from him and still want to go off with him but if Mum told us off we wanted to go with Uncle Jack.
After breakfast Uncle Jack went off down to the wood which was a coppice about 1½ acres of second or third growth, ash, chestnut and silver birch. He used to cut cordwood and faggots in the morning and then after lunch would harness up the horse and cart the morning's produce up to the road for transport to town.
Bob and I took his smoko down to him about 10 o'clock and then had nothing to do for over an hour. Bob said 'Let's have Uncle Jack on, let's tie his cart to the shed so he can't bring his wood up this afternoon. You go and do it while I keep watch'.
So I went to the back of the cart and found a good size chain which I put over the axle and around one of the timber piles along the back of the cart shed and hooked the ends together.
That done, Bob said 'Here comes Uncle Jack back for lunch'. By the time he got back to the yard we were at the gate to meet him. But while we were having lunch, Mum and Dad dropped in to pick us up and take us home, so we missed the fun but heard all about it next time we saw Uncle Jack!
Another thing we liked doing with Uncle Jack was going rabbiting. He kept two ferrets for this job, and we used to take about twelve nets and the ferrets, and go down the paddock and set the nets over the rabbit holes.
We then let the ferret go down one of the holes and waited for the rabbits to come out. We would only take three or four so there would be some there the next time we wanted some.
One Guy Fawkes night Uncle Jack thought he would give us a fireworks display and a bonfire, so he gathered up a whole lot of rubbish and put it over a large old stump that he wanted to get rid of.
But before he started making the bonfire he drilled a hole in the stump and put a plug of gelignite in it with about two foot of fuse attached to it. When he lit the bonfire he made sure the fuse was alight then stood back to see the reaction of Mum and Grandma.
Well, the fire had been burning for about five minutes when it exploded. We were all about 100 yards from the fire at this time but we still got one hell of a surprise with bits of burning firewood going way up in the air!
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