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Don McDouall was evacuated from London during World War II when he was five years old. He was sent to the small country village of East Hanney to live with Grans and Grampy at a house called Tamarisk. He now lives in Australia.
On Sundays Roy and I had to go to church over in West Hanney. After sitting through the utterly boring service we would go over to Mrs Wile's place, opposite the church, and watch the monkey. This tiny monkey had a small wooden house up on top of a pole. The animal was tethered to the pole by a dog chain in such a way that it could go up and down the pole and also walk about at the bottom on the ground. If you got too close it went for you.
One time the monkey got Roy's glasses and then took them to its house up the top of the pole. The following commotion, culminated in a man appearing from out of the house. He eventually made the monkey let go of them. Reluctantly it did, but not before it had pulled the spectacles in half!
Most times we would go on past The Plough pub, instead of making for home. Perhaps dally awhile at the pond and then on to the shop we called the 'funny shop'. It was inside a black barn, with a thatched roof.
This unusual shop, sold very interesting things that were laid out on straw and trestle tables. Things like miniature animals made from glass and 'Bakerlite'. My favourites were small elephants that came in many different sizes.
Sometimes we made our way home past The Lamb pub and the school. But often we went through the graveyard and through Cotteral's field. I remember playing in the long late summer grass. I remember the sweetness when you sucked on the stem of the grass you had plucked from its roots.
I remember playing on the grass verge, opposite Grans house. There were other children too. Alan, Norma and Norma's little sister June, who would help us look for four leaf clovers among the barely grass. The seed heads were much like small arrows and we often used them as darts!
We would collect 'Dandelion clocks' and tell the time by blowing the parachute seeds off the seed heads. Sometimes I would show the other kids my hiding places for my treasures. One great hiding place was under the metal door of the fire hydrant outlet.
But those days of our little boys happy summer drifted into the bleak cold frosty days of that first cheerless winter away from home. I was always cold. My knees always hurt. They hadn't before, but now they seemed continually to be covered in bandages that stuck with grim determination to the scabs on my poor mutilated knees. Grans I am sure took great delight in ripping the stuck bandages off my knees, taking the scabs off, with out heeding my pleas.
The village nurse was to me at the time a most horrid person. Just to see her frightened the very daylights out of me. Mrs Nurse, as I called her, was a very heavily built, no nonsense type of woman. She wore a white nurses dress with what looked like a pillowcase on her head. In her own way this person made my life a constant hell.
If I had a note to go and see her from Grans or a schoolteacher, I would have to walk to her house that was situated in the neighbouring village of West Hanney. It was a journey of about one mile. On my arrival I would be shaking with total dread of things to come.
The woman would hold me down with her arm across my throat and so held I would have to submit to her filling my eye sockets up with stinging eye-drops. To this day I don't know why this was so. Then with stinging eyes, I would stumble around for a while, then literally 'feel' my way back to Grans, the drops actually blinding me!
A happy event of my infancy was a Christmas party that had been put on by a rich lady, for the London evacuees. Thinking back it would have to have been the Christmas of 1939. Mrs Flyn was the benefactor. This kindly person owned a mansion of a house that was directly opposite Grans house.
Mrs Flyn threw this very lavish Christmas party for all the London kids that were in the village and perhaps village kids attended too. Roy and I soon became violently sick from eating too much blanc-mange and jelly and too many cream buns.
There were crepe paper hats on everyone's head and crackers in everyone's hands. There was sherbert drinks and stodgy Christmas cake with icing and marzipan. Right on top of the large cake was a glossy red Father Christmas with a sleigh and reindeer and a tiny pale green Christmas tree. We played musical chairs and 'ring a ring a roses' and sang nursery rhymes and carols.
Mrs Godfrey spent most of the time wiping kids noses, while Mrs Booker was kept very busy cleaning up each child after all the vomiting that took place!
Christmas eve came and Roy and I hung a sock up near to the fireplace. Next morning I found an orange, a square of marzipan, three toffees and lots of walnuts in my sock. Later that same day we got to eat roast goose and I found a silver 'thrupenny' bit in my slice of Christmas pudding.
That night Grans let us stay up and listen to the gramophone. There was Gracie fields singing 'The biggest Aspidastra in the world' and George Formby singing 'I'm a leaning on the lampost'. Other songs that were heard that night were records of 'The laughing policeman', 'Our Alfy's fell in the river!' and that song about someone eating a lemon in front of someone playing a trumpet!
It would be a very long time before we could again 'stuff`' themselves on such delights.
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