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.

The East Hanney church seemed to be shut most of the time. It had no graveyard and seemed to be used mainly for weddings and the odd christening. Both Hanney churches had the same vicar. The only means of transport at the time for the village vicar was a bicycle.

The vicar was a tall and very thin. A somewhat gaunt looking man and was exceedingly bald having just a ring of black hair around the sides of his head with his ears sticking out like Dumbo the flying elephant.

The vicar always wore a cassock that hung about one foot off the ground. His trousers were gathered at his ankles by a pair of bicycle clips. I can still remember him pedaling furiously on a 'sit up and beg' bike with his cassock flying in the wind. His black bowler hat would be pulled down onto his ears and if you saw him coming you would run for your life!

The vicar taught Catechism classes which Roy and I attended. These lesson's were to get us ready for confirmation. It was also around this period that I learnt to chant the Lords prayer in rather a parrot fashion way and as usual I had things not quite the right way. It was many years later that I realised that the words 'The pail and the gory' were really 'The power and the glory'!

The Vicar finally got around to asking Roy and I if we had been christened. It was a rather stupid question to ask of small children. How would a seven year old child, who was seperated from his family know the answer to a question like that? Of course I didn't know the answer, nor did Roy. It was then that the vicar told us that if we hadn't been baptised then neither of us could attend the lessons on Confirmation.

The sadly misguided vicar then went on to say no matter how good we children might be, we could never go to heaven and when we died neither of us could be buried with everybody else in a graveyard! Furthermore both of us were sure to burn in hell for eternity! Well, you can imagine the results, we were utterly terrified!