I remember. by Charles Roberts

            I remember sitting in the pub thinking about writing my life story so that Alf, my best mate and his wife Elsie’s, daughter Wendy would know what it was like when me and her dad was growing up in the village.  I was born just before the war and my dad went to fight, he didn’t have to because he was a farm worker, but he went.  The next thing we heard about him was that he’d run off with a French girl and was wanted for desertion and the girl’s father had a shotgun and was ready to use it.

          My granddad owned and ran the Crossing public house, this crossing was for crossing the river and at harvest time the farmers and hands always stopped there after a hard day in the fields.  Well in the late eighteen hundreds the railway put a line in between the pub and the river and all was fine till they asked grandad to open and shut the gates, he told them that he couldn’t run the pub and see to their gates so they built a cottage for the rail worker, but forgot to put a loo in the cottage so he had to come to the pub if he needed to go.

          Well it was in nineteen fifty four that it happened.  The pub was built in the seventeen hundreds of wood and it were the twelve thirty three express from London that did for the old place, as it came racing through, the pub shook so much that the roof gave way and came crashing down.  I was in the cellar moving barrels, mum was in the kitchen bent down feeding the cat when the cast iron bath tub came crashing through the ceiling and landed upside down on top of her, and she had a ringing in her ears from that day until her death.

          They didn’t bother calling the fire brigade because they were already there celebrating one of the lads getting engaged.  They dug their way out, but carried on drinking.  Then a young lad ran up saying that one of farmer Jenkins barns was on fire. The fire engine driver was found hanging over a five bar gate being sick and nobody could get any sense out of him so we started to push the fire engine, bloody heavy it was too.

          We pushed it into the side of the new panda car and all rolled about laughing, even constable Norman laughed his drunken head off.  We push the engine the two hundred yards to the barn, of course we were too late to save the barn, but Mrs Jenkins brought out a sack full of spuds and granddad arrived with a couple of barrels of ale in the wheel barrow so we spent the rest of the night having baked spuds and drinking the beer.  As granddad said the brewery would only write it off so we might as well sup it.