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It's amazing how many of my earliest memories involve buses. When I try to
think why this should be so I can only conclude that a trip on a bus when I was a very
little boy was still an event sufficiently rare that it was something of a treat. When the air-raids started in 1940, Dad got Mum and
I moved to a bungalow at West Mersey near my Nan and Grandad who were at St. Oswyth, a
small village on the River Blackwater. Grandad liked Clacton on Sea; and as St. Oswyth was near
there
and the radar towers 'the boys' were building, I guess that's why we moved there from
Wanstead. We returned to London in 1944, just in time for the bad recommencement of the
blitz involving V1's and V2's. So I would therefore have been at most about
4 years of age when the following incident occurred.
I remember I was with my Mum waiting for the bus in an
English country lane. It must have been a spot where all the locals caught the bus. It was
one of those pleasant English summer days and they were all in summer clothes. Quite a
crowd of people had collected, chatting and laughing together. I suppose my Mum must have
got talking with someone, because I decided to wander off and do some exploring on my own.
A rough gravel entrance to a farm entered the road near the bus
stop, so I ventured up it. I didn't want to go too far, but I'd been attracted by a
strange animal sound I'd never heard before and I wanted to find out what it was.
"Gobble, gobble, gobble. Gobble, gobble, gobble," came
the strange sound. It wasn't a chicken, and it wasn't a duck. I knew what they sounded
like - and it certainly wasn't a moocow or a bah lamb. I stepped off the path into high
grass to investigate what the nearby sound could be.
"Gobble, gobble, gobble. Gobble gobble gobble," came the
beckoning call as I wandered further from the laneway into the tall grass. Suddenly, a
huge ugly chicken-like bird confronted me. To me it seemed like some monster, and it
frightened me so much I immediately took flight in the direction, I assumed, my Mum was
in.
I remember clambering up a low grassy embankment and suddenly I
could see my Mum and the others on the other side of a ditch in front of me. My Mum, of
course, had been getting alarmed - she always did whenever I was out of her sight for more
than a few minutes. That is, until I was later given the responsibility of looking after
my baby brother, Jeffrey, and then, it seems, we were allowed to roam anywhere, something
you couldn't let happen these days.
Anyway, I remember waving to my Mum and her scolding me and
telling me to, "Get down here straightaway or you'll get left behind when the bus
leaves." I took a step forward and there at my feet was a HUGE egg. It was just
sitting there on the grass. It was the biggest egg I'd ever seen. I picked it up and
shouted, "Look Mum, look what I've found; I've found a big googy egg." Grandad
always called them "googy eggs". I waved it in the air in triumph.
Mum quickly looked around. "Be quiet and get yourself down
here straightaway." In a lower voice she hissed, "And don't go shouting out
you've found any eggs." I climbed down the bank and through the ditch, getting my feet wet
in the process, but I didn't get scolded. "Give me that egg," she said.
Someone with her, maybe it was my Nan, or just another local,
said, "That's a nice turkey egg; that'd make a nice breakfast for someone." Mum
laughed and after wrapping the egg in a hanky, popped it into her bag. "Now stay with me and don't go wandering off again," she
said. "The bus will be here in a minute."
At that instant a big fat lady with an angry face walked up to my
Mum in front of the people at the bus stop, and said, "Your boy's just pinched one of
my turkey eggs. I'd like it back, thank you very much."
Mum turned bright red and said, "What do you mean? My boy
doesn't go around stealing anyone's eggs."
Something of an altercation ensued. The fat lady said I'd pinched
her egg. My Mum said I found it on public property beside the road, and if she let her
turkeys wander on public property, she should expect to lose a few eggs. Everyone was
looking on with interest. Presently some of the people started supporting my Mum's argument;
others supported the fat lady. Someone said, "Well it is a turkey farm and she's only
trying to make a living like the rest of us."
With that, my Mum paused and sighed, like she always did when she
knew she wasn't going to win an argument. The egg was unwrapped from the hanky and
returned with a "Humph," and a toss of the head.
Fortunately the bus came into sight right then and we were able to
beat a hasty retreat, but strictly speaking, I felt then, and still do, that by rights she
should have kept the egg. And besides, I've never ever had a taste of a turkey egg. Have
you?
My Mum is a scrupulously honest person and would never condone
stealing, but she had strict guidelines as to what constituted fair game for free-bees. I
remember on another occasion, not so many years later, I found a pear in the back garden
at Goodmayes Avenue. It had fallen from a neighbour's tree. Again I picked it up and
started yelling out to all and sundry what I'd found. Mum came out and said, "Good
boy. That's a nice William pear. Your Dad will enjoy that. I haven't seen them in the
shops for ages." Mrs. Mudd, who owned the tree, had heard me and rushed out saying,
"That's my pear your boy's picked up. It came from my tree; it's mine." But Mum
wasn't going to suffer the indignity of the turkey egg occasion.
"No it's not. It came from that branch up there and it's been
hanging over our garden."
"But it's my tree, so it's my pear," said Mrs.
Mudd.
"No it's not, the branch was hanging over our fence"
said Mum. "You should get your husband to prune your tree so I don't have to be
always cleaning up the fallen leaves. If you don't want us to eat any pears that fall in
our garden, prune your tree."
Mr. Mudd was the laziest lump of uselessness imaginable and Mrs.
Mudd knew the tree would never get pruned. So Mum won the round on that occasion.
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