Knowing What a Witch Hunt Looks Like

Witch Hunts are usually associated with the middle ages, a time that spanned more than eight hundred years when most of Europe was shrouded in ignorance and superstition. Conversely it was also a time when the population was most fearful of challenging anyone thought to be a witch. Anything could happen if you were foolish enough to do so and it was considered as reckless as challenging one of the blessed saints. Times had to change of course and what with the launching of the printing press and people like William Shakespeare feverishly writing plays to tax the imagination, a new age of practical enquiry emerged. By and by Newton alerted all and sundry to the laws of gravity and Galileo did his dash with astronomy. The Renaissance had truly arrived and along with the galloping progress the Witch Hunt as we know it was more than due to take off with a vengeance.

It wasn’t altogether surprising that arthritic, bad tempered elderly women living alone were first in line for the stake, quickly followed by a colourful variety of other eccentrics, primarily female. You wouldn’t have stood a chance if you read tea-leaves and if you were over sixty and kept a cat you might as well have screamed from the rooftop – come and get me! Owners of black cats wouldn’t need to scream at all. As the arrests mushroomed so did the stories of Satanic gatherings and meet-ups by moonlight. Whispered one to another after Sunday Church services and in the bars of local Inns these tales greatly exacerbated the general anxiety and caused some to suggest that a certain amount of torture might be introduced in order to encourage those already accused to name their accomplices. It was all that people could talk about in some villages and it wasn’t long before even the more level headed and rational were drawn into the frenzy of denunciation. Those named as witches became responsible for all that was wrong with society and within a short space of time local bigwigs had decided that it was primarily because they were also members of a secret society controlled by Lucifer himself who of course had all the organizational skill needed. Even the most educated and influential began to talk about the number of pacts that had been made with the Devil, how many innocent babies were being sacrificed and eaten and the obscenity of the sexual rituals that took place on a regular basis.

Needless to say we would not be so easily persuaded to believe such nonsense these days would we? We would definitely know a Witch Hunt if we came across one but folk were more gullible back then.

However, during the more intellectually and socially backward sixteenth and seventeenth centuries panic regarding witches spread with ease throughout what was considered to be the civilized world. In Scotland alone one thousand five hundred witches were burnt at the stake and in Germany, the efficiency of the populace drove this figure to almost one hundred thousand. In the rather more enlightened atmosphere of England torture to produce confessions and associate naming was not generally approved of and thus only a thousand witches were eradicated. The last person to be imprisoned under the Witchcraft Act of 1735 in the British Isles was Victoria Helen McCrae Duncan, a Scottish Medium sentenced in 1944. The Act itself was not repealed until 1951.

Extraordinary now to look back on such barbaric times isn’t it?

In the late nineteenth century the idea of Baby Farming caused a similar degree of terror but did not last as long and the victims were fewer overall. Perhaps the relative ease of transport via the train system and the regular dissemination of newspapers helped with both the spread of the fear and also the curtailing of it. Amelia Dyer is believed to have murdered hundreds of infants in her care and her crimes led to one of the most sensational trials of the period and shone a very bright light on the practice. Other criminals with a similar bent included Margaret Waters, Amelia Sach, Hans Oftedal, Sarah Makin and in New Zealand, the infamous Minnie Dean. By the beginning of the twentieth century communities throughout the world were totally alerted to the idea of unwanted children being murdered for monetary gain and the merest whiff of suspicion was likely to swiftly lead to a court case.

Now of course we wouldn’t be so easily influenced. Generally speaking we’ve got more sense.

Half a century later in the United States the hunting down and exposing of those with any interest in the idea of Communism led to similar hysterical accusations, exposure and panic. Allegations that Hollywood was rife with communist sympathisers led the House Committee on Un-American Activities to pursue actors, writers and directors with determination and the mere suggestion of a basic admiration for the ideas of Karl Marx or a regard for communal farming might be enough for them to be barred from working in Hollywood. Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy took advantage of this widespread paranoia to advance himself politically by accusing State Department employees of communist leanings. Television might well have assisted with the passing of the mania because within a decade or so sanity prevailed, McCarthy's accusations were judged to be unsubstantiated, and the Senate eventually censured him in much the way we might now swiftly censure the wildly successful Matthew Hopkins, once the most successful Witch Finder of the seventeenth century.

Fortunately for the human race we definitely learn from history.

In the years approaching the close of the twentieth century perhaps the foremost obsession that swept through the world concerned the wholesale sexual abuse of children. Foreign Experts ventured far and wide, certainly into New Zealand, armed with their medical qualifications and ran seminars for General Practitioners so that the evil practice could be rooted out as fast as possible. With their help the situation took a smart U-turn and neatly mutated into the Satanic Ritual Abuse of preschoolers and before long it was found to be prospering in places you would never have thought possible a few short years previously.

In Christchurch, the unfortunate Peter Ellis was said to have hung children in cages, urinated over them, forced them to eat his faeces, and stuck needles into their genitals. The three and four year olds trustingly left at the Civic Creche by their well-meaning parents were regularly removed from the facility by him, taken through tunnels which connected with cemeteries, a Masonic Lodge and five star hotels where they were abused by adults dressed in black and wearing terrifying masks. They were forced to participate in mock marriages, buried in boxes, made to watch the torture of animals and encouraged to eat human flesh. Yet in the final analysis nobody seemed to notice any of this at the time, including their parents. The reprehensible Peter was certainly a clever Ritual Abuser and how effectively he was able to pull the wool over our eyes.

The internet was in general terms in its infancy but it certainly served to assist the speed of our acceptance of the horrific accusations. Twenty five years on of course we are infinitely more aware and mindful of the fact that some of Peter’s activities were unlikely – that’s the nature of progress. Regardless of how we might view such allegations today, Peter Ellis, still protesting his innocence, served seven years in prison which wasn’t a good thing at all. Luckily for him, however, the prison population generally not known for their ability to suffer child molesters gladly, did not dish out their own retribution. In fact on the whole they showed a great deal more common sense than the New Zealand judiciary. They jogged along with him quite well and saw no reason to chastise him further. Possibly they were simply not in a position to access internet searches with such ease as the rest of us.

The good thing is that we’ve learned a lot since the early 1990s and we no longer believe in Satanic Ritual Abuse.

It is astonishing how effortlessly we could once upon a time be seduced into the parameters of a Witch Hunt. How cheerfully we seemed to don the mantle of the overseer, how quick we were to point fingers to accuse and condemn. It simply wouldn’t happen now would it? We would recognize the signs immediately.

And before someone mentions the Me Too Movement I simply won’t have it. Those young people used so sickeningly and sordidly need our support and love, not our criticism and condemnation. They would not lie about such serious matters as being touched inappropriately, in a sexual manner and without permission. They who ventured so trustingly into the hotel rooms of movie magnates late at night for a chat and a lie down deserve our sympathy not our censure. The hardy one or two who returned a second time in the desperate hope of a mini-part in the man’s next movie should be awarded medals not have judgement heaped upon them. Their only blunder after all was to become blinded by the position and stature of a manipulative fiend who thought nothing of using his power and influence in order to solicit sexual favours. These hapless victims should be pitied rather than held responsible.

And don’t call the movement to expose the monsters who preyed upon them a Witch Hunt because we all know perfectly well what a Witch Hunt looks like. We’re not stupid!

The Undoubted Benefit of a Writing Companion

Jennifer and I meet regularly usually at the same time each month primarily to discuss our current writing projects. For her this means a ferry ride from Devonport and for me a twenty minute walk into the city – sometimes a short bus ride. We’ve been meeting up for ten years and during that time have sampled a fair number of cafes and coffee shops from back street brasseries with nothing but the coffee to distinguish them to five star tourist hotels with astonishing views. Of course the sole subject of conversation is not wholly writing and we often stray into a variety of other topics both philistine and scholarly – sometimes it’s simply cooking and how the day to day provision of food has a habit of interfering with what we see as the purpose to life. We have definitely learned a lot from each other and that very fact was what we discussed at length the other day sitting in Notting Hill Café in Parnell Road. The following is what Jennifer wrote later on her blog and I think it is of sufficient importance to all of us who write to republish here. We could perhaps all benefit from a Writing Companion – a Tinder Site for Those Who Write perhaps?

AUGUST 9, 2019 ~ JENNIFER BARRACLOUGH
Writing is a solitary occupation and the writer’s life can be lonely. Festivals, courses, talks and local groups provide valuable opportunities for professional development and social contact, but attendance can cost a lot of time and money and distract from the writing itself. For myself, one of the most productive, economical and enjoyable forms of support has come from a long-term partnership with one other person.

My first meeting with Jean was serendipitous. After being introduced at a lunch party in Auckland given by mutual friends, we discovered that we had both been brought up in Gravesend, a small town in north Kent, and had left England because of being married to New Zealand men. We arranged to meet for coffee a few weeks later and then found that we were both already published authors, Jean in the field of education and me in that of medicine, and both working on new books. This turned out to be the first of 100-odd coffee dates that have taken place almost every month for the past ten years.

Over this time we have developed a close friendship, discussed many topics ranging from animals to the afterlife, and supported each other through the trials of family illnesses and bereavements. But the main focus of our meetings has always been writing, and we have exchanged a great deal of factual information as well as encouragement and support. When we first met, we were exploring what was then the relatively new option of self-publishing. We have since both gone on to self-publish several books, both fiction and nonfiction. Most of Jean’s are set in north Kent, and my next one will be too.

We have read each other’s draft manuscripts and offered constructive criticism; shared information about the technicalities of using the various publishing platforms; exchanged recommendations for editors and cover designers; and tackled the challenges of marketing.

I have been very lucky to have found such a faithful and compatible “writing companion”. Maybe, if it does not exist already, there is a place for the equivalent of a dating website to pair other writers up?

Of Canaries & Coalmines

Writing about Wombwell Hall invariably stirs up more memories in others than almost any other topic I examine. We past pupils may be quite different as far as our lives have developed but we are in total accord when it comes to the astonishing level of affection we still hold for the school. It’s a fondness that does not merely relate to the grand old building, sadly now very much in the past, but extends to members of staff including some of the most unlikely candidates. In my own case there were probably more teachers I disliked or I was at least wary of than those I liked and I don’t imagine that any of them would recall me with any degree of fondness. However, my love affair with the place itself has ensured that I have kept every single one of the eight school reports that document my academic progress between Christmas Term, 1953 and Spring Term, 1956. It’s clear that the Hall had a similar effect upon its staff because not only did the majority of those noting my lack of scholarly headway remain in the job throughout the years I attended, many of them were still there ten years later.

Miss D Fuller was headmistress during my time and it’s possible she was a Dorothy or a Deborah with friends who were not intimidated by her and called her Dot or Deb when they met up in the village pub for Sunday morning drinks. She seemed to me to be a tall, angular woman, slightly hunched with a wardrobe full of tweed suits which she wore with striped blouses and occasionally men’s ties and I kept as far away from her as possible. I was only sent to Report Myself to her on a handful of occasions usually as a result of conflict with other girls but once simply because I was wearing peep-toe shoes. I was confused as to why the shoes were expressly forbidden and as I did not own a substitute suitable for school wear, was worried as to how to break the bad news to my mother.

During my first term Form G1 appears to have had two supervising Teachers, Miss S Smith who I now know to have been a Stella and who I remember well, and Miss M Cox who I have no memory of at all. I see now that my English teacher for the first three terms was someone with the initials MMH who never gave me a mark higher than B but said that at times my work showed thought and originality and that I should continue to apply myself. She may well have been the person that Miss S Smith got quite excited about, telling us we were indeed fortunate girls to be taught English by someone with a Master’s Degree. She then gazed around the room waiting for us to gasp in astonishment but with the exception of Valerie Goldsack who was prone to gasping at almost anything, we looked at each other in bewilderment and confusion. What on earth was a Master’s Degree?

Furthermore MMH might in fact have been the very person who, lacking a considerable amount of insight and empathy suddenly and completely out of the blue stopped short in the middle of an explanation of the finer details of the plot of `Prester John’ to stridently ask me if anything was worrying me. Not having the vaguest understanding of what she might be referring to I simply shook my head and so she said in that case perhaps I would like to stop staring out of the window and come to sit in the front row of the class. Additionally, once seated I might also like to explain to the class how Buchan had linked the Zulu uprising of 1910 to the medieval legend. As I did not want to do either of those things I said nothing at all but wondered why it was I was being seen as inattentive in the first place. Decades later it occurred to me that some of the ongoing distraction problems I had throughout my school years might have been due to the fact that I suffered from undiagnosed Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. On the other hand I might simply be giving myself an excuse as I was still most definitely more of an Enid Blyton aficionado than anything else. `Prester John’ may simply have been too difficult a work to engage me at that time no matter how brilliantly it was being taught by this woman who possibly had a Master’s Degree, whatever that eventually turned out to be.

During my first year a Miss SMH presided over Arithmetic, awarding me three lots of C- and noting that I found the subject difficult, was a slow worker and finally that I had a great deal of work to do before any kind of standard could be reached. She wasn’t wrong and when we gave up the subject by Spring 1955 in favour of Accounts, although she was moved to say that I seemed to be making an effort and gave me an unadorned C, it is my firm belief that she was mistaken. For the duration of my Wombwell Hall years anything to do with figures continued to elude me and if I am completely honest nothing has changed since.

Miss Springate who taught Geography was our 1SC Form teacher for two terms and I well recall clashing with her regularly and at times speaking to her quite rudely. My failure to get on with her is reflected in one documented examination result where I came twenty second in a class of twenty three. I’m still quite surprised by this result because I don’t remember disliking her subject to that extent. Some of the topics had been moderately interesting and particularly so when we examined the history of coal mining in Kent, an industry that existed in our midst but was almost invisible. Miss Springate was able to inform us that in fact an open cast mine as close by as the environs of Cobham had reliably produced a quantity of useable coal which had actually been used by Lord Darnley to heat Cobham Hall. Two further drifts had recently been dug into the hillside and at one point the mine was thriving and producing 80 tons weekly. For some reason I found the idea of mining in Kent quite fascinating and even asked questions which was not like me and seemed to unnerve her. Were canaries taken into the Cobham drift just as they were in South Wales and in the North for instance? Were they found to be useful? I think I had recently read at least part of `How Green Was My Valley’ and was captivated by the possibility of all the drama that mining seemed to offer the working classes.

Miss Springate did not seem to know a great deal about the canaries except that they were invaluable for detecting toxic gases so she moved quickly on to the village of Aylesham, not so very far from where we now sat she said and built in the 1920s specifically to house Kentish coal miners. Originally 20,000 residents were expected but the building had turned out to be slower than expected. It was still, apparently, a work in progress. It was at that point that Valerie Goldsack said she knew a little about the village herself because an Uncle of hers was actually living there on a temporary basis as a mining consultant. He most definitely did not own or need to own a canary she hastened to assure us and then went on to explain about Test Bores and Failed Sinkings further exhibiting her somewhat precocious knowledge.

Miss E Norman was our Form teacher for three terms and she taught several science subjects and might have been an Elizabeth or an Emily. She seemed to be fascinated by the sheep of the Romney Marsh and appeared astonished when we admitted to knowing very little about them because after all they were virtually on our doorstep so our lack of knowledge was abysmal. More importantly they were famous throughout the world. Why didn’t we take the pride in them we should? We looked at each other helplessly and a few of us, like Valerie and those who sought to emulate her, might even have felt apologetic. Miss Norman had a habit of being surprisingly astonished by various aspects of our lives. On one occasion she was quite incredulous because only a handful of her form class had hot running water at home and they were the girls whose families were fortunate enough to have been recently moved into newly completed housing estates.

When she recovered enough, she asked us what on earth we did when we needed to access hot water then? Jill Butler, a quiet girl, said, somewhat aggressively for her, - `We fill a kettle up with cold water and boil it of course!’ When Miss Norman looked as if she might have to sit down before she fainted, she added `What else would we be likely to do?’ The very nearly speechless science teacher looked about her and asked in a smaller voice, `How many of you have to boil a kettle on each occasion you need hot water?’ As a cautious plethora of hands began to rise she returned to fiddling with the Bunsen burners on the benches at the front of the room. I did not allow my own hand to rise though it was itching to do so because at the time I was engaged in a fantasy of mythological proportions about a substitute family living in a delightful thatched cottage in Cobham village which unlikely though it seemed had every modern convenience available.

English was always my favourite subject and Miss K (Kate? Kathleen?) Smith was my favourite teacher despite her habit of only once giving me a mark above B- and repeatedly littering my reports with phrases like `examination result very disappointing’….. `at times can produce good work’ …. `capable of much better. ….. `should spend less time daydreaming about the future’…. Despite these comments she gave me time whenever I seemed to need it and suggested places where I might send short stories for publication. She became for me the fount of all knowledge and when I had her complete attention I was in the habit of asking her opinion on all manner of issues that had little to do with the study of the English language. What was her opinion with regard to the use of canaries in Kentish coal mines? Why was the wearing of peep-toe shoes such an abomination? Her evasive replies did little to reduce my devotion to her. When she revealed to Miss S Smith my secret ambition to become a famous actress I was mortified but eventually was able to forgive her because it was difficult to hate her for too long and in any case we all knew that Miss S Smith, by that time definitely not my favourite person, and she were very close friends. So close that some girls, more sophisticated and worldly than me, sniggered knowingly when their friendship was mentioned. I had absolutely no idea what the suppressed mirth was all about and despite being thrown abruptly headlong into knowledge of sex and sin within a very short time of leaving school it was a long time before I actually gave any real thought to the subject of same sex relationships.

Some years later I was startled and embarrassed to come across the rather wonderful Miss Katie/Kathleen Smith holding court one Saturday evening in The Gateways Club in Kings Road, Chelsea. I had been taken there by a man I was obsessively in love with who thought I needed to broaden my horizons with regard to matters sexual and what better place to start? She had definitely gained weight but her voice and bearing were unmistakable. She sat half astride a barstool in exactly the same way she had on a number of occasions sat beside me in the library at Wombwell Hall, advising me how to improve my writing, the wisdom of certain types of footwear and whether or not canaries had a special place in the hearts of Kentish miners.

She was wearing a look-alike tweed jacket to that which I remembered from 1955 and she had clearly had more than one gin and tonic but was by no means intoxicated. Had I been capable of doing so I might have engaged her in conversation but I did not take that option simply because I could not on the spur of the moment think of a convincing reason as to why I should be in what was described back then rather inanely as A Girls’Club. It did not occur to me that she might well have the same problem of course because she was Miss K Smith, and thus still neared perfection as a human being.

Years later, courtesy of other ex-Wombwell Hall students I learned that she and Miss S Smith had indeed been extremely good friends and even shared a house together. I also learned that she was not everyone’s favourite which came as a surprise to me. How could that possibly be so?

Rhode Island Reds

It was my father who initiated the keeping of six hens and a rooster because just imagine having a plentiful supply of new-laid eggs not to mention the occasional Chicken Roast? The manner in which he enthused had me hooked very quickly even though I had some doubts with regard to the Roast, infrequent though it was promised to be and this was because when questioned he failed to explain that part of ownership even though I posed a fair few questions. In the end I decided that he could not really mean that we were eventually going to eat the birds because that was an easy enough question to answer and in any case we usually bought our Chicken Roasts already quite deceased and oven prepared from the butcher at Christmas time. It saved a lot of trouble as far as I could see.

My mother was much slower to reach any agreement about the idea because she really did not like roosters and said they could be vicious. The rooster we eventually got was only four weeks old at the time we first owned him and was not vicious at all and she suggested that maybe he wasn’t a rooster in the first place because he was nothing like Spiteful Stanley the bird who had reigned supreme in the house in Maiden Lane, Crayford when she was a girl. My father told her he was most definitely a rooster and pointed out that his comb was already developing and was a healthy pink colour. We called him Cecil because of Cecil Rhodes at least that’s what I called him and that was because of Miss Biggs at school pointing to a pink bit on the globe and talking about Mr Rhodes very enthusiastically. I was told that our batch of fowl were Rhode Island Reds and American in origin, all supposedly Reliable Layers. I did not know if there was any real connection between Rhode Island and Cecil Rhodes but fancied that he may at one stage have owned the island. Cecil’s six wives, and I mean our Cecil of course, were not supposed to have names because it was very difficult to tell one from another although I claimed ownership over the smallest one and named her, unimaginatively, Clucky.

The sad fact was that she did not make an entirely satisfactory pet but I was to grow quite fond of her simply because when you are six or seven years old there is an understanding between you and most of the animal kingdom and although you might infinitely prefer a cocker spaniel as a household pet you can make do with a goldfish if the situation dictates it. We had a rather unfriendly cat at that time called Micky and my father was still negotiating with my mother regarding dog ownership which I felt he did rather better than me though to be fair he wasn’t having much success. There was also Ricky the budgie and once the Rhode Island Reds arrived it amounted to almost a surfeit of pets but only if the seven of them could be included of course. My friend Molly who could be relied upon to know most things I didn’t know because she was several months older than me and her birth date actually placed her into the year above me at school, said they could not be included under any circumstances because hens were not pets. I pointed out that Clucky was most certainly a pet and I had almost been given her for that specific purpose. Molly said well in that case, Jonah, old Mr Bassant’s pig could also count as a family pet and nobody in their right mind would want him on account of the smell. You would never be able to keep him inside the house no matter how much you might want to.

The best thing about the hens was definitely the supply of fresh eggs and even Clucky joined in and did her bit now and again. As time went on Cecil Rhodes became more more self important and more unpleasantly aggressive and most especially when he became father to a clutch of fluffy yellow chicks four or which eventually added to his harem. There had been several rooster chicks in the bunch and they were just as sweetly loveable as their sisters but overnight they disappeared and I was told they had gone to live on a farm owned by Lord Darnley near Cobham village. No matter how loveable the group had been when first hatched though, once they grew out of their fluffy, downy infancy, both Molly and I lost interest in them.

The worst thing about the whole poultry project was the fact that from time to time as had been predicted, a hen that had been pecking corn happily amongst its sisters and aunts one day would somehow find itself served up as a special Sunday dinner. Well it didn’t quite happen like that because there would generally be a degree of discussion between my parents regarding what I could only view as the willful murder of an inoffensive member of our extended family. My mother would invariably justify it by pointing out that the victim had not been such a reliable layer lately as if the bird had almost brought it upon herself.
My father would be sent out into the yard after tea to Ring its Neck as fast as possible and meanwhile I observed him from the kitchen window as he approached the coop that had once been our Anderson Shelter. It must have been the increased determination in his stride that alarmed the hens because they seemed to foresee what was about to happen and a shiver of apprehension would pass amongst them. Their flapping and squawking would grow a little louder and more urgent and Cecil might courageously attack the lower legs encased in scruffy wellington boots that approached. Within the kitchen I held my breath and tried to curb the tears as I contemplated the injustice of the slaughter that was about to take place telling myself that when I grew up and gained status and power no hen of mine would ever meet such a fate. I would only ever order poultry for cooking from the butcher in Dover Road just as we had always done ourselves before we became back street chicken farmers.

By next day the murdered fowl would be plucked and de-gutted and hung above the kitchen sink ready for Sunday roasting. And by Sunday when roasted potatoes, parsnips and carrots had been added and a bread sauce made by my father on the oven top, I would have recovered enough to tentatively eat a little of the white breast meat along with my aunts and cousins and whoever else might be sharing the meal.

At times like this my mother would preside over the vegetables proudly, pretending to be a competent cook and my father would carve the bird listening to her telling the room that there was a lot to be said for owning hens and it wasn’t just the reliability of an egg for breakfast whenever you fancied one. In fact that wasn’t quite true because in recent months she had decided that the majority of the eggs should be sold to my father’s foreman from Bevan’s Cement Works who was willing to pay a very good price as they were freshly laid. This was because he had a family of four children, two slightly hysterical girls called Brenda and Sylvia and two foster children, boys called Kevin and David who replaced a son dead at three from Leukemia. Such a family needed the input of freshly laid eggs in an age of austerity when their regularity was hard to come by.

I was charged with the weekly delivery and carried them carefully wrapped in newspaper and placed in a hessian bag to their house in Vale Road. It was a house that befitted a Bevans foreman, one I greatly admired and for a time desired to live in myself, Edwardian with a small front garden and a narrow entrance hall. A few years later when after my father’s death I became familiar with the more upmarket houses in Darnley Road I was shocked that I had ever hankered after such a place but at eight it was my dream house and the inhabitants were very nearly my dream family. It wasn’t that I modeled myself on either of the girls but the fact that they put a tablecloth on their table at teatime rather than sheets of newspaper was impressive and I couldn’t help noting that their jam was not served directly from the jar it came in, but was put into a little glass bowl instead and you helped yourself with a spoon. When I told Molly about this she said they must be middle class and most likely had packets of real toilet paper in their lavatory, scratchy white stuff called Bronco. We generally used newspaper torn into wipe size pieces.

Over time we were to eat a number of our Reliable Layers and so I slowly became accustomed to the fact that murder lurked in our backyard and very possibly in other corners of York Road also. It did not go unnoticed that a number of neighbours kept rabbits and my cousin Harold jeered at me when I suggested they did so because they loved them. From my own point of view the ownership of rabbits would have been a great improvement on hens even if there was a vague intention to turn them into stews and pies at some stage. I might even have become accustomed to devouring the flesh of something I had cuddled to my breast and loved unconditionally, wept over and named because it had to be admitted that after a slow start I generally did my bit with regard to the consumption of the hens. I could only assume that over time my compassion became jolted and I realized that life was not always fair, especially where animals were concerned. And the shocking habit I knew to be not merely confined to animals because at school Mr Clarke had discussed cannibalism with us and told us that the taste of human flesh was said to resemble lamb a little. There had been sharp intakes of breath among the girls in the class when this was revealed whilst the boys nudged each other in excitement and sat up straighter.

When it was Clucky’s turn to be eaten, sadly I had to draw a line because as an animal lover it was necessary to show the world that I had standards and it simply wasn’t fair to expect children to eat their pets. My mother did a poor job of convincing me that it wasn’t Clucky in the oven sizzling away, that in fact she had been sent to that lovely farm at Cobham to live out her days alongside her relatives. As I tearfully related the details of the hen’s demise to Molly, hanging over the gate on Sunday afternoon whilst two aunts and Old Nan tucked into my pet hen, she said well it had been on the cards for a long time. In her experience that was the way of the world and just imagine being the owner of the pig, Jonah because eventually he would meet the same fate and would take much longer to polish off. You could find yourself eating bacon rashers for weeks. You couldn’t argue with that.

Going Steady at Wombwell Hall

Going Steady was a state most of us hankered after in Form 1SC at Wombwell Hall even though those known for being sensible couldn’t help noting that there was Plenty of Time which is what their mother or even their grandmother had recently said. Having a Proper Boyfriend was a status symbol in those days when you were round about your fifteenth birthday and couldn’t help feeling that time was running out no matter what anyone told you.

Of course I’m not talking about all of us because there were those in Form 1SC for whom all thoughts of the opposite sex were largely absent. These were the girls whom certain members of the staff looked upon favourably, girls who continually got B+ and even an occasional A for their analysis of the tributaries of The Nile and wrote essays detailing how long the Dark Ages had been and how dark they eventually were. Girls like Valerie Goldsack and Priscilla Horsfall who never ever got a C+ for Effort and were not prone to measuring each other’s vital statistics and comparing bra sizes. These were the girls who were eventually to be told that they were undoubtedly University Material and were quite unlike the rest of us sadly destined merely for routine office work. There was a distinct possibility that these two might be heading for Law or Science – even the hallowed halls of Medicine perhaps!

A few of those being so energetically trained by Miss Hart and Miss Wood towards the shorthand and typing speeds required to keep the wheels of business in North Kent turning had already given up on the complexities of Sir Isaac Pitman’s System of Shorthand Writing. Those girls had announced that their aspirations reached no further than a common or garden Typing Pool. Mary Brent and Kathleen Connelly for instance aimed no further than Exercise 98 in The New Course (Gentlemen: your attention is called to the fact that students must register for the summer session before 4th July …… etc) and following their lead Sally Warnett courageously announced that she could see no future at all in Shorthand, her aunt having told her that something called Dictaphone Typing would soon overtake it in all forward thinking businesses.

Shorthand writing was undoubtedly difficult and for some it proved to be impossible to master. The small clutch of Pitman Failures were thus allowed to drop the subject from their weekly timetable and for them extra sessions in Basic Accounting were added. The rest of us organized ourselves into loose groups of those who still found Pitman’s incredibly difficult but were willing to stick at it for the sake of a higher weekly wage in the years to come and those who did not actually find it too nerve wracking.

There was a distinct feeling of ease and even contentment in being part of a group that generally found the life’s work of Sir Isaac did not eat away at the psyche in the early hours of the morning. Shirley, Norma, Pamela, Pauline, Julia, Pat and I merged together in an untidy friendship cluster, mostly achieving similar levels of achievement in the subjects that were destined to dominate our early teenage years and beyond. And because there was an academic unity between us we now spilled out of the classrooms together on morning and lunch breaks sharing all manner of confidences.

Shorthand did not completely govern our lives because as I have said, because we were also extremely interested in boys although as we spent most of our time within the confines of a 1950s Girls School we did not get huge opportunities to meet many. Shirley was the only one of us who seemed to have any success whatsoever in this area, easily attracting a succession of what were loosely termed The Sea School Boys. Pat said that this was only because Shirley worked harder at it than the rest of us and in any case her own father had expressly forbidden her under any circumstances from doing what he called Fraternising with Seamen. Given what was to transpire within a year or two concerning Pat’s association with the opposite sex which would see her confined to a Reform School for a period of time you could only agree that her father had her best interests at heart. But of course we didn’t realise that at the time when we were busy comparing the relative merits of our parents and what they would or would not allow us to do.

The Gravesend Sea Training School had been founded in 1918 following the First World War to train boys aged 15 to 17 who wished to join the Merchant Navy and help replace those men who had been lost in the war. Over time approximately 70,000 boys were trained there and it became known as the best sea training establishment in the world. Eventually a purpose built college was to be opened at Gravesend, designed to replace both the old Sea School and TS Vindicatrix at Sharpness and to be called the National Sea Training College. In 1955 and 1956 the boys were a handsome bunch with their clean, scrubbed look, their neat hair cuts and their natty uniforms. They easily became a magnet for local girls who had moved into their teens and a fair number of those already working in jobs at places like Woolworths, Marks & Spencers and Featherstones, not to mention the local factories.

As a group the only thing we girls from 1SC had in common was our relatively rapid Pitmans’ prowess and we certainly did not agree about everything. What we were totally in accord with, however, was that of the seven of us Shirley was definitely having the most success with the opposite sex which Pat had early on persuaded us was totally on account of her forward thinking parents. Pauline and Pamela, however, who lived quite close to Shirley, maintained that as a family they were not quite as permissive as we would believe and their daughter’s triumph was more likely due to her uncommonly good looks. It was true that she was a startlingly attractive child with dark curly hair, wide brown eyes and a pleasant demeanour. The staff certainly thought so, Miss Eatch commenting one morning that in the staff room she was known as `that extraordinarily pretty little girl in 1SC’, a remark that seemed to mortify the person it was intended to compliment. At morning break Shirley, still slightly embarrassed told us as we huddled over the bottles of warm milk we were forced to drink that as far as she was concerned she didn’t care what her face looked like – pretty or ugly, it was all the same to her. She was only concerned, she added, that her Bust, Waist & Hips measured up to what was considered desirable. Vital Statistics were just that – vital! Nothing else mattered.

We as one then aimed towards the 36-23-34 that Shirley now assured us was what would ensure we caught the eye of the lads destined for the Merchant Navy, and should we fail she added that a padded bra might do the trick for a while. Pamela who did not yet own a bra of any description looked horrified. As I unfortunately already sported breast development that was to eventually become embarrassing and attract far too much attention from plasterers and carpenters on building sites, I assumed a look of disapproval. Pauline, not totally understanding disapproval told me in a far too loud voice that I would have been fashionable at the turn of the century when women wore bustles and had hour glass figures.

Shirley was the first to enlighten us that once you were Going Steady your boyfriend would be expected to buy you gifts like perfume and jewelry. Mariners, she said, were good at that because being a sophisticated group they knew what a girl’s expectations might be. Quite apart from that when they did trips to foreign shores, as was part of the Sea School Training, they would return with more exotic items than could be found locally. Her current Steady had given her Evening in Paris fragrance and bath crystals for her fifteenth birthday but when he came back from New Zealand it would most likely be jewelry. We were definitely impressed.

It was to be weeks before he returned of course but to make sure we did not forget his obligations even if he should lapse and do so himself, Shirley read excerpts of his frequent letters to us and made certain that we admired the envelopes, each adorned with S W A L K which in itself seemed to irritate Miss S Smith when she confiscated one that was being passed around her English class. This was not surprising when we were supposed to be immersed in analyzing the difference between a Noun Phrase and an Adjective Phrase. Norma who was still giggling when the envelope left her hands and had been passed on to a girl called Yvonne was curtly told she might collect it at the end of the period and so she immediately felt forced to clarify that it belonged to Shirley and she, Norma, did not have a boyfriend who would write such childish things on envelopes. Miss S Smith asked her if she realized that the childish thing was called an Acronym and Norma said she did not and probably neither did Shirley whereupon Miss S Smith told her not to be impertinent and the rest of us looked superior and tried hard not to giggle.

We had reached the very end of the term before Shirley’s current Love returned to compliment her with the promised jewelry which she said she hoped would not turn out to be pearls because they were a bit middle aged but she would certainly not say No to a small diamond. She brought the small, carefully wrapped package to school with her and even read segments of the letter than accompanied it to us. We watched in fascination as she began to discard the pale blue tissue paper and sellotape. There was a small box inside and leaning forward, we all began to get more excited. Shirley was smiling and trying to look nonchalant as she said she hoped it wasn’t a ring because that would be a bit presumptious. Her mother had said she was far too young to get Serious and she agreed.

There was silence when the little wooden earrings were revealed. Pat said politely that she thought they might be Kiwis, a flightless bird important to New Zealanders. Norma said they were very nicely made. Shirley shrugged and said she might not ever wear them because they were clip-ons and had we not noticed that her ears were pierced. Anyway, she added, she’d gone off him as a Steady. He was a bit boring.

A Possible Return to Fascism

I should never have started watching those hypnotic clips of Piers Morgan exhibiting his strengths and his weaknesses on a programme called Good Morning Britain. It was supposed to be light relief whilst weaning myself away from Jordan Peterson and I only started watching him because friends and acquaintances, who I now understand to be URF&A ….Ultra Right Friends & - you get my drift, told me that he spoke a lot of sense (UR sense of course). Jordan Peterson can be addictive to people like me who are somewhat lacking in sensitivity and correct thinking. When I stumbled across Piers Morgan I found he was even more so. Quite apart from the fact that he appeared to have very little sympathy or emotional alignment with those he was interviewing, the fact that everyone shouted over everyone else in a rather belligerent manner was distracting. We in the Southern Hemisphere have been conditioned over thirty or forty years to allow each other to air unacceptable opinions in a less antagonistic way. In fact we are trained in kindergarten and become accustomed to the idea that only he/she who is holding the pink bunny or the yellow ball is allowed to speak. This does create a false sense of tolerance I agree as we deftly dodge the moment when the actuality of our unpopular views will be exposed for all to see and we are forced to hang our heads in shame.

Piers Morgan was very bad for me because I found myself agreeing with most of his UR views. I realized by the time we got to the programme about gender change in under tens that my mother had been quite right about me being Easily Led. I had now clearly fallen in with the Wrong Crowd. Later in transglobe three am discussion with Jessica in Islington she pointed out not for the first time that once upon a time I was much more accepting of such ideas and wouldn’t my late Auntie Queenie have most likely benefited from some kind of surgical intervention early on in her life? From what Jessica remembered back in the day most of the Constant family seemed to reject poor Queenie. I said I didn’t recall her being rejected though she was at one time treated as a bit of an oddity which to be fair, I think she came to rather enjoy because she was definitely something of an exhibitionist . Anyway all that was really beside the point because I was only drawing the line at the extreme end of the current debate. Jessica said she thought the positioning of the line had more to do with wanting to be seen as reasonably liberal than anything else.

I didn’t argue because of course she was right. I mean who in their right mind wants to invite the rabid criticism that emanates from those huffing and puffing Virtue Signallers who see insults in every corner? The zealots among us now get offended so terribly easily and feel they have been put on this earth in order to show others the Right Way to think so if you have any sense at all you do think before you say something that upsets them.

And as I have said previously, what is to be done with social lepers like myself anyway? There are probably more of us than you might imagine. After all it’s not beyond the realms of possibility surely that those of us who have always happily jogged along with the legal recognition of same sex relationships might be just a bit miffed at the idea of same sex marriage? Is that really not OK? And those of us who would not dream of castigating an adult who decided to change gender, might feel some concern at the idea of a child being afforded the same degree of acceptance.

What should be Done with we who hold genuine but socially unpopular views on life? How should we be compelled to conform? I mean, most of us really would like to change – after all who wants to go through life as a Bigot and a Racist in this day and age? It is definitely a most unhappy place to find oneself in. There should be government re-education programmes for people like us and those that berate us so readily should surely understand that it is help we rednecks need rather than ridicule and threats of retribution. We can't help the way we think.

I mentioned a word or two about Stalinist Russia the last time I aired this problem but upon re-examining the conundrum perhaps Hitler had the right idea and Fascism is the road to follow. After all, the complete shutting down of dissent worked for him for a number of years – why on earth should it not work for us?

The Wombwell Hall Cookery Class

My next door neighbour tells me that when she was a fourteen year old at school in Auckland they called it Home Science. At Wombwell Hall they called it Cookery and we only did it for two terms. I now see that it was taught by someone with the initials KH but I can remember nothing at all about her. My report (which I still have – yes, indeed I do!) says `Jean works quite well but needs to concentrate more on her work’ and she gave me a C. I can’t complain about that because I was awarded a C for most subjects. I had been quite looking forward to Cookery because my cousin Connie said that we got to make Scotch Eggs and Jam Tarts. It was the latter that attracted me most.

My Scotch Eggs were tidy and acceptable, at least that’s what Miss KH said at the time and I was certainly proud of them as I carried them home for tea. My mother was a decidedly dubious cook, happiest when she was churning out pots of stew or fried kidneys. She would never have ventured into something as complicated as a Scotch Egg so you can perhaps begin to understand my sense of achievement when I bore mine home wrapped in greaseproof paper. To be totally honest I don’t think I had actually come face to face with one before the quartet I created myself though I might have read about them. Anyhow they went down well at teatime in York Road though my mother insisted that my brother and I had slices of bread and the margarine she called butter with them.

After this success you can imagine how much I was looking forward to the conquering of Jam Tarts. They were something I was totally familiar with of course and my mother frequently tried her hand at making her own but her version was simply a baked pastry case which she filled with jam later when it had nicely cooled. This was because she was convinced that only a complete fool would think it rational to heat jam too much, and as for actually cooking it …. and at this point she shook her head sadly. It stood to reason she said that jam would burn like billy-ho and then what a mess you would have to clean up not to mention the waste of both jam and pastry. Consequently her tarts never tasted or looked quite right as you can probably imagine because jam cooked inside a pastry case has a completely different texture and taste to jam spread carefully over a baked pastry case. There was never any doubt that my brother and I much preferred the version made by the bakery in Northfleet High Street. However, my jam tarts were going to be the real thing, or as my cousin Harold would say – The Real McCoy, to be admired and perhaps even emulated. To ensure that I would be able to repeat this culinary success I was going to write down exactly how to make them in shorthand in case I forgot anything vital.

Miss KH explained the intricacies of the ovens – two girls to one appliance and the girl whose tarts went on the top shelf would need to check them carefully to avoid the danger of inadvertent burning. Slightly burned tarts were still edible of course but you could never be too careful she told us and the top shelf as we were most likely aware was a much hotter place than the bottom one. I wasn’t aware of course but once she explained this I became aware. I was to share an appliance with Pat Haslam who spoke a little bit posh and said Gosh and Golly a lot because she had previously attended a boarding school in Folkestone. This made her popular with some of the teachers and slightly alienated her from some of her classmates. Later she was to disappoint her parents by running off with a visiting GI and living with him for three glorious weeks in a room at The Cumberland Hotel. For this misdemeanor which in 1956 was considered serious, she would be sent to what was called an Approved School for over a year deemed to be somewhat beyond her parents’ control. My mother was always threatening to have me sent to such a place and I had visualized it as a kind of Borstal for girls but Pat, home for the holidays after her first term, said it was exactly the same as the boarding school in Folkestone that had cost her parents so much money and according to her father had clearly been a place with a bad influence since she had not Turned Out well. Her mother, on the other hand, blamed Wombwell Hall and girls like me that she had been forced to mix with.

This was all in the future of course. On the day of the Jam Tarts we shared a bench and prepared our pastry side by side, each of us ending up with a few pastry strips surplus to requirements. Miss KH enthusiastically suggested that we might like to decorate our tarts once the spoonfuls of strawberry jam had been distributed throughout the half dozen in each tray, with pastry crosses. Pat said she might do just that but I was firmly of the opinion that mine should be completely unadulterated and declined to follow her lead.

In Pat’s opinion I was foolish because it was a waste of the extra pastry and Miss KH nodded approvingly because she liked Pat and liked her ex boarding school accent even more. She said Pat was being very sensible. She wished all girls were as sensible. But I did not want to join the ranks of the sensible and in any case I was never going to get the accent right. I wanted the jam in my tarts to be unsullied by pastry extras so that my mother would clearly see that it was perfectly possible for jam to be cooked inside a pastry case. I put my tray on the bottom shelf of the oven and Pat said she didn’t mind using the top shelf in any case because it only meant her tarts would be cooked that much quicker. She thought hers looked Absolutely Topping with the addition of pastry off-cuts formed into crosses.

I’m not sure how it was that we came to forget to check on the top shelf tarts but we did and so when it came to removing the trays from the oven Pat’s were decidedly burnt, the jam bubbling away angrily and the pastry a very dark shade of brown. She very sensibly, her hands protected with oven gloves decorated with pink roses, grabbed those from the bottom shelf, maintaining they were definitely hers just as Miss KH tracked down the smell of burning and appeared before us. Our teacher gazed at me reproachfully reiterating her warnings concerning top shelf baking and telling me that unfortunately my tarts looked a little burnt and there was now nothing to be done about it. I protested that they were not in fact my tarts but she had already walked away and Pat was holding firmly onto the tray of unburnt tarts looking pristine and unsullied, exactly as jam tarts ought to look. The perfect ones were hers she maintained, packing them carefully into the cardboard carton provided by Miss KH.

I knew that pushing a tray of burnt tarts into Pat Haslam’s face and hair was absolutely the wrong thing to do, but I did it anyway whilst twenty other fourteen year olds and our cookery teacher looked on in horror. Somehow or other we both ended up on the floor of the classroom, Pat trying to defend herself and me screaming hysterically about pastry off cuts and bottom shelves of ovens. By the time Miss KH had heroically parted us we were both crying and I found I had chunks of Pat’s hair between my fingers together with a great deal of burnt strawberry jam.

The next morning found us both in Miss Fuller’s office where an explanation was demanded as to why girls on the very cusp of young adulthood were fighting on the floor of Room 5, one of them screaming like a fish wife. I just knew that one was me because girls whose vocabulary includes Gosh, Golly and Absolutely Topping definitely don’t scream obscenities learned from their grandmothers at others on account of ownership over jam tarts. Miss Fuller waited patiently, her pen tapping the desk in front of her. Eventually Pat said something about unfortunately making an honest mistake about which tarts were hers and Gosh she was dreadfully sorry. Miss Fuller’s shoulders straightened as she extended a commending nod in the direction of Pat Haslam, a pupil who had simply made an error and owned up to it like a splendid example of young British girlhood - a pupil any head teacher could only feel satisfied with.

She turned her attention to me and told me that my language had been completely unacceptable and my violence could not be tolerated. It had been no way to deal with what was clearly simply human error and I was to apologise to Pat immediately. I was also to apologise to Miss KH and furthermore I was to write an essay about better ways of resolving conflict. I told Pat I was sincerely sorry and went in search of Miss KH who looked nervous when she saw me approaching. I can’t remember if I actually wrote the essay or not.

A year or so later our gossiping group of ex-Wombwell Hall girls discussed the astonishing demise of Pat the boarding school girl as we shared a cramped corridor of the commuter train to Charing Cross, heading to our jobs in typing pools. We marveled at the audacity of her love affair with a tourist that had hurtled her out of the ranks of wage earner and unceremoniously flung her back to a school of the kind none of us would want to attend. And all the while I felt strangely triumphant and I wondered if Miss Fuller and Miss KH would ever get to know about it because a girl who was capable of lying about which Jam Tarts were actually hers was to my mind capable of almost anything.