Reflections of Life

 Often on a Saturday morning we we given the task of taking two bags of animal food over to Dick Browns,   his cottage was on the other side of the green.....my father kept pigs and bought the feed in larger quantities and sold some to just 3 or 4  regular customers. Brownie was of slight build...a little hunched over and his walk was a cross between tottering and trudging, his trousers were always at half mast showing he tops of  his boots.... they were Made of a very heavy material and he had them “ yocked” up almost to his chest, had the waistband been on his waist they would have been the right length , and his old jacket hung slightly forward as he walked and he usually had a dew drop. Our task was to get the wheelbarrow with two bags of feed through his red painted sprung gate without the  gate swinging to and the latch splitting one of the bags open, on one occasion I remember not only did it split the bag but in our haste to stop it we tipped the wheelba...

William George, known to  us kids as Georgie lived in one of the bungalows opposite our bakery....a pair of bungalows that were built for old village people with money bequeathed by the Adcock family. Mum cooked Georgie’s lunch every day and it was either mine or one of my siblings job to deliver it to him....we would take it to the side door and into his kitchen where we were told to put it in the oven for later...this was a “belling 5” a funny little table to oven. Growing near his back door was a very green ‘ground cover’ plant covering two quite large areas....Georgie would ask “ do you know what that is?”...on replying no he’d tap his nose and say “mind your own business “ and then laugh....we go and tell mum what Georgie had said....”I’m not talking his dinner any more” like a stroppy kid....it was sometime before it was revealed that ‘mind your own business‘ was the name of the plant. On a Saturday afternoon Georgie always watched the wrestling and sometimes we’d watch it wi...

In my early days village doors weren’t locked...you tapped the door, shouted and went in.   Charlie Stevenson was  one of my favourite visits. Charlie was a widower, his only boy Edgar had died in action in the second world  war....I’m not too sure of Charlie’s age he was maybe in his late 70’s. One day when I was four no one could find me....after some frantic searching they found me sitting in front of the old black lead range talking to Charlie, apparently I’d knocked at his door and asked him if he was “playing today?” . Charlie’s little old two up and down was cold and damp and always smelt of the apples he was storing in one of his upstairs rooms .......he slept downstairs in the front room. Charlie didn’t have any teeth and whistled a lot as he stared into the fire , occasionally breaking off to talk or answer my questions...there was no heating , no hot water, he lived a very meagre existence. I remember in his little old scullery He had an old butlers  sink ...

I was born in Thurlby in Lincolnshire 22nd November 1958 at 22 the green November being the 11th month and 2 elevens are 22 , my parents owned the village bakery...this was to become the background for my stories. I was the fourth child to Syd and Elsie Stubbs and being the baby of the family I was proper spoilt. The night I was born the midwife told my dad on the phone that mum couldn’t be having the baby, I was born by the time she arrived at 4am.....many years later we had a black poodle called Chico who hated nurse Tully ( the midwife). I guess he knew she’d let me down. By the time I married my father had died and I was still living at 22 the green.....Now I was the village baker. My daughter Nell was born on November 2nd and her first home was also 22 the green....by the time my son George was born I’d moved on from the bakery but George was born on the 22nd of the 2nd ( Thinking day ) so you see two and twenty two figure very strongly.... My ex wife ? Oh her birthday was July 30...