umm... I was -18 in 1958... and now I have a horrible mental image to go to sleep with
I have to admit to being curious - what on earth was/is a treadle clutch?
And I want that 9 cylinder motorbike from ebay
Gods know what the police would say if they stopped me on that - if of course they could keep up
Its nice to hear memories from other people though.
One of my dads stories was about an argument between himself and an irate driver of an Austin 1100 (john cleese - fawlty towers/clockwise). The driver wanted to go to east mersea. In order to do this he had to get past a combine harvester with a fixed header (yes, it was old). My grandfather and father patiently explained to this world class nerk, that if he didnt back up, the combine would move forward slowly - drop a wheel into that pothole - and send a fair percentage of the front right hand side of his car into the nearest field. many of you will know that getting a farmer to reverse anything during the harvest would require the services of the 101st airbourne and even then would be a close run thing.. one bespectacled twerp in a tweed suit and driving gloves really wasnt going to cut it.
This went on for a while, until my grandfather (never the most chatty of men) decided to cut a long story short - put the combine in first gear - at which point said part of the Austin did a passable impression of sputnik and ended up.. in the adjoining field.
So, who turns up then but the local bobby on his bike. Asks the by now somewhat irate car owner what had happened, and then asks my father the same question. The upshot of that was the car owner got a ticket for littering - to wit, the front wing of his car, and was told that he had a pressing engagement somewhere, or else...
And now for a personal memory.
When I was 14 or so we moved to a new home - a bungalow - what I think the americans call a ranch house?. Anyways, this was a new build and the garden looked like something out of jungle book (never start building your dream home when you are in the middle of a divorce, but I digress). Once my father had used his usual method of weed clearance - aka Roundup/diesel/lit match/oops... we went on holiday and came back to a nicely rotavated front and back 'garden' courtesy of a friend of his. This friend was one of those people who was never that lucky - you know - the one on the chainsaw who suddenly realises that those 4 nice shiny pickups are under the tree - or in his case.. the electricity supply for the entirety of Mersea.
Anyway - dad started digging over the garden and my mum, brother and I went swimming. Imagine our surprise when we came back to a bomb squad van, police, military police cordons and gods know what else...
My father had been digging the garden over and coming across scaffolding pins - being a farmers son he proceeded to beat the living daylights out of these till they submitted, dig them out and put them with the rubbish to throw away. Just along from the new garage, he came across one and did the usual procedure of assume it was the local conservative MP and treat accordingly. Only this time it didnt break. So he hit it again. Still it didnt break...
Curious by this point dad digs it out cleans it off and its an large egg shaped thing with a sorta nub at the top and a crosshatched pattern on the surface... I know what you are thinking.. and yes you are right on. A grenade. More to the point - a grenade that has been sprayed with chemicals, possibly set fire to, driven over with a powered rotavator (twice) and then had the crap beaten out of it with a spade.
Dad calls the police - they wont touch it - tells him to call the military police - they quickly defer as well and call the bomb squad out - who take one look at it and wont pick it up either... they take X-rays and do other fun technical things and find out that the pin is still in it! which means its likely to be live..
At which point they very very careful put it in a lead lined box and go blow it up in their tame woodland.... nothing like a quiet saturday afternoon in an english country village is there? ... warm beer, whiskey powered grannies (valium hadnt been heard of outside london at that time..) and those nice unexploded bombs.....
Jemma xx
