As the title suggests, I grew up in a small village. Things were very different back then.
Some of the things that occurred during my childhood could be straight out of a ‘70s or ‘80s sitcom. I shall recount some of the goings-on, both eyewitness accounts and hearsay. Needless to say, true identities will be withheld!
When I was very young, actually perhaps before I was born (this story was recounted to me by my Mum), there was a peeping tom in the local public loos. A spy hole had been fashioned between the gents and the ladies to allow the peeper to see into the ladies’ toilets and watch the poor unsuspecting women. Makes your skin crawl, doesn’t it?
A chap quite high up in the police force - or should I now say police service? - asked my Mum, a friend of his, if she would agree to act as ‘bait’ and enter the loos to see if they could flush him out (pardon the pun!). She told him that she would, provided she could take her dog in as well, as she was understandably nervous. The pervert didn’t reappear, so her valiant effort was in vain.
We had a resident of the village who used to drive a delivery van. He was as mad as a box of frogs. I went past his house one day and saw him cutting his garden hedge with a pair of scissors. I suspect it took a while.
A school friend of mine swore that this same man leaned out of his van window one day, as my friend was walking home from school, and barked like a dog. Additionally, a close relative once paid the chap a visit at his home, was shown through to his kitchen and found him lying on his stomach on the kitchen floor, with a hole in his sock, eating a pie. Not your everyday culinary experience, by any means.
Another resident, who lived close to us, was arguing with his wife one summery afternoon. He chased her across a busy main road and started attacking her. Bystanders intervened, so he went back home threatening to get his shotgun (eek!) and proceeded to smash everything breakable in his house, which we could all plainly hear, whilst his wife was safely hidden from him in a nearby garden centre by concerned villagers. The local bobby put him in the cells for a night to cool off. Different times…
Mum had a friend who chained herself to some railings, to protest at proposed building work in the village. She later moved away after some property developers bought her house as they wanted the land for a future project. There’s an irony to that, I feel.
The teachers in the local schools were very different to teachers nowadays. We had a battle-axe who used to keep a slipper in her drawer and woe betide you if you dared to anger her, as that slipper would be used to smack the back of your legs. Another teacher once used a pile of hard-backed geography books as a weapon on a boisterous chatterbox of a classmate. He never said another word during that lesson. Probably concussed!
Mum used to sometimes mix her words up; she once went shopping at the local butchers, said a cheery hello and asked for ‘some chicken doo-dahs’ please, which made the counter staff guffaw. I can’t remember which part of the chicken she actually meant, but it certainly didn’t sound appetising.
She would also often temporarily forget my name - calling me every female name in the family (even the dog’s!) before eventually getting to the right one.
We used to suffer fairly bad winters when I was a school kid. Some of the pupils lived in very rural areas, on farms and so forth. They travelled on school buses. This meant that when it snowed, a decision had to be taken as to whether they needed to be sent home early for safety reasons, as their journey home could be too treacherous otherwise.
I lived within easy walking distance, so the snow was of far less consequence, and I can still remember how I felt watching the country dwellers boarding the bus well before the end of the school day - whilst I was stuck in maths class. Pretty resentful, I can tell you!
The benefit of living in the village was the sense of community. The downside was that it could, at times, be quite claustrophobic and gossipy. Everybody wanted to know everyone else’s business, and what they didn’t know, they made up!
I wouldn’t have chosen to grow up elsewhere, but I wouldn’t move back there nowadays. Too much time has passed and it simply wouldn’t be the same.