Bill Malim

I was 12 years old at the start of the 1950’s. I went to Drayton School on the Village Green. We had school gardens and everyone worked on them. The produce was used in the school kitchens. At Christmas a local farmer would bring chickens etc for a Christmas dinner. We all had a bottle of milk a day. We were checked at school by a dentist and had eye tests and the nurse came to check for nits! The vicar came and randomly picked children to read him, or recite, the times table. Boys were caned for misbehaving – me often!

I did a paper round in the mornings before going to school and three time a week, on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, in the evening. This was because everyone had the local paper (North Berks Herald) on a Wednesday and on Thursdays and Fridays so many people had Women’s weekly magazine and Radio Times, that we could not get them all into our bags with the papers. On Saturdays after I had done my paper round I worked on Gilbourne Farm for Mr Hall, mucking out and feeding horses, pigs and chickens, for which I was paid two shillings (10p).

On Sundays I went to Church and sang in the choir for which we received sixpence per week, and twopence extra if it was your turn to pump the organ through the service. We had an extra sixpence for weddings.

At home I was the eldest of five boys. Every room in the house, except the kitchen, was a bedroom and for a long time we slept three to a bed. The only heating in the house was the kitchen range and in the winter we often put our coats on the bed, and sometimes the rugs off the floor. We had a tin bath that hung outside and was brought in and put in front of the fire. Hot water was boiled on the gas stove and we bathed in order of age – youngest first. Gas and electricity were on cash meters and if there was no money for the meters my mother would boil water and cook on the fire.

Most boys under the age of 14 years of age wore short trousers and all clothes were handed down. My father repaired our boots with old horse harnesses – we did not have shoes.

Our toilet was in a shed at the end of the garden and needed emptying every week or so. There was no water indoors. We fetched it from a standpipe out on the path which froze every winter. The water was kept in two buckets in the kitchen. We grew all our own vegetables. As the toilet was emptied into hole in the garden we were assured of a good crop.

In 1951, the year I moved with all my class to Abingdon Council School, still in short trousers! We travelled in a school bus with children from Steventon and Hanney Camp. The price of school dinners was five old pence (2p). Sometimes we did not take dinners; we would buy a penny bun and twopence worth of chips. With the twopence left we would club together and buy Woodbine cigarettes and smoke them behind the bike sheds.

In 1952, when I was 14, we moved to a council house in Steventon Road, Drayton. There was a kitchen with running water, but no hot water, and still a ‘thunder box’ in the outside loo.