Then

Back then you addressed adults quite formally. Mr Assert was the school caretaker. Mrs Rosling ran the post office. Mrs Austwick had the sweet shop and Mr Peers was the proprietor of the village's general store. Next door was a widow from Northern Ireland. She was Mrs Varley and she was a pillar of the church. She sang to the rafters when nobody else seemed to be raising their voices in praise of "The Lord".

The village policeman was Sergeant Pepys. He had two daughters - Diane and Vicky and sometimes we played in what was once a rural court room - still part of their mid-Victorian police house.

Our village employed a street sweeper. He was Mr Grubham and he was small in stature. Looking back, it is possible that he had learning difficulties. You would see him with his brushes and his bin on wheels, forever sweeping the roads and footpaths and titivating the verges. He never said much but he did his job and people were kind to him.

Miss Spicer sometimes babysat us and Mum paid her for a couple of hours of cleaning every Friday morning. She polished the brasses and swept out the fires and I can still remember the musty odour of her body as she worked. Then she kept breaking things and Mum had to say it was the end.  I can still remember the tension and the tears for she had been like part of our family.

Back then we ate simply. There was no pizza, no spaghetti, no takeaway curries or Chinese meals. Once a month we might have fish and chips wrapped in newspaper from the village chip shop. That was a special treat. And we never "ate out" because pubs were very much for adults to drink and socialise in. Children were not allowed over the threshold. Besides, back then the majority of pubs did not offer food.

Back then, there were only two channels on our little black and white television - BBC and ITV. As I recall, programmes did not commence until about four thirty and they finished at midnight with The National Anthem - though I hardly ever saw that because I was tucked up in bed in my striped pyjamas. Sometimes I heard that familiar tune seeping up through the floorboards.

Back then, everybody was white apart from Steven Nicholson whose father was an American airman though Steven had never even met him. There was also an Irish family in the village but they were so well-assimilated that there was no hint of an Irish accent. And of course there was Mrs Varley too but she came from The North.

On summer weekends and holidays we were free to wander away from home - we biked along quiet lanes to outlying farms and sometimes we picked potatoes or peas. That was backbreaking work for little pecuniary reward. Sometimes we ventured by the canal which strikes west three miles to The River Hull.

Weeks had their rhythms and so did the years. Bonfire Nights were eagerly anticipated and around 1966, the village  took to creating a massive community bonfire on the school field. Guy Fawkes sat up there and the primrose coloured flames that destroyed him were like the tongues of cackling demons. Rockets burst in  the sky and Catherine wheels rotated crazily in the darkness. We ate toffee apples and baked potatoes.

Back then, it was all so simple, so uncomplicated. We were not bombarded with news or opinions or social media. We just got on with things. Just lived.

And what I have said here was merely the surface of "Then". There's so much more that I could say because "Then" is woven into my very being like the arteries that crisscross inside my body, carrying blood to every extremity or like the veins that take it back. And I am sure Dear Reader that you have your own "Then" that never really leaves you. Close your eyes and you return.