Memories of Wereham

We first moved to Wereham when I was 12. It was totally different from London. Very rural, a small village, a couple  of buses into Downham in the morning and a couple back in the evening. We'd walk from our house on Flegg Green down to the George and Dragon pub opposite the village pond, to catch one to go to school. Sometimes Mrs Yallop, the pub landlady, would come out and nag at us for our noisy chatter as we waited.

My dad stayed in London with his job, and travelled up on the weekends, turning part of the yard  into a veggie garden. We had chickens in a pen at one side of the house, and an old boiler house that I used to boil up vegetable peelings in to make chicken mash for them.

There was an old shop at the front, cobweb covered, and next to it, a car port. Behind that were 2 attached buildings that became stables for Jack, the donkey, and 2 New Forest foals, a grey with a  start on his forehead named Star, and my Golden Dawn, a palomino, beautiful golden chestnut with a  blond mane and tail. I don't remember exactly where we got Jack, I think he may have come from a pub in Wretton or Stoke Ferry, but I'm not sure. Dawn and Star we got from Watlingon. Dawn was a filly, and she cost forty pounds. 20 weeks of half my paycheck back then.

My mum fostered, and we had a house full of kids. I worked for her, and she hire another lass, Diane Jarman, as well, and the landlady from the Chequers pub a few doors down, used to come in and clean a couple of times a week. Her name was Lorna.

Sometimes my mum would send me to the pub to get a bottle of Tizer or a couple of packs of crisps for a treat, and I met some of the regulars - Jimmy Allen from West Dereham and his brother Steve, Chippy Burgess, Gabby Matthews and his brother Donnie, Chode (real name Michael) and his brothers Paul and Cedric (real name Peter) - during those times. I wonder where they all are now and what they are doing. I was 15 and most were in their 20s and 30s then. I'm 62, so - if alive - most are old men now.

I volunteered at the local stables and loved my time there. Linda Dalliday taught me how to ride, and I loved the horses, especially a beautiful black boy with a star on his forehead named Slipknot. He belonged to the owner, and was his older daughter's horse. She was an accomplished rider and won many awards at gymkhanas, yet she was afraid of him. He was very spirited but he was so good with me, I'd have ridden him in a heartbeat had I been given the chance.

His family also operated the local milk route, and the lady who delivered lived in a cottage by the stables entrance. Her name was Alice and she was a cheerful lady with a big smile.

The stable owner's house was opposite the pond, as the road curved, and if we ran out of milk or eggs, I'd be sent up to knock at the back door, to get some.

There were only 2 shops in the village at that point, one at "the top" and one on the road we crossed, just before the pond. Both were small but served the village well.

The Post Office was at the back of the pond, just up from the village school and before the entrance to the village playing field. The school has been closed for many years now, and is a private home. My friend, Jeannette Roberts', mum was the postwoman when we were kids and rode all over the village, in all weathers, on her bicycle to deliver the mail.

Just down the road from us, on the opposite side of the road, was a small Christadelphian chapel where Michael Carter's mum taught Sunday School, and where I went for a while. I remember studying Paul's journeys there, and Paul is still somebody who fascinates me, in the Bible.  Later on I went to Sunday School at St Margaret's Church near the pond, but the boys used to mess about and drive poor Victor, the man teaching it, crazy with their antics.

I always felt sorry for Victor, he was a solemn man. Always seemed lonely.

One year though, our dustbin disappeared, and where did we find it but at the church! It had our name on it underneath but that didn't matter. Village politics came into play and we were "foreigners" It had previously been explained to us by another "foreigner" that they'd been in the village 10 years and were still an outsider. So, my dad had picked up our dustbin and brought it home, and we were quite vocal about how the church had stolen out dustbin. Lo and behold the village policeman came to our house to talk to my dad about HIM stealing the church's dustbin! It didn't matter that it was ours and my dad had just taken back our property. Village politics said we had to give it back. I stopped going to Sunday School there after that. It just felt wrong that a church would steal and then have the audacity to send the police after my dad claiming he'd stolen THEIR property, which was what they had stolen from us.