was from here that Hazel and his rabbits were later to set off on their adventures.) The lane led past some rather rough cottages, in one of which lived Mrs Dolimore, the milk lady. She used to come to our back door with the milk in a great metal drum with a lid, and from this, with a metal dipper, she would dip as much milk as we wanted. The milk and the metal also had their own smells.
The lane ran on between elms and high hedges into the Park meadows themselves. I remember the smell of the dust, the smell of dried cow-dung and of nettles and woundworts in the ditches. In the Park were some old, gnarled hawthorn trees, all bent every which way. One was bent into a regular âSâ, and formed a natural seat. This seemed wonderful, and I always used to go and sit on it. Even a light breeze would bring out a whispering from the boughs of these isolated trees.
âStill through the hawthorn blows the cold wind,
Says suum mun, hey nonny nonny.
Dolphin my boy, boy! - sessa! . . .
Close by the Falkland Memorial lay the Pond. There were actually two sizeable ponds on Wash Common (for watering passing horses, flocks and herds), but this was the better known and more used. It lay between The Gun and Mr Jessopâs house. I remember the herds of cows - huge beasts to me - on their way to Newbury market, wading knee-deep (hence the thrushâs song) in the brown water, lowing and splashing, and the dogs holding them there while the drovers went into The Gun for a well-earned pint. (4d.: that is, a bit less than 2p today.) Being shallow, the pond often froze hard in winter. I used to go sliding with the village boys (the ban on Idle-ees was somehow lifted) and had a lot of fun. I donât recall a single person ever skating on the pond, though.
The upper pond, at the west end of the village, was lonelier and different. It was overhung with trees on the further side, and it was bigger, greener and more rural. There were rushes and reeds, including the Great Reed Mace; coots and moorhens and, in summer, reed warblers. Here, too, I sometimes slid and also learned how to throw âducks and drakesâ. This pond, in winter, I associate now in my mind with T.S. Eliotâs lines in âLittle Giddingâ.
âWhen the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heartâs heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.â
This pond was all of half a mile from our home. Constance and I didnât go there much, unless we were doing the Cope Hall walk, or else, perhaps, going to Nutworthâs (that is not its true name), the village shop and post office. There were exciting things on sale at Nutworthâs. One of these was windmills - so-called. A windmill consisted of four vanes of curved, brightly-coloured, mottled celluloid, pierced and held together by a central pin at the top of a stick. You held it up like a sceptre in your right hand and ran along, and the vanes, catching the wind through their curvature, would rotate in a medley of colours - red and blue making purple, blue and yellow making green - and a light clattering and justling of crisp celluloid.
Almost better, however, was the bluebird. He worked on the same principle: a model blue bird, about four inches long, held to a stick by some nine inches of string in the middle of his back. He had a long blue tail of three or four âfeathersâ - strips secured by a central nail - and similar wings. You waved the stick round your head and he âflewâ.
These were cheap German toys, which in those days were imported and sold in numbers. All sorts of cheap clockwork toys, too, were stamped âMade in Germanyâ. On account of the war, I suppose, and on account of their cheapness and fragility, the phrase âMade in Germanyâ was used as a derisory taunt. âYah! Mide in Germany!â the
Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale