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Known as ‘Barthy’ to his pupils, he was the headmaster of Glemsford School during most of my stay at the station. He was a large man who wore pale three-piece suits and had two large Samoyed dogs. To me he was a fearsome man. He seemed to specialise in lecturing us about the extent of the British Empire (lots of red on the world map) and firing maths questions at us. The latter made me squirm in fear as my mind went instantly blank. This enraged him and he would come and sit on the edge of my desk, frown down at me and call me ‘England’s last hope’. Each time I just kept very still and hoped he would soon go away. Of course, eventually I told my parents – a big mistake. My father confronted him and, as one might expect, he told the whole class what I’d done and reinforced his ‘England’s last hope’ opinion of me!
Education under his headship was far from good. As the time of the scholarship exams neared my friends and I knew that there was little chance of us passing and we’d have to move to
the next and last classroom until we reached school-leaving age.
But, fortunately, someone, somewhere, intervened.
Mr Bartholomew left suddenly and a new headmaster, Mr Paske, arrived.
Mr Paske immediately discovered which pupils were approaching scholarship age and gave us all extra tuition and past papers to practise on – and we all passed to Sudbury High Schools.
We were thrilled by the interest he took in us and delighted that we had good schools to go to.
Mrs Meek was my Saturday morning piano teacher. She lived at the far end of the village from the station, in a cottage opposite a green.
My father knew her well because she travelled regularly by train to Manchester where she played the cello in the Halle orchestra, conducted at that time by Sir John Barbirolli.
She was a tall, gentle lady who had infinite patience with my efforts.
Mrs Meek was a widow and all I knew about her apart from that was that her family came from Scotland. However, looking through the Glemsford Roll of Honour for WWII recently,
I found Thomas Alexander Meek, MC listed, together with the information that his wife was Dorothy Marguerite Meek of Glemsford.
Could this be Mrs Meek’s husband, I wonder?
Editor's note.The straightforward answer is "Yes"! Colonel Meek has appeared before in these pages. I am fairly certain he was not a Glemsfordian by birth, but his wife was well-remembered by several people I spoke to at the time. It is rather gratifying to encounter another reference after all these years.
I mentioned Joan and Keith earlier in relation to them coming down to play in the deep snow of 1947.
Joan was a remarkable little girl. She was only a year older than me, making her six or so when I arrived, but she took such good care of Keith, who I think was then about three.
This was necessary because her mother was widowed and had to work. She worked at home for a Sudbury corset factory.
I was fascinated by the speed of her machining, but it must have been very hard and repetitive for her.
Joan, meanwhile, took Keith everywhere with her and in the summer my mother frequently made picnics for us all to eat in the orchard.
We often visited Joan and Keith’s grandparents who lived farther along Egremont Street in a cottage with a very long front garden.
And, as with Mrs Meek, when I was looking at the Roll of Honour for WWII, I think I found them mentioned.
I came upon Arthur George Clarke, listed as the husband of Lilian Margaret Clarke (Joan and Keith’s mother?) and son of Charles and Laura Clarke of Egremont Street (their grandparents?).
Another sad story…. How did everyone get through it all?
Jean Raisin was the same age as me and when Joan went on to Sudbury High School a year ahead of me, Jean and I became good friends. She lived beyond Mrs Meek's house, i.e. at the opposite end of the village from the station. But by that time I had a cycle so I could cover the distance quickly.
Margaret Smith lived opposite St Mary’s church, where I went to Sunday school. We used to ramble around the lanes beyond the station and help to pick rosehips. These were collected and made into rosehip syrup to nourish children during rationing.
Several boys from my class (whose names I cannot remember, though Brian Cant may have been one of them), literally called for me to join them as they went past our house. My mother was the provider of bread for their fishing hooks – and I was the one who sat on the bank and rolled the bread into tiny balls and baited the hooks. I was never allowed to do any actual fishing…. I changed the dynamics though whenever I met them cycling down the hill towards the station. I was the only one of the group who dared to ride down the hill without using any brakes, so invariably I beat them to the bottom!
One rainy Spring day, my mother opened the back door of our house and got a surprise. She called me to look at our little back yard. I couldn’t believe what I saw. The whole yard was alive with tiny, tiny frogs – each one no more than half an inch long. I thought they were gorgeous. I put my hand to the ground and they hopped on and off and all around me. But we couldn’t understand how they had got there, and in such numbers. It was one of the station porters who gave us the answer. They had apparently been sucked up from the river in a squall of rain, blown along and deposited in our back yard!
Of course, when we told friends and relatives that it had rained frogs, no one believed us. They just couldn’t comprehend how such a thing could happen.
But it did.
We saw it.
And I wonder whether it still happens today.