Alex McGahey's Childhood memories

I have been racking what is left of my brain cells for little stories ever since Colin's recent note about Alfie Miles. Alfie was also a stalwart member of the Church Choir and should be in the photo of the Choir about Easter 1955. I was 8 at the time so no funny comments!

There was no rhyme or reason why we boys joined the choir, it seemed as though the Rev C E L Harris had a word with your mum, and you were in, there was no need to be able to sing in tune, and as my family will tell you, I still cannot! The benefit of being in the Choir was two fold, firstly you got a little remuneration but more importantly, the Choirmaster, Walter Yeates used to organise an annual trip to the PANTOMIME in the big city of Oxford! Were we gullible or what?

The village was more of a close knit community then, we had our own local Bobby, Constable Matthews who lived down East Sands and he knew everyone. Should you be as unfortunate as to be caught scrumping the Vicar's apples (he had an orchard of Beauty of Baths where the new vicarage is now), then you caught TWO thick ears, one from Mr Matthews and one from your Dad (for getting caught we used to say).

We were also all members of the Sunday School, well, there was the annual day trip to Weymouth to look forward to! Two of Chiltonian Coaches' finest loaded with families would set off about 8 am and after a couple of natural breaks on the way, would roll into Weymouth around 11.30 am, in time for the Dads to settle mum and children on the beach before exploring the town, or so they said! Families all hired deckchairs for the adults and it was nothing to see all the family elders enjoying the sun still wrapped up in their Sunday best go to meeting clothes! The coaches all departed Weymouth at 6 pm and the next highlight was fish and chips when we stopped in Salisbury, finally arriving home around 10 to 10.30.

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