Remembrance

I am flaunting my winnings. 

The tomatoes came home with me in a washed plastic take-out box. They were my chosen raffle prize, well, one of my prizes.

I'd been invited to make some oral history recordings at a local 'afternoon club', which sounded delightfully raffish. John, a friend from our local museum, had invited me. He and his wife had taken over the running of the fortnightly get-together a couple of years previously.

Of course I'd agreed to go, John's a lovely man. 

As the day got closer, I regretted making the commitment. The afternoon was half way through a week of being overwhelmed with 'real' work. I felt stressed and unreasonable. Under the cosh from more than one direction.

Fortunately, John and his wife don't have a computer or a smartphone, a fact which instantly whipped away any opportunity for a wheedling email from me seeking postponement because something (infer 'more important') had come up.

I spent the morning working at an office an hour away. It meant that I drove too fast to get there, ate Quavers for lunch, and berated myself for yet again making too many promises to do too many things for free.

I parked, brushed the crumbs off my lap and walked across the road straight back into my early childhood. 

Bright specks of dust caught the sunlight in the high-ceilinged village hall. John and his wife welcomed me and I sat, while others arrived and joined me around a large table.

Everyone placed their prize for the raffle as they arrived. Alongside the box of home-grown tomatoes was a beef and onion Cup A Soup, a tin of Tesco own brand custard, half a dozen home-laid eggs, a Lynx body spray, a small manicure kit, and a bunch of carrots that had been 'dug up this morning'.

I had no idea if I was sitting in the right place or if I was meant to do something, but it didn't matter. I was back in early childhood and sooner or later someone would tell me what to do. No one wanted a strategy or some witty copy, we were all where we wanted to be.

Until that moment, I had no idea that it was still possible to buy a 25p ticket for a raffle (they're called draws round here). 

In the first of many courtesies, they refused any payment for my three numbers, printed on small pieces of thick card that had become soft and rounded at the edges. When I tried to push my 75p across the table, it was firmly but politely pushed back.

I soon spotted Bill. He was in charge of the raffle numbers and I suspected that he was the elder. 

When everyone was settled, John asked me who I'd like to speak to.  I asked Bill if he'd mind spending a few minutes talking to me, and he said he didn't, so he and I went to sit together on the bench outside the hall in the quiet fresh air and autumn sunshine. 

We talked for more than 20 minutes. It wasn't the best oral history recording I've made because Bill was so witty and I interrupted too much. I wanted to know more about the pig and the half year's bacon rationing, about how you never went hungry in the country, even in war time because 'there was always a rabbit to be had'. More about his mother working the railway crossing gates, and about Bill getting up to do the milking before going to primary school which incidentally had been in a school room in sight of our bench. 

Most of all, I wanted the recipe for his mother's 'wheat wine', and to capture him telling it to me in an accent so distinct to this locality that it has all but disappeared.

We went back inside for a cup of tea or coffee in village hall china, for the raffle to be called and to listen to the detailed discussion of where the next outing would be.

Bill and I assured them that we had got on very well and I promised to visit again to speak to Jean and Yvonne.

I was restored by the afternoon club. By their kindness and their sincerity. They weren't constantly distracted by messages and alerts. They didn't look over their shoulder to see if someone was more 'liked'.

I did go back. I played the beetle drive, recorded some more oral histories, and when it was time for the draw, I spotted a poppy knitted by one of the Pats. 

Bill had noticed me admiring it, and when his number came up, he chose it and pushed it straight across the table.