Memories of a Haslingfield Childhood – III
Nora Cannell apparently travelled to school every day on a bicycle that she shared with two others. She also had to carry with her her packed lunch, because there were no school meals during the first quarter of the twentieth century. She recalls one family from Cantelupe who brought “a grey, anaemic-looking mass” every day. Tom, the boy, regularly threw this mass against a brick wall at the school, where it failed to disintegrate (mass and wall!).
Nora was a dab hand at marbles and the spinning top, and regularly trundled hoops down the streets of the village. On Shrove Tuesdays children met at a specially-erected sweet stall near Camping Close and Glebe Road. During the three-day Whitsun Feast swing boats, sideshows and sweet stalls were erected on the village green. There was also a dancing booth, with a roped-in platform. Harvest time was also one of great joy for local children, but more of that next month. Happy Christmas!
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