KELBROOK PART ONE
In July 1956 (was it really 56 years ago?) the Queen decided she could do without my services guarding Berlin so she sent me home to Civvy Street. This was a life event in itself as anyone who did National Service will attest but it was made more interesting for me because while I was holding back the Russian Hordes single-handed my family had flitted from Stockport to a place called Sough in Yorkshire and taken a grocery shop. How this suddenly came about is another story, what concerns us is that 23050525 Cpl. Graham S. of the 22nd of Foot, the Cheshire Regiment, expert anti-tank gunner was now a civilian with three qualifications, a good education to GCE standard, a year's experience farming and a driving licence. I had an idea that knowing all about the 17 Pounder Anti-Tank gun was not going to be very useful!
Remember that 60 years ago travelling across Europe alone was not something ordinary young people did. I loved that journey, the Blue Train out of Berlin direct to the Hook of Holland, Her Majesty's Troopship 'Empire Parkeston', 7000 tons and a fast ship, from the Hook to Harwich and then I was given a rail ticket to Colne and I was on my own. In those days you travelled in uniform so you've got to imagine this relatively smart lad in his best uniform, carrying a kit bag, climbing on to a bus in Colne and asking for a ticket to Sough. My education started straight away because I pronounced it like 'Slough' and was quickly informed it was 'Suff'. Even the language had changed!
Much is said these days about the difficulties of readjustment to civilian life after army service but I can't say I had any problem. I was needed to help run the shop and the grocery round serving the farms on the hills all round and soon fell into the routine. Doing the farms oriented me and I soon learned my way round, my year farming helped here because I was no stranger to the work and the animals, it wasn't long before I was helping with hay-making and other farm work. The biggest change was that I had no mates and missed the entertainment that was available to us in Berlin. In many ways, the Berlin of the 1950s was still pre-war Berlin, no wall, a very dodgy night life and an underworld that had learned its survival skills during the war years and the defeat. I learned many things and saw sights I would never see again, I still remember the naked lady on the white horse accosting us in a night club on the Ku'Damm as we sat at our ringside table. It didn't take long for me to appreciate that such events were thin on the ground in Sough!
Being in the shop was handy because it meant I was meeting people all the time and soon got to know not only the housewives buying their groceries but the blokes from the neighbourhood and the mill next door as they came in to buy their fags, get a snack or use the phone to ring their bets in to the local bookmaker. In many ways a small grocery shop was a community centre, we got all the gossip, it's quite amazing what a woman waiting for some cheese to be cut and weighed would divulge. I often think that we were like a Confessional because apart from immediate neighbours the person behind the counter could be the only other person they had daily contact with. I soon knew who was bothering with whom and which houses had TV!
One man in particular took a shine to me, Eddie Lancaster, a small wiry man who drove a bottle wagon for West Marton Dairies and as I was often free in the afternoon I used to go with him to Nelson and help unload the bottle deliveries to the Dairy's depots where the retailers got their milk each morning. Looking back, this was the reason Eddie latched onto me, I was a strong lad and all I cost was a couple of pints at the Craven Heifer in Kelbrook as we came home empty at the end of the day's work. Thereby hangs a tale, there is no better way of immersing yourself in the local life of a village than drinking regularly in the pub. I must have been a natural. I took to it like a duck to water. The Heifer was the local for Sough as well and this probably explains why I never had much interaction with Earby. Kelbrook was the playground!
I have no illusions about my rapid assimilation into the community, it wasn't that I was a particularly attractive lad, it was down to the fact that the natives were friendly and open and I had the advantage of ready-made status by being part of the village infrastructure as part of the local shop. I didn't blot my copy book, gave my elders respect and soon gained complete acceptance, I was a member of the club.
I had another advantage, because I was regularly visiting the farms with the travelling shop and delivering grocery orders I had a foot in both camps, the village and the surrounding hills. I soon began to pick up the relationships between the hills and the valley and while I didn't consciously analyse what I was learning recognised that the district was like a big family, everyone knew something of each other and you had to be very careful not to be too direct in criticisms or opinions because like as not the person you were talking to was indirectly related to whoever you were slagging off! I don't think I made any serious mistakes but sailed very close to the wind at times.
Writing this sixty years later makes me wonder if the linkages are as strong now as they were then. Perhaps they work in different ways. What strikes me is the number of people who were doing the same job as me, travelling round and serving the community. There was the milkman, the coal chap, the grocer, the postman and even the telegraph boy delivering urgent messages by cycle. All these have gone now and I wonder what we have lost. Perhaps the equivalent now is the Avon Lady!
Time we looked a bit more closely at Kelbrook but that will have to wait till next week.
The Mobile shop outside Graham's grocery shop at Sough in 1956.
