M.G.S. Magazine - July 1956

I tripped over a treacle tin, and came to rest in a puddle of black slimy water, in the middle of the main street. My disgust was apparently notice­able, as the postman on his annual visit just stared. Digg was an old seaside village of the 19th Century— rambling grey houses with broken windows, dirty torn curtains, broken eaves, soot grimed chimneys, and overgrown untidy, straggling ivy climbing up the walls: dustbins with no lids, shrivelled up potato peelings on the cracked pavements, ashes in the gutter and in the gardens, a leaking drainpipe spluttering out drops of water— brown, dirty, slimy water.

An old-abandoned butcher's shop with a cracked pane of glass, a mouldy-piece of mutton crawling with bacteria, large ones, small ones, but still bacteria: the old gas meter lying in the middle of the road, a water pipe, an old milk bottle, a shrivelled cabbage, a red mass of fur and intestine and a child's broken doll surrounded the gas meter.

I sat on the golden sands and surveyed the village. All I saw was decay, decay, more decay and still more decay, endless decay and dirt, dirt, dirt.

J_______ was rather ordinary to look at, with a cheeky, turned-up nose and an untidy mop of wavy hair. When she was happy, her greenish-brown eyes sparkled but when she was in trouble, which was very often, they turned quite the reverse. She kept up an incessant flow of chatter and never stopped saying impertinent things which she didn't mean. Her blunt manner was inherited from a fiery Scotch grandmother, but her imprudent statements were entirely her own making. She always had a "couldn't-care-less" attitude and usually discovered, when it was too late to mend, that she minded very much.

J_______ had a very bad temper, which helped to get her into trouble. If J_______ was cross, it didn't matter to whom she was speaking, she told that person exactly what she thought. On the other hand, if in a good mood, she was willing to help others and cheer up the unhappy ones. If she made one resolution she managed, quite unintentionally, to break another.

On the whole J_______ isn't too bad according to her friends, but grown-ups' thoughts of her are absolutely unprintable—and I think that it's about time she mended her ways.

One morning in the month of June, Bert Johnson, President, Treasurer and Secretary of Willoughby Cricket Team, received a letter from the neighbouring town to play Norby Cricket Team one month later. Old Bert agreed and started to pick a team. He went first to Eddie Senior, the blacksmith, and asked him to be Captain. Eddie agreed, and together they went round the village and soon the team was made up and placed on the notice board. Practices started and the time drew near.

One night after practice, Jack Ellis came up to Bert and said, "I'm awfully sorry, Bert, but I can't come on Saturday."

"Right-ho, Jack," said Bert, I'll have to call in Norman Brown, the reserve."

He said this quite happily, but when Sam Stead and Michael Webster had announced their withdrawal from the team he began to be a little perturbed. And when, on the day before the match, Bob Oates and Paddy Donovan had dropped out he was very anxious indeed. He had already had to join the team himself but he still managed to make up a team.

What was more, he was continually being pestered by a fifteen-year-old boy called Johnnie Broadbent who wanted to play but, by the agreement of all, was not good enough.

The match was scheduled for 2-30 and by that time only one Willoughby player was missing. He was Willy Allen. "Can I play if he isn't here for three o'clock?" asked little Johnnie Broadbent.

Bert agreed, so at three o'clock a small figure took the field. By this time Norby had scored 71 for 1. Eddie kept changing his bowler, but with no success. At last, with the score at 191 for 1, he tossed the ball to Johnnie saying, "Have a go, young ‘un; you can't do any worse."

Well, he took two wickets in the first over and another in the next, and in a quarter of an hour he finished the team off with the hat trick, but the total of two hundred and forty one was formidable enough, and when the Will­oughby team had five wickets down for ninety they looked doomed. After Eddie Senior and Bert Johnson had gone, the total still looked unattainable with a hundred needed and three wickets to fall. Jack Wilson and Ralph Bird put on another sixty and so Alan Heeley and Johnnie Broadbent were left with forty to win, in ten minutes. Alan scored eighteen in the first over and Johnnie had four snicks off the edge of the bat for four. So they needed six in one over. Alan hit a single with the first ball, then Johnnie played three more. Two balls left; there was a silence; the bowler pounded down,— No Ball!!! Johnnie took a wild swing, missed the ball, the stumper missed the ball and the game was Willoughby's by a four bye.

There was a celebration afterwards at which Johnnie was heard to say, "Ee—it wor nowt!"

The Battle of Hastings started in 1066. It was between Anible and the Romans.

The Rattle started in the winter when Anible went over the Alps with a huge army and thirty-nine elephants. When they got over the Alps they were in Italy right at the top. They bet some of the Romans and sent for his bother to come with another army and he waited and waited but he never came, then after a while a basket was brought to him with his brother's head in it and they said that the Romans had killed him at the top of Italy and Anible was chased back over the sea to his own country and they chased him in the next land where he died.

It was a dull afternoon in late November in the year 1916. Jack Green, a tall, handsome man of about twenty years was walking towards London Bridge looking very disconsolate. He walked up onto the famous bridge and listened to the hooting of the ships' sirens. He strained his eyes to see the ships but failed as the air was very misty.

Suddenly a harsh, gutteral German voice reached him through the mist. The voice said in broken English,

"Ach, Hans, are you ready?"

"Ja," Hans replied.

"Right, then put the sticks under each side of the bridge and then meet me here at six o'clock a.m. sharp."

Hans again said, "Ta."

The one called Hans left and Jack wondered what the "sticks" meant—but there was a war on and he knew a German would be up to no good in England. He was wondering what to do when a hulk of a man loomed up behind him and said: "Goot-afternoon" in the voice which spoke to Hans. Jack turned round and saw that he had a squat, little automatic in his left hand, in his right one of the sticks, a stick of dynamite. Then Jack realized that he was going to blow up London Bridge. He forced Jack back and suddenly shoved him and Jack fell off the parapet into the murky waters of the Thames.

He came up to the surface and heard the mocking laugh of the German. Then an oar from a rowing boat hit him on the head and he blacked out. He came to in the Police Station in a riverside street. When Jack looked at the clock it was a quarter-to-six a.m. He had been found drifting in a rowing boat, asleep. Jack said: "Not asleep, but unconscious."

He related his adventure but the police inspector did not believe him. Then the policeman left him. He jumped out of bed, dressed and broke out of the window. Once away from the police station he put on his shoes and arrived at five to six. He saw the sticks of dynamite and pulled them away and put some pieces of wood there instead. He did the same to the other side and then rang for the river police.

The policemen arrived just as the crooks were trying to light the sticks of wood and arrested them.

Well, it had been quite an exciting day, or rather night, after all, and now the mist had cleared away. When he told his mother all about it he said, "I was only just in time."