Vicar with scouts, Eric in
front with fanily dog Jap

MY father was a great scout leader and at his funeral in London scouts came from far and wide. He was a privileged guest at the Thanksgiving service for Baden-Powell and I kept his copy of the service until I gave it to the group scout master of a Baden-Powell group about 25 years ago.
So scouting flourished at Wethersfield as much as it could in a small village and Alex the oldest of our evacuees became a scouter and later when he was dying of cancer dragged himself to the local scout troops major events.
There was an interesting side effect. The District Commissioner wanted to buy some articles in a sale of furniture etc in a Wethersfield house where there was to be an auction. Because he trusted me to do a good job and because he could not be at the auction he marked the lots he was interested in and the maximum price he would pay. At the age of 13 I felt terribly important waving my catalogue when I was bidding. The auctioneer looked a bit anxious but being told I was the vicar's son did not question my actions.
The real purchaser came just before the sale ended. He was pleased with what I had done and paid for the goods. He gave me

10 shillings - a fortune. Hornets: These were common in Wethersfield and although harmless unless you attacked them they would often fight each other to the death. One young horse disturbed a nest and they stung it to death.
Milk: As the years passed the number of cars increased which caused minor aggravations when a farmer was moving sheep to a new grazing area or cows from a field to the farm for milking. I can remember milk-maids milking the cows in the fields at Godalming but I never saw this at Wethersfield.
We used to have to go to the farm with our jug or a special metal container for our milk. Then it was brought round but to put into our jugs. We later saw for the first time milk churns outside the farm's gates to be taken to a depot.
Pets and Owls: We had tame rabbits, cats and dogs (all called Jap!). Our favourite cat caught rabbits but if they were very young would not harm them but carried them tenderly as she did her kittens. She delivered them to our back door; with great difficulty we caught them and restored them to their burrows. There was a piece of "common land" behind the Sandhills cottages which was known as The Warren because of the masses of rabbit holes. Here we had picnics, played 'French' cricket and other games.
One dog always greeted my father in his car at the gate and ran alongside towards the garage. One day the inevitable happened. He was run over and looked lifeless. We put him in the car and took him to the Butchers, opposite the school, which was the nearest we came to having a vet. He thumped him and got him breathing and told us that he must not be allowed to lie down till the next day. I stayed up with him all night holding him against me and the next day he began to recover. After some weeks he was his old self and lived to an old age.
We had two barn owls who toured our hedges every twilight but we never found their nest.
Wartime: A few bombs fell in fields and whether Germany knew there was an airfield in Wethersfield or whether haphazardly the planes were haphazardly jettisoning bombs we do not know. The knowledge that three or four German crew members had baled out and landed near Finchingfield was an event. I leapt on my bike and cycled there to see them being escorted into a cottage with farm labourers (home guard) helping them along with fearsome pitchforks in contact with their bottoms. They looked very young and very frightened. Feeling sorry for them I was relieved to see that they were uninjured.
One day there was a dog fight overhead and bullets rattled into the lilac trees along the roadside edge of our drive and it suddenly occurred to me, as I stood in the drive that I was in some danger. I went inside and heard and saw nothing from the window.
The Mushroom Farm or part of it was taken over by a British army unit to which my father became the Chaplin, who they were and what they were there for I do not know.
We all went to see the first crop of sugar beet in Wethersfield, an entirely new crop which being grown nationwide made England pretty well self-sufficient in sugar but to get back to cane sugar was one of the joys of post-war Britain.
War time rations as far as food was concerned was a non-starter. Meat was plentiful and nobody could keep a count of rabbits and pheasants. Vegetables

Eric after graduation
and ordination,1942