“We had a rather disreputable mongrel called George. He had not been castrated and was for ever looking for the opposite sex. We did our best to keep him in, but when he had escaped yet again I was angry and pursued him shouting ‘George, George’. I was astonished to get a reply because he did not usually answer back. George, from the neighbouring farm, who was working over the hedge was equally surprised to hear an angry voice calling him.”
“They had a very quiet wedding, almost secret, so hardly anyone knew about it. When they went to bed, they did not bother to pull the curtains, and the men who were drying the hops saw them and thought the worst. They told the vicar, and he wrote to the convent, and suggested that the nuns who often came to the farm for a holiday, should no longer visit”
“The horses were often difficult to catch. They knew why you wanted them. But my mother knew how to catch them. She took a bucket out to the field with the hens’ food in it, and the horses came along to get their noses in it.”
“I was talking to him in a field one morning, and we heard footsteps in the lane and saw an old hat moving above the hedgerow. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘ that’s X. I must get back to the farm, or I shall have no cider left’”
“She wore stockings with so many holes, that someone said she must have had lessons from a flute player to put them on”
“ In wartime, the shop in Malvern got some sugar which as a result of a mishap, had pepper mixed with it. She bought some to use for chutney, and that was all right, but it got into something else as well, marmalade I think.”
“We sometimes walked across to the village and called at the “Cliffe Arms”. My father asked Mrs. Hatch if it was all right to bring me into the bar, as I was under age. ‘Quite all right’ she said. “the constable’s in the other bar””
“My father was short of cider to give the men, but he had some home
-made wine, so he mixed the two and gave them that. He had to go out on an errand, and when he got back they were all asleep.”
“There were two flitches of bacon and two hams hanging in the kitchen, and when they started to diminish, you looked at the next pig.”