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Category Archives: High Ham and Somerset

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Primrose time

For the fainthearted . . .

The Easter card on the window sill of the house found a resonance deep in the recesses of the memory, not anything religious, but that sense of irrational optimism that filled childhood years; that sense of the springtime of the year bringing days hugely different to those of winter in our country village. There was a momentary sense of something having been lost, and gone forever beyond recovery.

The card radiated a spring brightness; its depiction of spring flowers declaring the return of the light evenings, of trees shrouded in …

Primary spelling

For the fainthearted . . .

‘What lesson have you next?’

‘Spellings – we have a test. I hate spellings’.

‘When I was at primary school forty years ago, we were given sixteen spellings each Monday and we were tested on Fridays, and if we got them all right we got a gold star and if we got fifteen out of sixteen, we got a silver star’.

‘We still get sixteen spellings and we still get tested on Fridays and we don’t get any stars’.

‘It doesn’t seem to have changed much in forty years’.

It …

The best teachers in the best school

For the fainthearted . . .

The wonder of email brought a photograph of my primary school teachers this afternoon.  It is hard to imagine the two ladies of advancing years had been the commanding figures of memory. It will be forty years in July since I left High Ham Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School where Miss Rabbage and Miss Everitt comprised the entirety of the full time staff.

Miss Everitt, I discovered for the first time today, had been there since 1947 and taught for thirty years until her retirement in 1977. Miss …

Scrapbook existence

For the fainthearted . . .

In 1965, the High Ham branch of the Women’s Institute produced a scrapbook of village life to mark the Jubilee of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes.  Perhaps this was a national initiative, and each branch made its own scrapbook of the year; if so there are, perhaps, hundreds if not thousands of such scrapbooks in existence.

Someone in High Ham has reproduced that scrapbook, having each page scanned and printed on high quality paper.  Each page of it is a delight, the photographs and the handwritten items providing first …

The world is getting smaller (or High Ham is very big)

For the fainthearted . . .

Preaching in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin this morning, a clerical collar near the front row of the congregation was easy to spot; its wearer did not look familiar. When he came to the communion rail, he was definitely someone I had not seen before.

Going to the south door to greet worshippers as they left at the end of the service, the man in the clerical shirt and his companion approached with warm smiles. ‘Good morning’, he said,’ we are pleased to be with you.  I’m a Roman Catholic …

Learning useful things

For the fainthearted . . .

Sitting in the study at nine this morning, frantically marking text books before going to face Fifth and Sixth Class, a figure passed the window of the Rectory.  Having caught two boys last week treating the graveyard next door as an adventure playground, I flew out of the door.  It was no-one more alarming than the churchwarden cutting sprigs from the shrubs to use in flower arrangements in the church.

“Do you know there is a branch broken off your Red Robin?”

Not having a clue what a Red Robin …

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