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That Reminds Me

TRM

That Reminds Me was a weekly column published in the Bletchley Gazette from January 1973 to December 1978. Originally from Yorkshire, Harold (Heppy) Hepworth had worked on The Gazette for twenty years. He preferred to describe himself as a reporter, though his title was officially Leader Writer or Assistant Editor. Later, we believe after his retirement, ...
1947 - Now That Was The Year For Snow (23 February 1973)

TRM/008

It is hazardous to write about the weather nine days before the expected time of publication. Nevertheless, I am tempted to waive a lifetime’s rule by the fact that for almost the first time this winter I woke this Valentine’s Day to find a covering of snow on the ground. Not that I am going ...
With My Two Votes I Knew I Had A Winner (4 May 1973)

TRM/018

In this year’s county council elections I voted for a winning candidate. So rare has that experience been for me all my voting life that if you, dear reader, are working for a particular candidate in any kind of public election the best thing you can do is to persuade me to vote for the ...
Gone Is The Personal Touch Under A Cloud Of Numbers (13 April 1973)

TRM/015

Recently the Post Office lumbered us all with a set of six letters and figures to remember. They represent part of our new postal address. And thus, as far as the Post Office are concerned, we no longer live in Bucks. We live in MK something or other. I don’t like it. Not that I blame ...
All Aboard For Town's First Bus Service (8 June 1973)

TRM/023

A reporter in a growing town is bound to be in at the birth of many things, some of which live on and others which die almost as soon as they are born. It was thus that I became the very first passenger on the Bletchley town bus service when it came into operation on December ...
Long And Malodorous History Of The Town's Sewage Works (14 September 1973)

TRM/037

One trouble with a rapidly growing town is that it suffers greatly from growing pains. Bletchley has had plenty of them in the past during its expansion under the 1952 Town Development Act and now it is having them again under the Milton Keynes new city plan. The problem is that of providing essential services for ...
Growing Town Brought A Touch Of Colour To The Water Supply (21 September 1973)

TRM/038

An adequate supply of wholesome piped water is taken pretty much for granted today. Yet history, even mid-20th century history in Bletchley and Fenny Stratford, teaches that this first requirement of any community is the last that should be presumed. Practically all the towns and villages in North Bucks are where they are because originally there ...
When Nissen Huts Were Homes For Squatters (14 December 1973)

TRM/049

Recent reports in this District bring to mind the greater amount of squatting that occurred hereabouts shortly after the last war. In fact, that was the first time I heard used for the unlawful occupation of premises for the purpose of living there, so it might have been coined about that time. It was a ...
Does The Price Of Beer No Longer Count? (29 March 1974)

TRM/060

What has happened to all the clubs that used to dot the urban scene? I do not mean those private gambling clubs one hears about in the big cities. I mean those licensed social clubs run largely or wholly by bodies of ordinary working chaps, like the Bletchley and Fenny Stratford Working Men’s Social Club, ...
Retirement Is Not Roses All The Way (10 May 1974)

TRM/067

“You’ll be all right now you’ve retired,” they said. “Your time will be your own. Getting up when you like and going to bed when you like. Doing a bit of gardening, then sitting in the sun with your feet up. Tripping off with the wife two or three days at a time. Roses, roses ...
Even The Bad Times Were Good For Men Like These (17 May 1974)

TRM/068

Two of the most interesting men I met during my early years in Bletchley were Mr. John Robert (“Bob”) Bryant, of Duncombe Street, and his neighbour, Mr. Thomas Beckett, who lived round the corner in Osborne street. They came from rather different backgrounds, but they had one thing in common. There were allotment digging enthusiasts. ...
More Noughts And Dots That Means Summat And Nowt! (12 July 1974)

TRM/075

I see that the Wizard of O’s has been at it again – to the further bafflement and discomfiture of all we 60 and 70 year olds who now wrestle in despair with the intricacies of the metric system. This time he materialises in the form of an ‘important notice’ to customers of the East Midlands ...
Commuters Had To Pay A Ten-Bob Rent "Fine" (24 May 1974)

TRM/069

No doubt Gazette readers were pleased to see in the May 3 issue that only one per cent of Bletchley’s working population were unemployed as against a national average of 2.9 per cent. They comprised 160 men and 40 women. As against this there were current vacancies for 400 men and 290 women. Wolverton was in a ...
It Wall Roll-Up And Queue-Up For The TV Look-In (21 June 1974)

TRM/072

During my first two or three weeks in Bletchley in 1946 I was mildly curious about the di-pole (letter H-type) aerials attached to a number of houses in the town. I had seen many similar aerials before, but they had been on army masts and vehicles, not on civilian buildings. By some means which I have ...
Costless Games The Children Used To Play (28 June 1974)

TRM/073

What games do children play today around the streets and on spare patches of grass? I see pavements marked for hop-scotch. I also see girls skipping with a long rope swung by a girl at each end. But apart from that I see little to remind me of the improvised and nearly costless games of ...
The Family Bible Reveals Clues To A Doctor's Dynasty (9 August 1974)

TRM/079

A factor that made me feel more at home when I first came to Bletchley was the presence here of a number of other Yorkshiremen who were in fairly prominent positions in the town and had been for years. Men like Mr. R.L. Sherwood, who was clerk of the urban council, Mr. E.C. Cook, who ...
Those Were The Good Old Days... Or Were They? (20 September 1974)

TRM/085

On rainy days – and at the time of writing we are having lots of them – there is nothing I like more than looking through old newspapers, especially “local rags”. By “old” I mean anything published more than 50 years ago. Maybe because I was 50 years at the trade, I find that they ...
Just A Pennyworth - But A Revealing Read (3 October 1974)

TRM/087

A week or two back I gave some advertising items from the Fenny Stratford Weekly Times of August 28, 1879, which I trust were not without interest. Now I turn to the paper’s local editorial content. It comprises only four-and-a-half columns on the back page of the four-page paper, but I personally find it a ...
Mysteries Are Piled On Mysteries (15 October 1974)

TRM/090

I like a good mystery. Especially do I like a good mystery of history, such is why a Gretna Green situation seems to have arisen at Great Woolstone during the six years 1664 to 1669 inclusive. This mystery, with its suggestion of runaway marriages, was brought to light in 1947 by Mr. Warren Dawson. Mr. Dawson ...
Crisis? Worse In The Old Days (6 February 1975)

TRM/104

Grim warnings of economic disaster are in the air. “Tighten your belts” is one call; “Save energy” is another. We older people do not face the prospect in any mood of complacency. Yet we are fortified by the knowledge that we have come through similar periods of short commons in the past. My own experience began ...
The Riddle Of Two Dead Cats (4 April 1975)

TRM/112

I was a little surprised to read in a recent issue of the Gazette that St Martin’s Church is now the only building in Fenny Stratford proposed to be listed for conservation on historical and archaeological grounds. Only a little surprised, because since the war there have been a number of such surveys, proposals and recommendations ...
Settling Into A Village Routine (21 March 1975)

TRM/110

Galley Hill Women’s Institute have celebrated their first anniversary. Nothing much in that, some might say. But wait a minute. Commonly a WI is a village institution, but Galley Hill is a new city housing estate. And commonly a village is a place where most people have known most other people all their lives, but a ...
Those Meals That Turn Me Sour (13 June 1975)

TRM/122

I note with a certain amount of interest that the Eight Bells Field at Bletchley is in the news again, thanks to a fair that pitched there recently. Incidentally, I insist on spelling it “Bells,” not “Belles,” for reasons I hope to explain at some other time. The authorities have been talking about what to do ...
A Publican Who Sold Home Brew (6 June 1975)

TRM/121

Occasionally there comes into the hands of local newspapers material which is of historical interest. This happened to the Gazette in 1949 through a letter from Mr E. Troughton, who lived at Weymouth, but who spent the first 19 years of his long life at Water Eaton in the 1870s and 1880s and who often ...