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, he began this series of articles on a wide variety of topics – though mostly about life and the characters in Bletchley. Our volunteers Wendy Williams and Penny Perdue have transcribed these stories and we present them now, as before, in a regular offering.
Creator
Harold Hepworth for the Bletchley Gazette
Place
Bletchley
Reference number
TRM
Records in this Collection
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 ...
Captain Phillips is a lucky man. He has not only married a princess. He has married a former horse-riding champion of Europe – A title which has nothing to do with the accident of birth, and one of which she can never be deprived. I myself know little about horses, except which is the head ...
A recent event of special interest to myself has been the retirement of Mr Mansell Thomas, the Victoria Road draper and clothier. There are people who have been in trades in Bletchley longer than his 23 years. My interest in Mr Thomas is that I have seen him both set up in business and eventually ...
Generally speaking, our local district councils, now ending their days, have been a well-behaved lot. Never in my time among them did I witness a case of violence by one member on another, nor even a little gentle pushing and shoving.
I have seen members pick up their papers and walk out with snorts of disgust. ...
I have just read the Gazette report that the projected £200,000 extension to the county branch library in Westfield Road, Bletchley has been shelved – for the time being at any rate. To my mind, this is a great pity.
As far as I am concerned, the setting up of a full-time free library service in ...
The longer I continue these quasi-memoirs the more I am impressed by the fact that it is not the Bletchley-shattering events that I remember best it is the kindnesses done to me and mine during my life here – kindnesses which have led to enduring friendships.
For a newsman, I am not a very sociable sort ...
Just after the introduction of decimal currency I had one of the biggest shocks of my life. This was the sight of a youth spilling two or three copper coins from his pocket and just not bothering to pick them up. None of his companions saw fit to do so either. So I bent down ...
It is now about a couple of years since our old market town died. Nothing much was said about it at the time. People were too agog about what was left and what was taking its place. There was also the fact that it had died on several previous occasions since it was created by ...
Nowadays I feel that the heart is being torn out of the Bletchley I first knew, not so much by the disappearance of old familiar places as by the disappearance of old familiar faces.
Mostly they have been those of men who did not at any time occupy any particularly exalted position yet gave a good ...
In the early 1960’s when the Gazette office was at the station end of Queensway, I used the Oliver Road car park. Regularly during the winter I noticed a 1934 Morris 10 parked there. I was interested because it brought back happy memories.
One day it drew up alongside me and a woman got out of ...
During my early years in Bletchley, I met several men whose acquaintance with the town dated from the first world war. They had been sent here for training, had formed romantic attachments with local young ladies and had returned to marry them and settle down as Bletchley people.
For that war, this district produced a large ...
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, ...
When you’ve shouted “Rule Britannia,”
When you’ve sung “God Save the Queen,”
When you’ve finished killing Kruger with your mouth,
Will you kindly drop a shilling
In my little tambourine
For a gentleman in khaki ordered South?
That was the top pop song of the Boer War, the 75th anniversary of which falls later this year.
I was not born until six ...
When all the natural excitement anent the take-over of Bletchley Urban Council by Milton Keynes Borough Council has subsided, it may well be that the most interesting thing to come out of it will be seen to be just 22 pages of the souvenir brochure produced for the Bletchley Pageant.
In those pages the history of ...
With the retirement of Mr. John Smithie, Bletchley’s town manager, I can think of only one man prominent in local affairs who still holds the position he held when I came to this district in 1946.
He is Mr. Edward T. Ray, who for the whole of that time, has occupied the ancient and honourable office ...
The Milton Keynes Amateur Operatic society – formerly the Bletchley Amateur Operatic Society – reach a notable milestone this year. For Viva Mexico which they are beginning at Wilton Hall, Bletchley, on Saturday, May 4, will be their 21st annual production.
Over the years the members have given many fine shows and I have reported them ...
One of my unhappiest days in Bletchley occurred about my 58th birthday.
Four of us were in the midst of a good game of tennis on the Central Gardens hard courts when quite suddenly my legs seized up in a kind of cramp I had never known before.
Next morning I saw my doctor – it took ...
If there is one sure thing about writing a column of this kind, it is that you live and learn. And at time you live and unlearn too.
Right from my first article – now nearly 70 weeks ago – I have frequently mentioned that I have no first-hand knowledge of Bletchley prior to 1946, which ...
“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 ...
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. ...
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 ...
Hurrah for the new town of Newton Longville. And three cheers for its mayor.
Hurrah, too, for the new town of Woburn Sands, though that has less historical justification.
And hurrah for any other parish that wants to take the same step.
Something is needed to enliven the greyness of the new local government scene. Maybe this is ...
For many years after the war the local area Medical Officer was that genial Irishman, Dr. D.H. Waldron. Carl Moser, then Editor of the Gazette, and I first meet (sic) him over a cup of tea at the opening of the first council house in Whiteley Crescent, which was one of Bletchley’s earliest post-war estates.
He ...
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 ...
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