It is always such a pleasure reading and search­ing for long-ago memories in the magazine and in some cases finding them. For instance the photograph in the last issue of the Brownie Band of which I was a member was a lovely sur­prise and one dream was to be chosen as a conductor, but 'Feebles' seemed to have the baton stuck on her hand with super glue. There was also a picture of Miss Talbot Rice and one incident I remember so well, we had gone to the library to change our books and near the back were some apple trees. So, for the first and only time, we gave in to temptation and went scrumping. Now there were large 'cookers' -and the only place we could hide them was up our knicker legs. Unfortunately, the elastic wasn't all that good and coming out of the meadow we met Miss Talbot Rice and that darling old man Father Alien. I was desperately trying to hold on to my 'cookers' but one fell out and Father Allen saw it and to my amazement picked it up before Miss Talbot Rice saw it and hid it behind his back. He didn't give it back to me-but after leaving them I turned round and saw them both laughing their heads off. But I had the-last laugh I still had one up the other leg. Looking back I don't think I had the last laugh, I had dreadful tummy ache the next day.

I passed by T.V.H a little while back and noticed that lovely church. The sun was shining on it, and it looked lovely and I had total recall. The bells were famous all over Barkingside. There used to be a team of bell ringers, three or four people headed by Miss Astley, the librarian. Outsiders used to peer through the little church gate as we all filed into church. Now the sermons were something else again. One week it was Miss Picton Turberville. She used to wear a long black robe and a kind of black tricorn hat, resembling a medieval portrait. She always started her sermons with 'if you want to corf, corf now', then suddenly there was an uproar of phoney coughing, but only God would help you if you coughed after that.

Father Allen, everybody's favourite, was quite different, quiet, shaky and sometimes made us laugh. During the week Father Allen used to walk through The Village and you couldn't see him for kids, four or five hanging on each arm, 20 in front, 20 behind. If he chose to sit on a bench he was buried. If our hands were cold he used to put them in his overcoat pocket and if you dug deep enough you'd find fruit drops or peppermints. He always pretended to be so surprised by this, he almost had us believing God put them there for us. Once or twice I had to go to hospital as an in-patient and he used to come around weekly during the afternoon rest hour and give us all an egg. These we had boiled for breakfast the next day. Once when he came round I was asleep and didn't know he had been. I got up, took my ward slippers out of my locker and still half drowsy, thrust my feet into them. He had put my egg in my slipper. The next week he came to see me obviously having been told and as well as getting an egg I also had a cup of jelly.

When I was in Sweet Briar Cottage, my cottage mother, Miss Lovatt, used to make us all rewrite the sermon after lunch during quiet hour and if you couldn't you didn't get any cake for tea­ you can bet we listened as that was the only time we did get cake. The first time I saw Miss Lovatt I was aged 7. She looked really grim. She was tall and thin with iron grey hair, scragged back in a bun. She always wore a floral wrap over pinny, lisle stockings and stumpy shoes, a size too big, because she had corns which we were always treading on. She also wore round spectacles on the tip of her nose, and when they weren't there, they were hanging round her neck on a piece of string. She always stood glaring at you with arms and legs akimbo. The first day she petrified me and as it was my first day I had to sit at her table for tea. There we both sat glaring at each other (I was being difficult)­ suddenly she winked. I tried to wink back but at that time could only do it with both eyes. When you looked closely at Mother Lovatt, her eyes were always laughing, even if her mouth didn't agree. What a character.

SELMA BARNETT, nee GHOUSE
The Girls Village Home

Barnardo Guild Messenger Summer 1988

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