A Somerset Lad

The first day of the month.

Do people in primary school in England still go up to friends, pinch them on the arm and then give them a punch on the arm, and not always a friendly one, while saying, “Pinch, punch, the first of the month, white rabbits and no return?”

Such was the custom in 1960s Somerset, a custom that no-one thought unreasonable. The “no return” meant one was honour bound not to retaliate.

Where did we learn such nonsense?

An Internet search offered one explanation that says that the “pinch, punch” bit was supposed to come from times when people believed in witches and thought a pinch of salt, followed by physical force, would repel them.

Another explanation offered says that George Washington would meet with Native Americans on the first day of the month and offer them fruit punch flavoured with salt.

To be honest, neither explanation sounds convincing and no-one seems certain about the saying’s origins. Perhaps it is an amalgam of sayings, each with a source that has long since been lost.

What seems odd, more than five decades on from those early school days, is that we uncritically accepted stuff that was patent nonsense. It is hard to imagine that children in 2022 would believe someone could reasonably walk up to them and pinch them and punch them and then remove any cause for complaint by saying “white rabbits and no return”.

Perhaps it is that children are far more educated about what is and what is not acceptable, perhaps it is because within seconds of someone saying something it might be verified or falsified by Google. Perhaps it is because children now are smarter than we were in the 1960s.

The idea that kids today might be smarter came from a conversation some years ago with a pair of sisters, who were then both in their late 80s and who both graduated from Trinity College, Dublin in the early 1940s:

“Did you catch the train to Harcourt Street?”

“No, I don’t think we ever used that line. We used to get the train to Westland Row. I hated the train, it was smelly and dirty and you got soot on your clothes. Not that we were as bright as the young people now”.

“But you’re both graduates”.

“Yes, but that was in old subjects, you just learned dry stuff. The young people now have to think much more”.

“The young people have to think much more?”  Maybe not, but they don’t believe rubbish like “pinch, punch, first of the month.”

On the road from Glastonbury to Taunton, it was a filling station in that old sense of the term. It was not a garage, for that would have suggested the possibility of mechanical repairs, instead it was three pumps with a small shack set back from the forecourt. It sold petrol, diesel and oil, nothing else. There was a counter inside the shack on which rested a temperamental cash register. There were no facilities, no toilets, even the air line worked only intermittently.

Unattractive, lacking in investment. The poor condition of the place was not assisted by an owner who would come into the shack and take notes from the till in order to go horse racing. The tanks must have been leaking, or perhaps water was deliberately added to the fuel, for more than once customers returned to complain about having to take their car to the garage, only to find there had been water in the petrol. There was no canopy, the pumps stood in the open, operating them on wet and windy days was a miserable experience. It would always be in the pouring rain that one of them would refuse to reset to zero, no matter how forcefully the lever was pulled down, the metal digits would obstinately decline to move.

The pay was poor, sixty pence per hour, a figure that was around the lowest an employer might pay in 1978 and still hope to have someone working for him. I worked there from 1 pm to 8 pm on a Saturday and from 8 am to 1 pm on a Sunday for £7.20.

The man who worked the remaining hours of the week was paid at the same rate, but he was a novelist, who was just waiting for a publisher. A draft of one of his novels lay in a drawer in the shack, it began with a scene involving red-coated huntsmen, it did not seem very exciting, but what would a seventeen year old student know about such things?

There were few other buildings in sight and no-one else to whom to talk. A transistor radio provided the only diversion and, while it would have been possible to take a book to read, the radio was always sufficient. The favourite times were the hour before closing on Saturday and the first two hours on Sunday when customers were few and there was nothing to do other than just sit and listen to the radio.

Is it possible now to be seventeen and to find hours of contentment in something so simple?

In Somerset, it is the season of fairs: Bridgwater, the greatest of them all, will take place next week.

Our local fair was at Long Sutton.  It was a funfair small enough to fit onto the village green, but it was big enough to cause excitement to a six year old boy. There was not much to it: dodgems, a roundabout, swingboats; stalls selling toffee apples and candy floss; and maybe a few other things. Standing outside the Devonshire Arms on the green in Long Sutton now and you realize how small it must have been.

Going to Bridgwater Fair was the highlight of an uneventful year. Bridgwater was the big day out. Dating from medieval times, it takes place at St Matthew’s Field.

Was there always mud? I certainly remember going in Wellington boots. The street approaching the field was lined with ‘cheapjacks’ intent on parting people from their money. The offers were too good to be true, but everyone knew they were, that was part of the entertainment, watching to see who might be taken in.

As the field was approached there was a gateway through which the countless thousands of feet passed. The ground would have been well churned up by the Saturday evening, the closing night of the fair.

Stalls and other stuff were OK for grown ups, it was the funfair that was the magnet for a small boy clutching a half-crown. Looking back now I’m sure it was gaudy and garish and completely unsophisticated, but to a child who lived in village of 300 people and who went to a two classroom school that had just forty pupils, this was the most amazing place. This made Long Sutton look like a sideshow.

The rides were often frightening, more for watching than trying. There were constant wonders to discover as we pushed through the throngs. I remember tents that were forbidden to small boys, but perhaps my imagination invented them. In my memory, there were at least a boxing ring and another involving the charms of some lady. Did they exist or are they the later interpolations of a mind fed on stories of travelling shows and circuses? Was there a Wall of Death or is it something misremembered?

If a small boy went to Bridgwater next week, would there be the same magic now? Where would a child cluthching the equivalent of a half-crown find such a world of excitement and delight?

Apparently, Larry the cat at Number Ten Downing Street is the only permanent resident. It was a story that prompted speculation by the presenter of the radio programme as to how long cats lived. Sadly, for those with an affection for felines, the lifespan is probably all too short.

If Larry had been around for a human life expectancy, I might have met him on a visit to his neighbourhood five decades ago.

Being taken to London on a school visit in 1975 brought an unexpected  direct encounter with members of the government.

Having visited the House of Commons, where our host had been the genial Ray Mawby, then Tory MP for Totnes, we arrived in Downing Street as a meeting was ending at Number Ten.

The opportunity for autograph hunting was too good to miss.

Taking a postcard of the House of Commons from a bag of souvenirs and borrowing a biro from our teacher, the first target was Roy Jenkins, the Home Secretary. ‘Mr Jenkins, can I have your autograph?’

‘Oh, all right, but quickly before a crowd gathers’.

‘Who was that man?’ asked an onlooker as I turned back.

‘The Home Secretary’.

‘Oh’.

Jenkins was followed by Education Secretary, Fred Mulley, and then an even better target.

From the Saint James’s Park end of the street came James Callaghan, the Foreign Secretary, with a foreign visitor. ‘Mr Callaghan, can I have your autograph?’

‘You would do much better to ask this man. He is the deputy prime minister of Egypt’.

Not wishing to be discourteous, I handed the visitor my postcard and pen. We walked down the street together, Callaghan asking about our school and our visit to London.

‘We’d better go in here’, he said, ‘the Prime Minister is waiting for us’.

On the steps of Number 10, Harold Wilson stood, smiling.

1975 was at the height of IRA terrorism, yet teenage boys were allowed to wander unchallenged around Downing Street; government ministers were people content to move around without a phalanx of security men.

Even four years later, visiting London as an eighteen year old, standing on the pavement opposite the door of Number 10 and shouting, ‘Power to the people,’ as Foreign Secretary Dr David Owen stepped from a limousine, brought no more than a contemptuous glance from a policeman.

Only a cat now would have the opportunity for such free movement among the holders of the great offices of state.