As it is Jubilee year I will tell you about my memories of the Coronation.

I was 9 years old at the time, and youngest of 5 children and of course Televisions in those days were few and far between. As evacuees our family lived in the Old workhouse at Thrapston ( a very different place now after having a major re-vamp, and now the Council Offices) There were several families living there. One of them was the Clerk of the Works and his wife Mr and Mrs Champion. Another was a dear old man named Mr Williams and his wife. He was deaf and she was blind.

We were all crowded into Mr Champion's living room in front of his 9" television. I think including our parents there must have been about 12 people in that little room. If I remember rightly all of us little ones sat on the floor. We saw it in colour would you believe....Mr Champion had a piece of see-through plastic over the screen which was multi-colour stripes! We thought it was wonderful. I don't believe we had ever seen television before so it was doubly exciting.

I don't know whether it was the next day but Mr Williams put on a party in one of the big upstairs rooms. This was for all the families in the Workhouse(about 8 families in all) which included lots of children. Also there were a lot of prefabs leading down Cedar Drive in Thrapston, I imagine a lot of these were for evacuees too. Everyone from there were also included.the party was wonderful, plenty of food (goodness knows how the dear old chap did it )hats, streamers everything you could think of. A truly great memory.

Many of my other memories are the same as My sister's, (Mary Reynolds) although I can add a few more:

• The times we used to go to the Mill for a jug of milk, this was when we ran out - otherwise it was delivered in churns and measured out with a kind of ladle
  
  
• Alec Manning delivering the bread on a hand-cart. He used to walk from Denford with it. Alec didn't like dogs and he used to throw a loaf at our dog Scamp. Just as well his other customers didn't know this.
  
  
• Sundays in the summer walking from Thrapston to Denford. When it was hot we use to find great enjoyment breaking the tar bubbles with our fingers and getting in a awful mess. Poor long-suffering mum was always ready with the butter or lard used to clean it off. We used to also listen to the fairies whispering in the telegraph poles.
  
  
• My sister June doing my mum a favour by cutting my hair. Can remember it as though it was yesterday, me saying mum would be ever so pleased. Think she must have just about fainted, there wasn't much left by the time she had tried to repair the damage.
  
  
• The very same sister throwing chewing gum into Mary's hair and trying to get it out with dad's safety razor, minus the blade. Trying to keep Mary quiet in case dad heard.
  
  
• Jumping up and down on mum and dad's bed while they were at the pictures and it collapsing in the middle of the night. No-one told them what the five of us had been doing though.
  
  
• One more memory of going to the Plaza cinema to the Tuppenny rush Mary mentioned. That was the penny lolly from Stapleton's next to the cinema. A whole lot of enjoyment for threepence.
  
  

Margaret Mann

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