9. School Holidays Part 2

In the 1960’s, by the age of 12 during the school holidays we were out of the house and doing our own thing without our parents worrying if it was safe or where we were. We always came home at the right time. To be late meant your dinner was put in a cooling oven or put over a pan of hot water on the stove with a saucepan lid over the plate, which kept it warm, but it did not look very appetising after half an hour (well before the age of microwave ovens).

In the Summer holidays, most of us boys went to work on the local farms. At the age of 12 I spent a week and a half working on Clary Daws farm (I will write more about Clary at a later date), pulling up young cauliflower plants. There would be four or five of us of a similar age doing this under the watchful eye of Frank (Bunny) Ireland. The plants would be taken by Clary to be planted in the main field. Four more experienced boys would be on the planter behind Clary’s Nuffield tractor, the most senior boy driving said tractor. This week and a half was enough for me! I think I earnt about £5.50. This was enough to get a bus to Ramsgate and back to buy myself a small rod and reel, line, hooks and lead weights. Then, with quite a few other lads and my elder brother, I would spend most of the rest of the holidays fishing in the River Stour, catching mainly eels. This is how, over the two years my Summer holidays went. Each year I worked a bit long at Clary’s, as older boys left school but never more than about three weeks of the holidays.

Easter holidays could sometimes be hard for us to find things to do at the age of 12 to 14. We may get a couple of days work at Clary’s. Fishing was not allowed as it was closed season. One thing that nearly all village boys, for generations had, was a ‘catapult’. Days were spent in Monkton Court or Willetts Chalk Pits shooting at cans and bottles that were dumped there. A supply of small stones was always hard to find with the exception of the year when Seamark Close was built, as they dumped loads of ballast on the edge of the road at the bottom of Willetts Hill, which was full of the perfect sized pebbles.

During the Winter holidays, when we could get out, we would often spend time in one of the various small woods that were in the Parish (before Dutch Elm Disease wiped out most of them). Someone would have a box of matches and we would make a small fire out of dead wood and sit around it for hours. We must of stank of smoke when we went home but nobody seemed to mind. Something that we never did when we had a fire, was to break new branches of trees. Unfortunately, on farms now, it is seen too often people have hacked branches of trees to make a fire, which doesn’t work as the wood is too green.

Next month School Holidays 15 years +

Terry Marsh

Originally published in the Monkton News (May 2023).