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"The shop was also the only Newsagents for miles around and we had the monopoly of Broughton Astley, Leire and Frolesworth. We took over the shop from a Mr. Jarvis and our first amazement about village life came on the first day when we saw the order books for the newspaper deliveries: there were no house numbers! The order books were made out mostly to names of people only and we were expected to learn the names of everyone in three villages - about two thousand people. Even Mr. Jarvis had not learned them all in his many years there and had left instructions such as "House with red curtains, Daily Express and Leicester Mercury." Father just prayed that they never changed their curtains.."

"Living in the country opened a whole new world to me. The boys I made friends with in the village knew nothing of the ravages of war, only of the indirect effects of it such as a general shortage of everything. They, however, knew everything about climbing trees, birds' eggs, the differences between cows and bulls - I had always thought that the bulls were the ones with horns, where to find mushrooms other than in a Greengrocer's and a wealth of other information unknown to the town boy."

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Copyright - John Peirson 2000