The girls seemed to spend a lot of their time making mud pies and daisy chains.  Farmyards at that time were vastly more exciting than any modern adventure playground, and of course far more dangerous.  Once, three of us made up a perfect, square shaped parcel and filled it with horse manure and then addressed it to the village policeman at Barnetby.  We put it on the footpath at the side of the road along which he usually travelled and awaited his arrival. We heard his motorbike stop at the parcel as we hid in the wood next to the footpath, then heard him drive round and round the wood for what seemed like hours.  We were terrified but remained hidden and eventually he left and when we later came out of the wood, the parcel had gone as well.

One of our tricks was to play pin and cotton.  A pin was pushed into someone's window frame, a long length of cotton was tied to it and about a foot down from the pin, a piece of metal or stone was attached.  We stood a long way away in the darkness and kept pulling and letting go of the cotton.  This caused a tapping sound on the window which drove people mad, as when they came out they could not see us in the dark.

As with most villages, we had our own ghost which we called "The White Lady of Hallgarth." Hallgarth is a low-lying field with a stream running through the bottom of it and at certain times of the year, thick white mists covered the lowest parts of it.  The top of the mist looked the same as clouds when you look down from above when you fly over them. At night we roamed about under the mist and made horrible wailing sounds and ghostly noises which we were certain would terrify everyone and leave them quaking in their shoes. Our parents probably thought, good, we know where they are now.

We always seemed to be busy from morning until night, except for Saturdays when all the children spent the day with their families. It was the longest, most boring day of the week, as we had no one to play with.  I remember the sheer joy of running through woods, fields and the countryside in general.  I enjoyed it so much that my legs grew strong and I could soon outrun every one of my age group.  Before I left school, I could outrun anyone of any age in the village and a few villages around.  My daughter later became the fastest girl runner at Healing School and two of my granddaughters are now the fastest girl runners in their age groups at Keelby School.  It must be something to do with the food we eat, or some high-speed gene.  People said at Melton Ross that you had to be a good runner if you could not fight.

If you are in Melton Ross and cross the railway lines, you are in New Barnetby, which must surprise outsiders as the two added together hardly make one decent sized village.  Although I spent most of my time in New Barnetby, before moving to Melton Ross,  I nearly always refer to them as Melton Ross, as hardly anyone has heard of New Barnetby.  There used to be thirty-six houses in the village and surrounding farms.  I know because I used to deliver the newspapers.  When I joined the RAF, someone said,"Blimey, we've got three hundred in our street."

In the past, if the man who operated the crossing gates took more than ten seconds to open them, he was considered lazy, but now, anyone who plans to use them would be well advised to take a packed lunch and those with bladder problems should not even attempt it.

Every schoolboy collected bird's eggs. We could recognise all the eggs and were pretty expert at finding and recognising the nests.  We would make a hole in each end of the egg and blow the contents out.  It was a very difficult operation when you blew out a wren's egg for example.  If we had to climb a high tree to reach the nests, we would carry the eggs down either under our hats or in our mouths.  I still remember how difficult it was not to close our mouths when we had an egg or eggs inside.  We would have a lid of a cardboard box, fill it either with sand or with cotton wool and lay the eggs out in neat rows.  When winter came, we would be thoroughly bored with the eggs, throw them away, and restart a new collection the next spring.

There was a story that a schoolboy had been collecting bird's eggs and was carrying them home under his hat when he met the vicar.  When the vicar asked him if he had been stealing eggs he replied-"no." "Good boy" said the vicar and patted him on the head.

In the spring, when the baby rooks first started to fly, the owner of the rookery gathered his friends round for a spot of rook shooting.  All the children joined in this annual event, picking up the shot rooks and comparing the skill of the different shooters.  Afterwards, the people who shot went round to the farmer's house and had a supper of rook pie.  The cooks worked rapidly to cook the first rooks that were shot and have them ready for supper.  It was a poor man's version of eating the first grouse on the Glorious Twelfth.  I have never tasted rook pie and I don't think I would like to.  [Continued]