Give me a simple life (From Worcester News)

Give me a simple life

2:38pm Wednesday 9th November 2011 in Features By John Phillpott

*ONCE it was all weddings.

These days, it’s funerals and 60th birthday parties that dominate the social diary.

One of this year’s more memorable celebrations of reaching three score years took place at Sinton Green village hall and although I didn’t join in the ceilidh – that good old war wound ruse again – I did get an impression of how much simpler life was when a chunk of cheese washed down with a flagon of cider after a quick burst of Sir Roger de Coverley reel formed the highpoint of the rural calendar.

*I SAT and worked through an entire day of wall-to-wall child street noise during a recent visit to Kempsey.

Don’t village kids run across the fields any more? When I was that age, my parents didn’t see me from dawn until dusk. I was too busy allowing my imagination to flow free as the meadows became prairies or seas and the spinney transformed itself into a dense forest or the masts of great fleets.

Something’s been lost somewhere down the years… and that’s for sure.

*MADDER as a hatter... I have received several letters after asking for information about the dye used for British soldiers’ dress uniforms. Joyce Lamb of Kempsey and her brother David have supplied quite a lot of fascinating information; Mrs C Atkins, also of that fine village, says her late painter husband used brown madder and rose madder tint; and Rose Hughes of Evesham has supplied a fascinating account of how alkaline was added to damson juice to turn naval uniforms blue during the First World War. The plot – and the dye – thickens.