Role play
Posted on November 6, 2015 | By kstevenswoolsery | 2 responses
Today the children have been preparing to write a diary entry from the perspective of a local person during World War 2. This is a summary of the research we have done on the question, “How did evacuation affect rural life in Woolsery?” Role play and hot-seating helped the children to get into the character of a farmer / teacher / child / parent in Woolsery during the war.
looks good and fun hope it goes well.
HI Lily. By the way please call me eddy or Ed.Nice of you to write again. Last time i wrote we had moved from Parkham to Woolsery. A tiny cottage in Back st which we always called Sunnyside .A big shock as we had moved from the big farm with lights and water and our own bedroom. Woolsery was so different with four other boys. No electricity and the water was at the bottom of the street which had to be pumped out into a bucket and carried back. Mrs glover who we used to call aunt Mary had a parafin lamp.There was only four small rooms and one of those was the kitchen which we only ever went into on a Saturday night. this was bath night. A tin bath was put in front of black cooker and one by one had our bath .Water must have been a bit dirty towards the end because it was not changed..Unlike Parkham we had our meals in the other room. There would not have been room in the little kitchen. For breakfast we generally had bread and hot milk.The bread from the day before was chopped up and put into the milk It was quite nice.We would also sometimes i think was an oxo cube and hot water and bread put in the same.Aunt Marys husband was uncle George who used to be a hedge cutter and also cut the verges with a big sythe .He was also the local grave digger..Both were very nice to us and never hit or smacked us.They must have been very poor to take six boys.I think the government paid them about 10 shillings a week for each of us. Aunt Mary when it got dark and we had to go to bed used to take us up with the lamp. We had to kneel by the bed and say our prayers and then jump into bed. Then we would all have to have a big spoon of Cod liver Oil. Horrible, but this was when we had a sweet to get rid of the taste. This was the only time we had a sweet. You only got 2 ounces of sweets a week because they were on ration.Our toilet was outside at the end of the garden so we would not go there at night. We had a pot under the bed. As soon as Aunt Mary had put us to bed she would go downstairs and it would be dark.There was three beds in our little room.Three of us in one bed ,two in other bed and one on the floor on Mattress.I remember getting up to go to the potty and one of the boys shouting out rats and i jumped back into bed frightened. I suppose that thought it funny but it only upset me.I think this was the start of my bet wetting which i hated. It shows you how good Aunt Mary was because she never told me off and it must have caused her a lot of extra work.In the winter when it was really cold Aunt Mary used to put big stones in the oven to warm our beds up. At the farm in Parkham was Betty and a bit like my mum to me so missed her when we had to leave. But next door to us at Woolsery was miss Hooper who was the sister of Aunt Mary.Her cottage was even smaller.We called her aunt Rosy and she was a lovely lady and made my life much easier. She would call me nipper and i would spend a lot of time with her. Much more than any of the other boys.She seemed quite old but probably about 60 She had very bad arthritus and walked with two sticks.She had a little wind up record player and play two records for me. One was Dick Turpin rides to York and the other Grandfather Clock. Whether she had any more records i don,t know but that is all I heard. Never fed up listening to them. I used to play snakes and ladder and tiddly winks.Also play cards. She also had a lot of foreign stamps,which she had got through writing to people round the world. She said she did this by writing in Esperanto which was a worldwide lanquage .Must have been quite educated. I remember once being in there and she had a friend and they were having coffee.Well you could not buy coffee then and they had coffee and chicory instead.I suppose she was giving me a treat and it tasted horrible,but i did drink it. Next door to aunt Rosie was a lady called Christine.She seemed to be about 30 but must have had something happen when she was born. She was very nice but more like a young child. When she saw me she used to grab hold of me and say i love you nipper and squeeze me and not let me go.The older people in Woolsery will remember her.Wonder what happened if her parents died. I remember that we did not like Sundays because we had to go to church instead of playing.The six of us had to sit on the front seat and it used to seem forever in there. Aunt Mary used to give us a penny each to put in the collection box. In the afternoon we had to go to Sunday school which was not so bad but did seem to spoil our day.We wore different clothes sunday and would not get them dirty.The other thing that happened when we went to Woolsery was to have our hair cut very short with just a little bit left in front..We all had the same haircut.I think it was to stop you getting fleas.Lots of times when things happened they used to say ,them glover boys again which was not true.Bye for now Lily .
Eddy