BAKERY DAYS....

The picture above (click to enlarge) is of Padworth Common, a small hamlet on the Hampshire/Berkshire border. You are looking into the Berkshire bit, but the picture was taken right on the boundary between the two counties. At the far end of the road, just visible on the left, is the house where my grandparents had the village bakery and where one of my aunts ran the village shop. The house on the left just past the big conifer is where the Post Office was once housed and towards the end of their working lives, my parents had the village pub - the Round Oak - just out of shot on the left. So even a tiny hamlet like Padworth Common had all the necessities of life.....and what you see of the village is pretty much all you get.

Now, when I was a boy, I always looked forward to the school summer holidays. I know things look rosier in hindsight but the long summer holidays always seemed blessed with sunshine. Although we never went anywhere on holiday, much of my days were filled along the shoreline of Southampton Water doing what boys do and some were spent staying at Padworth in the Bakery. Those were working days for me - going out on the bread delivery vans either with my uncle or my other aunt - and it seemed the natural thing to do in a working family who always welcomed any sort of helping hand, however young or inexperienced.

I was kitted up with my own jacket, money bag and bread basket which was filled with loaves of different kinds - sandwich loaves, split tins, coburgs, along with lard cakes, dough cakes and anything else that might tempt housewives on their doorsteps. I got to know the various rounds we did in the old Ford van - Mortimer, Burghfield, Ufton, Padworth itself and Silchester, which is where the week ended at about 8.00pm each Saturday evening at the Crown Inn. I got to know the customers, they got to know me and although I didn`t get paid for my endeavours (it never occurred to me) it did help with my mental arithmetic as, at the end of each week, the bills were settled in cash on the doorstep.

I think what reminded me of all this was hearing today about the price of bread these days. Although it seems the price might come down a notch, a large loaf still costs something like 95p (19/- in old money) and it brought to mind the prices that I remember from all those years ago. Then, a large loaf was sevenpence ha`penny - about 3p - so two loaves were 1/3d and four would be 2/6d (12 1/2p.)

I`m sure I was fortunate to be able to spend my school summer holidays gaining that kind of experience and confidence in that kind of environment. The only sadness being that, when I revisit Padworth Common these days, the Post Office has gone, the Bakery and the village shop have gone and been been replaced by an angling centre and, although the Round Oak is still there, my parents and the rest of my forebears are long gone too.

The hamlet itself has hardly changed - just the people, who don`t know what they`re missing with the demise of the old wood oven, like the one pictured above, which produced that wonderful bread. And as for lard cakes and dough cakes, well, there`s probably an EEC Directive banning them. If not, then perhaps there ought to be given their obesity-inducing qualities. The Round Oak is still in business - see http://www.theroundoak.co.uk/ - and I can recommend it..... even though I may be biased.