The Victory Ball at Priory Dean Village Hall

Extract from “The Village” by Marghanita Laski (1952)

She had never seen the hall decorated for a dance, and indeed, for none of the wartime dances had the shabby wooden hall been bedizened as it was tonight. Everyone had contributed what they could find from their old stocks of party and Christmas decorations and everything in splendid confusion was tacked to the walls, to the platform, to the beams in the ceiling. Ted Pickering, who, having been invalided out of the Army after Dunkirk, worked at his Dad’s electrical shop when he wasn’t conducting his Ragamuffins, had managed to fix up the coloured electric lights that Mr Waters had dug out for Victory night so that they dazzled and twinkled (except for two blue ones that wouldn’t work) right above the heads of the band. Then there were Japanese lanterns and odds-and-ends of paper concertinas and little glittering glass Christmas tree toys and lengths of tinsel and tacked-up laurel branches – everything, in fact, that Priory Dean could produce in the way of festive gaiety to bedeck the village hall on the night of the Victory Ball.

http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/the-village.html

Comments

Woods Ware China at the Serving Hatch - The Book!

I have now put together a book to accompany this blog, featuring all the best bits and much more besides, about the development and use of village halls over the past century. It costs £1.29 for a Kindle download and £3.99 for a printed version. Here's the blurb: "Enter any village hall and look at the noticeboard. The range of activities taking place these days is enough to keep anyone entertained. Cinema evenings, keep fit classes, scouts, Women’s Institute, St John’s Ambulance, lunch clubs, support groups - all keeping the physical and spiritual on the straight and narrow. Where would we be without the village hall? What a marvellous innovation, and one that seems to grow in importance as we realise that we have lost sight of community somewhat, and need to nurse it back to life. You might, if you were in a particularly philosophical mood while hanging around the vestibule, wonder where and how it all began." English village halls have been a fixture of our lands...

The Curious Case of the Whitminster Village Hall Thief

This article is copied from The Illustrated Police News, 14 February 1935: Judge Thanked "Thank you very much, sir, I've got off very light." Remarked John Moore, 76, when sentenced by Mr Justice Hawke at Gloucester Assizes to six months imprisonment on charges of breaking into Whitminster Village Hall and stealing articles valued at 4 shillings and 6 pence. There was a term of 344 days remaining of a previous sentence, and Moore was told that he would have to serve that time. P.S. (Police Sergeant) Howkins revealed that since 1904 Moore had been continually in and out of prison. Since that time he had been sentenced seven times to penal servitude, involving in all 23 years. In addition, he was in 1927 sentenced to four years imprisonment and had served further sentences most of them in respect of house breaking. Moore's last sentence was three year's penal servitude. Moore handed in a statement to the judge, beginning "I most respectfully wish t...

Dixon of Fingers Green

In what could be the script from a gentle BBC comedy of the 60s or 70s, the village policeman triumphed at the horticultural show in a small Kent village. The local bobby walked away from the Village Hall with 11 out of 14 prizes. A cub reporter from the local rag dared to ask the green fingered P.C. if he talked to his blooms, to which the answer came: "No." He was encouraged to elaborate: "Talking to them, singing to them, music, that's all a lot of tripe. There's no substitute for hard work. You have to treat them like children, water them and care for them." I suppose he's right. There are similarities. Both flowers and children are prone to infestations of little creatures. And they never quite turn out how you expect, but sometimes you're lucky. Have a look at my novella for more vintage gardening fun

Woods Ware China at the Serving Hatch

Search This Blog