General Chat

I don't want to join in any argument either way, but it has been a little heavy on the board lately. I went and saw the film Big Fish. It was a real feel-good film about the stories a man told his child as he grew up. Some were quite fantastic, others true. How about folk sharing some stories told by parents/grandparents etc. and cheering us all up?

Here's one to get the ball rolling: My grandfather told me once about a plane that was shot down over Banbury in WW2. He was in the home guard, and they ran over to the plane, but all the pilots etc. were dead. However, there was a chicken - they all thought it was a mascot because it had a coat on, a bit like a wollen tea-cosy. Well, chickens were very few and far between in those days, and the prospect of fresh eggs was too much for my grandfather. He took the chicken home, and it proved to be a good layer, and my grandmother was delighted with the eggs. After a couple of years or so, nature took its course, and the hen stopped laying eggs so regularly. Its days were numbered, and one day grandfather went out the back yeard with an axe. One chop later, and Granny was plucking the bird, and removing the entrails. Suddenly there was a scrape of metal as the knife went inside the bird. She took out a small round box. There was a film inside!! A great uncle of mine used to develop films, so the precious film went off to his house to be developed. The photos were of "Alcan" an aluminium factory in Banbury, used in wartime as an important ammunitions manufacturing base. My grandfather says they had taken these photographs to enable them to bomb the factory. You see, a "dummy" factory built down the railway line had been bombed several times. He kept the photographs as he did not want to own up to what he had done, but told me that they accidentally went to a furniture shop in the secret drawer of a cupboard they were selling, and have never been since. But since the real factory was never bombed, he reckons this won the war, but told me never to tell anyone until after he died. Well, what is true? He certainly kept chickens. The dummy factory was destroyed three times, the real one never harmed. We did win the war. More than that I wouldn't like to say. Maybe someone has the photgraphs? The truth is out there - somewhere

Excellent - wonder what happened to his finger? A true (I am sure all this one is true) story about a finger - my grandmother (same one) only had half a little finger, and the nail used to curl round like a claw. On their wedding day in 1934, my grandparents were going to stay at my great aunt's house in Dulwich, south London. When they got to Paddington station, my grandfather shut my grandmother's finger in the door! She spent her wedding night in St Mary's hospital having a graft! The finger wasn't found, so, needless to say, as a child, no trip to London was complete without a quick check along the track of platform 8 at Paddington

Wow! Nigel, what a story - a film could be made of that, starting with someone finding the photos after buying some furniture at a second-hand shop. I'd make it a romatic comedy with Alfie from EastEnders in the leading role. My little story is very mundane. My maternal grandmother, whenever I visited her would say,"wellthelordloveus" and only being very young, I used to think it was all one word until getting older and bigger, I realised what it actually was. This same grandmpother always told me that she used to get smacked at school for being good, and when I asked how that could happen, she would tell me that eating raw carrots is good,but that she still used to get smacked in class for eating them there. I used to think that so unfair!!!

I was always told about when my mother was young she used to go the shop with her older cousins. one wasalways getting into scrapes and the other always told tall tales. one day they went to the shop and the one cousin got his foot stuck down a drain hole cover. The others ran backand the eldest one told his parents and aunties what had happened.To which the response was "stop telling tall tales and go and get the milk." Not one adult came to help. The children all tried to pull him out and eventually a stranger good samartain helped to release him. Even now I don't think anyone believed them until he came home with big cut marks on his legs. This same cousin also used to skive off school and his mother always knew because he used to bring her wild flowers picked from the canal , which wasn't on the way to school. KIM