Standard Practice

You know how it is. You go rummaging about in old cardboard boxes looking for one thing and end up finding fifteen things you weren't. This Saturday's foray into a cold garage (Albion lorry badge hanging up on a rusty nail) resurrected an early 1950's Leicester Official Handbook. I can't even start to tell you the joys suddenly released from the ever-so-slightly damp pages, but here's one. I was born half way up a cul-de-sac in Wigston Fields, and there are those who say I've spent all my time since crawling up the other half. My elder brothers were much older, so I took my pleasures on my own in exploring, inch by inch, my neighbourhood. A red letter day came when I reached the pub at the bottom of the road and I watched the Holes Newark Ales yellow brewery dray unloading wooden barrels at the Royal Oak. But next door to the pub was something much more exciting. This was Browett's service depot, where they maintained the ranks of newly-bought little grey Ferguson tractors and red and yellow Massey-Harris combines and muck spreaders. Such was the post-war demand, Browetts signed-up a fleet of Standard Vanguard vans with the evocative tractor silhouette. I just stared and stared at them over a fence that has been air-brushed from this picture. You can hear the manager can't you, the evening before this picture was taken: "I want all mobile engineers to be here with their vans (washed) at eight in the morning".

Letter from Leicestershire

A whole day out in High Leicestershire, rummaging about in wet muddy lanes. I've known about these red gates with the top rail painted white since I was I boy, when I cycled out into the countryside around Hungarton just to annoy my brother whilst he was hedge laying, or chucking manure about the fields with the aid of a little grey Ferguson. But today I noticed this curious fastening on the double gates, and on closer inspection realised that instead of it being some convoluted addition to secure the gates to each other, it was in fact a letter 'Q'. The red and white gates have always been associated with the Quenby Hall estate, pastoral acres surrounding what is one of the finest Jacobean houses in the county. What a brilliant but subtle way to announce ownership, rather than the usual mindless corporate image for some agro-industrial complex that often has the adjunct 'keep out' next to it. I fear yet another collection coming on- A Country ABC. Well, at least I've got one of the hardest, although I expect 'Z' is going to prove somewhat elusive.