Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Ruffles, Peter (O1994.3) |
| Interviewee | Peter Ruffles |
| Interviewer | Peter Ruffles, Jean Riddell |
| Date | 16/02/1994 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O 1994.3
Interviewee: Peter Ruffles
Date: 16th February, 1994
Interviewer: Peter Ruffles and Jean Riddell
Transcribed by: Jean Riddell
Peter Ruffles talking to himself (&Jean Riddell !) on the evening of Ash Wednesday.
I've just come in from the Ash Wednesday Service at St. Andrew's. Maisie Ditton wasn't there. Don't know whether she's been celebrating the release from the ordeal of the tape recording machine by having a few more ginger wines or whether she's rehearsing a play.
But after the service I spoke to Jean Riddell, the Labour Party of 99 Willowmead - that's just a little test to see if she edits this out, should she be the one doing the transcript, and we were discussing in the churchyard, she resisting a lift home on the back of my little Honda 50 motor bike because of the absence of a helmet, even though it was a dark night and we would probably have been undetected.
We were discussing the kind of thing we ought to encourage people to talk about when they are painting these little pictures of Hertford life in earlier years. I had been prompted now just to put on to tape, because I expect she will be the one to listen to it, some personal memories.
It was prompted by Maisie Ditton speaking about shops in St. Andrew St. & as I've sat down here in front of the Parkray which actually needs a poke at the moment, because It's not sparking up very well, I wonder perhaps if I mention one or two memories that I have from the street, St. Andrew St., Hertingfordbury Rd., The Wash, street scene memories, whether she might comment on the validity of such things.
The difficulty will be that they are personal, and in a sense they are not so very interesting to the general public and what we want to do is preserve pictures which reflect the town view as it would
have been shared by other members of the population and not just personal anecdotes.
Anyway, Maisie got me thinking about shops and troubles and injustices I seem to have suffered myself over the years, in the street. I shall think of some more just immediately after I've turned off but just for the moment - poke the fire - Maisie mentioned the fish and chip shop and I do remember that that caught fire and the fire engine came along and managed to put the fire out before it spread into the house next door where the Lukas were. But I suppose that was just a big chip pan fire and was restricted to the flue and the frying apparatus at the back.
Next door was McRea's, a rival to George Ditton's shop, where you took your accumulator to be re-charged at the end or the war, for the wireless.
Then was Mr Crawley's tailors shops and I think there were two shops side by side. Crawley the tailor, and I don't remember it ever being a very lively shop as far as customers entering and exiting were concerned. And it did have a rather dowdy window, not very attractive in a very narrow bit of street between the Ebenezer Chaple and the shops. The pavements and the road were very, very tight indeed. You never really stood back and looked at the shop front, you just passed it by on your right shoulder as you went down to the town.
But I do remember being shaken by the sight of Mr. Crawley, I think it was one Sunday afternoon, being brought out of the shop on a stretcher, taken into the ambulance and I think he didn't return home - he was off to die. But, the shock wasn't so much his little head poking out above the blankets but the bright red colour of those blankets. I can picture that quite well, the end of Mr. Crawley as far as I was concerned.
And then next door was this sheet shop that Maisie mentioned, The Lantern. There were quite a
number of different people who were served, I suppose chiefly school children, quite a lot of people resident in Hertingfordbury Road, with sweets. But the ones that stuck in my mind most and were loved by the children were a couple who may have been there just two or three years, seemed a long, long time when we were children, a couple called Mr. and Mrs. Fry and she had - they
were elderly, I suppose approaching retirement - she had one of those bent legs, something had gone wrong with the bone of' her leg and it had a sort of bow in it, half way down, not sure what caused that. There were one or two people I remember in town having that sort of condition. Ladies, of course because you couldn't tell about the chaps. I remember when they moved away how very sad we were when we got the news that they were going but I can remember quite well them telling me where they going to. It was number 10, Temple Road, Croydon and I thought, I probably wrote them a letter once or twice in an eight or nine year old hand. I've never been back, to 10 Temple Road, Croydon to see if, well they won't be there now, to see if they were there. At the time I might have gone to visit them.