Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Sampson, Claire (O2002.25) |
| Interviewee | Claire Sampson (CS) (with Paul Sampson (PS)) |
| Interviewer | Peter Ruffles (PAR) |
| Date | 29/08/2002 |
| Transcriber by | Mark Green (using Otter.AI for initial transcript) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O2002.25
Transcript Title: Sampson, Claire
Interviewees: Claire Sampson (CS) (with Paul Sampson (PS))
Interviewers: Peter Ruffles (PAR)
Date: 29th August 2002
Transcribed by: Mark Green (using Otter.AI for initial transcript)
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
Some material relating to third parties outside the scope of the interview has been omitted from this transcription.
PAR: [Peter starts the recording at his home, under the loud ticking of his kitchen clock]
This is Peter Ruffles, putting a tape in and testing it because this morning I made a mistake and forgot to say the date on the tape when I began it, at 51 Brookside, which was Pam Lambert's, but I'm now off this evening under the kitchen clock, sorry about that. This evening, which is an August evening, the 29th of August. Beautiful, warm summer's day to number 66 Ladywood Road the home of Paul and Claire Sampson. Only just Claire Sampson because she was Claire Jones until just three weeks ago, back from honeymoon. And Claire was brought up in the Longwood Road part of Sele farm. She went to St Andrew's School. And she's at the moment teaching at St Andrew's School so I'm going up to ask her for a few memories’ life story and memories and ambitions on the social history side of things to do with Sele Farm, and particularly St Andrew's School. and the year is 2002. Do we, oh yes, we got power
CS: So, in the form of a question-and-answer interview, or am I just gonna sort of?
PAR: Yeah. You can say any, what we want really is the social scene at Sele. Present day and age. What's going on up there.
CS: Right. Yeah.
PAR: A bit of a family thing. I suppose. It might be best to start at the beginning, now and work backwards. Normally we start when someone's born.
CS: There's lots to miss out and I suppose the more you think about it, the easier it is to remember back. [Material not transcribed]
PAR: So that was, and you got married about three weeks ago?
CS: Yeah. Three weeks ago. On Saturday.
PAR: Those three weeks still coming up as it were.
CS: Yes. On Saturday.
PAR: at St Andrew's Church.
CS: Yep. With Father Graham.
PAR: With Father Graham
CS: Yep. He was very nervous let me tell you.
PS: Yes, he was. Yes.
CS: I couldn't believe it. I thought Paul I would be nervous, but when he actually had the rings and was presenting, he shook like a leaf.
PAR: That isn't the bloke normally, is it?
CS: Not that we know, no, no, absolutely, yeah, no shocking. I think Paul, at one point Paul said to him, yeah, you're shaking so much.
PS: He didn't say a word
PAR: You didn't get to the bottom of why it was...
CS: No. I think perhaps having the involvement with myself and the rest of the congregation that was there. It was a lot.
PAR: It was a big thing for him, church wise. Parochially.
CS: It was, yes. Yes, it was. Yeah.
PAR: He seems very fond of you.
CS: Yes. Yes.
PAR: Perhaps, I don't suppose you are the only person he is fond of. [laughter] Yes, there's that extra bit. And you're teaching at St Andrew's School.
CS: I am. Just finished my first year, my first whole year with year one.
PAR: I wanted to say a little bit more about that because you're doing this curious kind of training on the job lark.
CS: I am yeah, that starts in May. It's, yeah, it's a bit of a [hard to describe, impossible to transcribe sound, indicating uncertainty]
PAR: No. No. Wouldn't want that at all.
CS: No, it starts in May. It's over in Luton University. It's one evening a week with Saturday workshops. It's three years for that for the BA Educational Studies. And then it's another year and a half as a registered teacher within a school continuing, what you've started as the degree basically, Yeah, it's pretty, pretty long-winded. And, and to be honest, with I am honest, and I've sort of spoken to Ronald about it who's the Head, within those five years, I might like to have a baby. So, you know, we'll start it, we'll get on to the course. Because without that, I can't continue to teach as I'm unqualified,
PAR: so that you keep the job warm.
CS: Yeah. Yeah. So that's the plan. It starts in May.
PAR: I wouldn't want that. It must be really hard.
CS: It is really hard, and to be honest, I don't know how if I can do it, but I'll give it my best shot. I think but I've got to do it really, I haven't really got a choice.
PAR: I mean you know the School so well, but it isn't an easy school is it? I mean you are working just not being in the classroom there, you are working harder than the average primary school teacher?
CS: Yeah.
PAR: Because of the nature of…
CS: Yeah, absolutely. The area that within the schools within? Yeah. But having not experienced other schools, it's first-hand nature to me. I know nothing. I know no different.
PAR: But it's no, it must come home tired, then.
PS: Very tired, really tired.
CS: Yeah. mentally tired. Not physically, but mentally.
PAR: And then if you have to bring anything home, it gets, gets very tiring, doesn't it [indistinct]
CS: Yeah. Yeah, it does, because it doesn't ever stop, does it? There's always more to do. And you can throw yourself into it and into it, into it, into it and then you think I can't,
PAR: But you do anyway.
CS: Yeah, that's the point. That's the thing. I don't stop do I. Yeah. Saying that there's so much there's so many, many hours of goodness, no, and that, that they outweigh the bad times the hard times.
PAR: I just think it's just a hard way of starting, having done, you know, my training years and then getting into it, just
CS: a gradual…
PAR: Do you have I mean, the the training time is, was, is good time, but then that wouldn't make it any easier domestically for you to go away for three years?
CS: it would be impossible. We couldn't afford it. It wouldn't, it just wouldn't work with our circumstances.
PAR: You are not missing, but it is a treat to be? Well,
CS: to be your way and to do the full, yeah, I can see that. Definitely.
PAR: I had a really good surprise, just last week, because I applied for my pension, which comes in December
CS: Yaaaay! I don't believe it.
PAR: Yeah, but what I forgotten was that I did like you're doing at my old school Richard Hale. I went as a pupil teacher. And although I knew I did, I did it. I thought it was like work experience or a gap year, you know, just chipping in. But I got paid. And I can remember now, but I sort of wiped it out in my thoughts. About two pounds a day, two or four pounds a day. I can't remember which [indistinct]. But all that's counted on my service. So, when it came back saying I'd done 36 years at Broxbourne School, and I thought well it is 35, isn't it? And then.
CS: That extra year, wow.
PAR: Nearly an extra year, I got a supply, so it wasn't a full year. So, in a way I was given me more on the pension, but it's a bit like your way of doing it. You know, because I'm learned on the job just walking, I had to go and do stand in some teachers who are missing. But I had one class all the year for English, GCSE. What were they called then? [indistinct] Just one class that's all I had all the time. And then all the rest of standing in front of people. But it's really, it's really helpful.
CS: Your financial build up that you have behind yourself. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah, actually.
PAR: Actually, know that when you get to College all these others were green, you know, just come straight out of school. And they had to go on teaching practice while I had been in classrooms.
CS: Wasn't that more difficult? I, I worry about that.
PAR: No. They spent...
CS: Do you?
PAR: Yeah, you just got that I know, I've done it. When they started giving you a lecture about the correct way and the best way of approaching this [indistinct] then you think I didn't find that...
CS: Didn't always work like that for myself. Yeah.
PAR: So, it gives you confidence. You are one-up on...
CS: Just got to keep that within because I'm always very conscious about the other people that you're in class with and how they may feel about you, if you kind of know. So, I suppose in a way, you just have to sort of hold yourself back and see how the rest of the class lies. Straight in, then.
PAR: and if you decide to stop and do something else,
CS: You can that's fine.
PAR: That's absolutely fine. And, you know, you've got an experience from life behind you. Whatever. Whether you pick it up or not. So, when did you actually, went to St Andrew's school as a pupil? Like I did.
CS: Did you? Did you really? When it was, school was down...
PAR: Was down the hill. My mum worked there, my mum was the secretary, down there, and first of all, when it first came up here, like Janice, for a long, long time, and she was a pupil there and so were my brother and so were my sisters, so was my [indistinct] It's really nice, just talking to someone.
CS: Wow! That is amazing. [Peter says something indistinct. Laughter] Oh, me too.
PAR: How old were you when you began five or four?
CS: I went to nursery type playgroup at the Community Centre initially,
PAR: Where was the Community Centre then?
CS: In the same place, yeah, where it is now,
PAR: In the Ridgeway...
CS: Yeah, near the Adventure Park. Not sure what that road is called.
PS: Part of the Ridgeway, isn't it...
PAR: Brooks Court is opposite.
CS: That's right. Yeah,
PAR: It's just probably just the Ridgeway.
CS: Just the Ridgeway. So, I went to Nursery Playgroup there and then moved round to the nursery at St Andrew's, which I remember quite well because at the time, what is now class three, first year juniors was actually still part of the nursery. And the nursery was huge. And you had this whole backspace where there was a piano and rabbits with this huge run. I can almost remember it. I also remember, Mary, I remember the staff more. Very motherly, weren't they? More so than you can be nowadays. It was a lot more care
PAR: Yes. No Ofsted
CS: Absolutely yeah, learn through play.
PS: And the dinner ladies were all lovely,
CS: oh, the dinner ladies, dinner lady actually in the juniors was Janet Wright? Do you remember Janet Wright.
PAR: Oh, yes.
CS: At the time. We actually used to call her Nan. And when you'd had your dinner, you used to go out onto the playground, and she used to give you these big like bear hug squeezes. And she was somebody that always made me feel really comfortable knowing, yeah, yeah, she was wonderful.
PAR: Where does she live?
CS: She lives in a mobile home somewhere quite far out within the sticks. Yeah, very happy still go out with her once every half a term with Marilyn Locke from school. And Janice and Janet and I yeah, we still meet up
PAR: She was in my Sunday school class apparently, and I used to teach her.
CS: Was she? Wow. [Peter says something, but this is obscured as Claire's laughter is closer to the microphone. It sounds like Peter is saying it is a wonder that she has turned out so well, to which Claire, laughing, says 'Has she?']
PAR: So lovely mum, I mean, called Marjorie.
CS: Marjorie. I used to see her quite a lot up at the greengrocers where I also worked at the parade of shops, local shops and greengrocers for about four years, sort of during school holidays. And as a Saturday girl I knew Marjorie quite well, there [indistinct]
PAR: Anyway, we've got you've being hugged in the infants…
CS: and juniors by Mrs. Wright, yeah, I remember school dinners very much at St Andrews'. Now you have what I call aeroplane tray food. And so, you have your main and your cup and your cutlery and your dessert all on one tray. But when we were at St Andrew's, it was tables which had eight seats on them six either side, and two at the end. And the two people at the end were the monitors and there was juniors, and they used to take us up table by table and we used to actually have knives and forks and plates. So, you'd go up for your first course. And then you'd go up for your second course. And the juniors who kind of looked after the table would help you clear away and pour your water and if you had chips then they'd allow you to use vinegar or not that type of thing. Yeah, remember that very well.
PAR: Who were the teachers, at the school?
CS: There was, Mrs. Kemp was my reception teacher. Then Miss Fairclough?
PAR: Yes.
CS: Then it was Mr. Harris.
PAR: I get muddled up with the christian names of the Faircloughs.
CS: Oh, sorry.
PAR: Stephanie
CS: Yes, I think so.
PAR: Stephanie Fairclough.
CS: Bun, hair in a bun. Always pulled back and up sort of here on her head. And I met her not recently but within the last few years at somebody's retirement party, and that's always been quite strange when members of staff have come back and now, I'm there. Not always as a teacher but I've always, and...strange more strange for them I think than it is for myself.
PAR: I wouldn't think
CS: would you not think so?
PAR: No, no. I think it's a really great pleasure. And you get a fillip out of it.
CS: Really? Oh, that's lovely. I hope so.
PAR: I don't ever think....no, I never get the sense because you always know the ones coming up behind you actually. Right sharp on the ball and no more noodles [?].
CS: That sounds [??] right
PAR: Well, it is, isn't it really. I mean, you are you're right there on the nail. I think that, that might be a bit defensive. I just can't remember her mum's name. Her mother is a Parish Clerk in Hertingfordbury, Lorna, I think, so Stephanie is the daughter, so you got Kempie [Carol Kemp, veteran teacher at St Andrews], Fairclough...
[Material not transcribed]
CS: …then we had a young lady teacher, I think her name was Miss Finch. She also taught us to play netball. She was very hip. And she was very cool. And she was our first youngest type teacher and that might have actually been year five. Because we also had a Mrs. Dodd. Do you remember a Mrs Dodd?
PAR: I don't remember a Mrs Dodd but the Finch name rings a bell but...
CS: she was our young, our first kind of youngest hippest teacher and all the girls thought she was wonderful. And she used to play netball. And she took us for netball competitions to other schools and stuff. And then Mr. Gosby was our year six teacher. Yeah, my now mentor was this year six teacher. Within his class our topics, a lot of our topics had to do with electricity, and I absolutely loved it. And I swore to him before I left that one day, I'm going to be an electrician, and he's still teases me about it to this day.
PAR: It wasn't very girlie [laughing]
CS: No, it wasn't at all. But I've no, no, but I was I thought it was wonderful. Perhaps it was something that I got right.
PAR: That often happens, in success.
CS: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. won't do that again.
PAR: Something must have clicked. Oh, good old Gozzers.
CS: Yeah, very much.
PAR: And who was the Head, then?
CS: Initially, Mr. Blundell. And then I think. No, it was somebody before Joan, Fitton. Chris Fitton. Yep. It was Mr. Blundell for a little while I used to remember him. Because he's quite tall and thin chap, isn't he? And he used to stand at the front of the assembly hall with his assembly table, which was kind of a stand which he just placed by…[Peter says something indistinct but to do with table being used at church events] Yes. Yes. And I can always remember him in his suits, but always quite tall and quite thin. Yeah. So, him initially, then Chris Fitton then Joan White.
PAR: because Johnny, John is still around and lives in Royston where he was living in the last years when you knew him, I'm in touch with him a little bit.
[Material not transcribed]
CS: I remember the interviews.
PAR: Oh, do you?
CS: Yeah. Because straight from Sele School, I went to Ware College to the careers department and they, I started an NVQ and that was what took me back to St. Andrews. It was one day release at Harlow College, four days, based at St. Andrews, and then I'd go to college during the school holidays and book like a week or two weeks off during the holidays, but the rest of the time I'd have to attend college.
PAR: You didn't half graft it.
CS: Yeah. Oh, gosh. Yeah, really not. Yeah, yeah.
[Material not transcribed]
PAR: I feel that, yeah. I can understand you saying that. So, what about your arrival in Longwood Road? Were you? How did you fit in with the neighbours...
CS: My mom had me at 14. And we spent the first year of our life in a bedsit in Buntingford.
PAR: Oh, what she a Buntingford person?
CS: She was a Hertford Heath person. Oh, yeah. from Hertford Heath. And then we went to Buntingford. And then when I was one and a half, we moved to 74 Longwood Road, and we stayed there until I was 15. So, until '93, what
PAR: What, so was the Buntingford let, you know, a private letting or was it a council place?
CS: No, it was a hostel, yeah, this council placement until the flat at Longwood Road came up.
PAR: How does, I mean, where, where did you how did you relate to the neighbourhood? Were you a cut above the others?
CS: No, far from it, I was right in there amongst them all. Enjoying the common...no, no, I was just saying it was wonderful. Yeah, particularly in your block, but it's very, it was very different then to what it is now. I mean, if I go down to the Ridgeway now, I think it looks a little bit like a Spanish resort. You know, the way the flats are, whereas before it was far more basic, just much bigger blocks with a ground level and a top level. And yeah, loads of community feeling everybody would kind of sit out on their balconies in the evenings, certain neighbours would join up children would play. You know, I think it was very comfortable for us all just to play out on the green it was like a triangle, triangle green, which had like a path going round...
PAR: Which part where you in?
CS: I was right down the bottom of Longwood Road second blo...block from the end, which is also very close to the woods. Bluebell woods, which ran by the back, and we could go there anytime on bikes and to play without adult supervision completely safe.
PAR: So, we've never I don't think we've talked to anyone who's lived in the Ridgeway, Longwood Road, you know, ever largely because the older people lived somewhere else, so it's quite important. And I've known since it was built but as a local Councillor. You only come in when there's trouble.
CS: Yeah, of course.
PAR: When there's babies on the balcony left out all day and neighbours ring up and...
CS: don't remember [mumbles] like that, don't ever remember and it still to this day when people talk about how [pause] bad the Ridgeway is.
PAR: It wasn't your perception.
CS: I can't, no, it wasn't. Honestly it wasn't
PAR: That is why it is important to, to say, to be able to say that.
CS: No, not it wasn't.
PAR: coming from the outside. I mean, you knew all the time and you kept saying as a Council, let's say that. But sometimes church knocking doors you were saying how many good families living on...
CS: Absolutely
PAR: [indistinct] but even so credit down in the town for TV rentals and things like that didn't get it certain shops up here on the estate were [indistinct] because of a few bad customers I think the Ridgeway parts of the Ridgeway were worse than, than Longwood Road.
CS: I think so because as, as, as you came through the Ridgeway we used to have what we call the homeless block. I don't know why it was called that. I don't know if that was a general thing, or if it was
PAR: It was a policy; it was a policy too...
CS: Oh right, ok, I didn't know at the time if we were calling it that for some reason, or..
[Material not transcribed]
CS: But then with your own compound.
PS: almost
PAR: Yes, that was like almost like a transit camp because a very bad policy and I was really opposed to it. When I suppose like a hostel but, but in a way yes. And it meant that anyone who was evicted for not paying their rent anywhere in East Herts, Bishops Stortford...
CS: Is that how it works?
PAR: They came there. I could go along some of those balconies now tell you, you know the names of my regulars and I hate to use it. I mean always to help not, you know, I wasn't the bailiff kick out, no, trying to ease them over next hump somehow
CS: I remember certain families being there for a time though. I had my friend Sayeed Tousey [?], and he came from where's Sayeed from, what country
PS: He's from Sri Lanka or something like that?
CS: No, he's not, he's from, [pause] I can't remember. But I don't know if he came from his original country to the homeless block or if he came from somewhere else to the homeless block, but I seem to remember him staying within the homeless block for quite a while. So, they were badly kept some of those blocks, weren't they? Oh, they were hideous. Yeah. Yeah, they were.
PAR: And then they got this person involved, upset, there was appointed to live on site and, and be a sort of rent collector.
CS: Yes. Yes. Yes.
PAR: That was a big step forward. But then, although he's quite important bloke in the housing now. He was pretty popular with me.
CS: No, no, I bet. There was also like a caretaker type person. And he had his own room type flat underneath one of the blocks within the Ridgeway. I always remember him.
PS: Are we still rolling do you reckon or are we not rolling at all?
CS: Yeah, it's still going.
PS: Also, the chap with the bike wasn't there, used to go across the green every single day with the long hair, the old chap with a grey hair and a big bike goes backward and forwards over the green every single day. If I was ever up there, I'd always see him. They used to call him Catweasle, I think.
CS: No, I don't remember him
PAR: Oh Catweasel?
CS: Catweasel! From down at Goldings?
PS: That's probably where he is from and he was going across Sele Farm across the Ridgeway probably going towards Goldings, wasn't he? Every day.
CS: Goldings is a fantastic place.
PAR: He's not called Bob, is he?
CS: You're thinking of the guy that cycles round now, aren't you? And he is, he lives at the back of Cherry Tree [Cherry Tree Green],
PS: Long grey hair at the time, and old hippie. Well, them sort of things, you used to remember them. Single people, living characters in Sele Farm. It was always the same people around in the same places. All the time, from the outsider's point of view, I used to just notice the right people
CS: Same thing going on....
PAR: That's good to get that heartening, you know community for kids.
CS: It was wonderful. I've still to now. I've still, my two bestest friends are the two girls that I went to primary school with at St. Andrews then went to Sele with and still now we all three of us grew up in the Ridgeway. All very, very different, all kind of chosen different ways of life. But still best friends and always will be.
PAR: So, is your Ma still there, then?
CS: My Ma, no, she lives up in Bengeo now. When they renovated, they actually knocked down the block of flats that were in and built houses there. So, she moved up to Revels Road. But she would move back any day. She would. Yeah, she lives in Revels Road, and she says she prefer to live in Sele Farm any day.
PAR: Oh, that's interesting because Bengeo generally is really sought after by, by Council well also Riversmead tenants.
CS: No no, she would go back to Sele Farm
PAR: That's, that’s really good news. Having said that, though, nevertheless there are the statistically the [indistinct] parenting levels of the 1990s and over the [indistinct]. Poor, aren't they, in some cases. People struggling to cope with their lives.
CS: Yeah. I think personally, I think that the lack of parental education that they had themselves, therefore they cannot produce what needs to be done. So, if you're not taught how to parent then how can you be expected to parent properly
PAR: Even in...
CS: Definitely, yeah
PAR: I mean, it's not everyone that [pause] necessarily needs parenting lessons but some, probably do more than others. So, you went then from St. Andrew's School over the way to
CS: Sele School. Mr. Masson was the headmaster
[Material not transcribed]
PAR: What about Mike Vaughan, was he there when you were there?
CS: Deputy?
PS: Serious.
CS: Very serious. Yes. But again, didn't really pay much attention to him. Wasn't ever the type of person [indistinct exchange between Peter and Paul]
PS: ...Deputies you were worried about, not the headmaster.
CS: That's true, yes, that's true
PAR: Old Vaughny worked at Broxbourne. [Indistinct] remember him coming into my office there and saying I don't know whether I am doing the right thing or not, yeah, I'm going to apply for this Sele. And I thought he probably was not doing the right thing because he was a very brainy mathematician and very strict with our boffy ones I couldn't see where…
CS: couldn't see it working well there
PAR: [indistinct] you know, he stayed a long time.
CS: He did. Yeah.
[Material not transcribed]
PAR: … and what about people like Clausie [?] was she down
CS: She certainly was. She used to quite frequently tell my friend my friends Joanne, Catherine and I that we were not allowed to hang around with a year five girls that we must go around with the girls in our own year group. But, um, Mrs. Norris, textiles teacher looked like Maggie Thatcher loved and had a love and hate relationship with her throughout school. Mr. Barlow...
PAR: I am trying to think of the christian name,
CS: I don't do christian names.
PAR: No, no, Dee, Dee.
CS: Was it? [indistinct]
PAR: She was probably not christened that, but that's what she liked to be called.
PS: You couldn't know their christian names when you were at school
CS: No, you don't, no. And you tried to find out and you tried to listen to conversations, but you never quite get them. Mr. Barlow Scottish PE teacher. Do you not remember him? Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. He was there when first I went to [stutters] to Sele. With Mrs. Coots, Mrs Riddle.
PAR: Yeah, she wasn't Riddle then was she, or was she?
CS: She was when I was there, yeah because her husband's...
PAR: Anne-Marie.
CS: No, her husband’s not Anne-Marie [laughter].
PAR: No, no...he was a Richard Hale rugby player. Her father-in-law is called Jim, Jimmy Riddle which [laughter]
PS: Son's Eric. She married Eric.
CS: That's right. Yeah. Mr. Brown he was my tutor. Yeah, not initially Mr. Harris, the geography teacher. Chap with a mustache. Lovely. Lovely man.
PAR: You call these blokes; you call them all lovely
CS: I saw that I don't actually remember being at school and thinking that the teachers were bad in any way.
PAR: Steve Heelings [?]. Did you get him at all?
CS: Yeah, he was my English teacher...
PAR: he was lovely...
CS: ...give me GCSE, He was, yeah, he was lovely. [laughter] He was, he retired at Sele, didn't he?
PAR: He, yes, just
[Material not transcribed]
PAR: I think I have had enough. Um, anything else on the Estate community wise with we'll think after you're sitting on the pictures there um, come out reasonably well. The only thing I would ask that is look at them in the right order. [indistinct conversation] I was creeping around the edge when you were, when the real photographer was doing the main things.
PS: Yeah, seems to me that we haven't seen the real photographers’ photos yet but everyone’s takes excellent pictures, from all different angles. This is what we wanted, wasn't it, some pictures of the church
PAR: Mine, mine that was quite a few blurs there. But I've put them in just did it quickly now thought rather than leave them out you could just say [Claire exclaims drowning Peter out]
PS: Grandad. [Peter muttering in background] He looks good in a suit, doesn't he?
CS: Didn't know he was the lollipop man. oh, wow. That's my stepdad’s mum.
PAR: He didn't bring his lollipop in the house. Yep, she's moving away. Isn't she?
CS: She's moving to Spain, yeah.
PS: Well, you did your groundwork there, while you were there
PAR: Well, I used to run into her. Where was it I used to run into her? Did she go to [indistinct] school for a bit?
CS: I don't know they live in Watton. Always lived in Watton.
PAR: Can't remember. She always gives me a kiss.
CS: Does she? Lucky man.
PS: [indistinct] everywhere.
PAR: He was snooping like the others. I got more snoopers [laughter] the official photographer won't have got the snoopers.
PS: Everywhere I go in Hertford, I'd see him whenever I'm in Hertford
PAR: I taught him. His name is Jeff
PS: He's a local, is he?
PAR: No, he was a Hoddesdon boy [indistinct]
PS: He only appears about five years ago.
PAR: Yeah, caretaker at Sovereign House. Quite a naughty boy in school
CS: was he?
PAR: Very. Good. I like the naughty ones best.
CS: Mr. Clark.
PS: Oh, that's Mr Clark
PAR: Oh, you wonderful.
CS: Mr. Clark is a chap who, ah, working up at the greengrocers. He used to come in every single week. Ex-navy man, with many stories to tell because of my travelling, I've been to Africa and to Nepal. He always had such a keen interest and wanted to chat about it and since I've stopped working, I actually still go to see him every other Saturday morning to have tea and further chats. Really, really nice guy. [indistinct] It is, yeah, just for an hour or so, then I take him up to the shop and carry his shopping home with him. Yeah, he's lovely man. [Material not transcribed, and then they continue talking about the photographs].