Snapshot memories...

St Mary's Church.

I was christened here as were all of my family on my Mother's side - just about all of the family were married here to. Not me though, I moved away long before I made that first mistake. I remember going to lots of weddings when I was growing up and even more receptions in the Church Hall on North Street. Sausage rolls, barrels of beer, egg and cress sandwiches - my Auntie Lena's multi-coloured cocktail cigarettes. I was at the weddings of my Mum and Dad, Auntie Muriel and Uncle Bob, all of my cousins - Lynsey, Judith, Alison, Leslie, Susan, Mary, Linda' - maybe even Gina. Not Ian though, Ian never married, and he died last year of AIDS.

My Grandfather is buried here. As a child I can remember going to the grave with my Mum and Gran and watching whilst they cut the grass with a pair of shears. His grave was in the far corner by a Yew tree, unmarked. It might even be under the tree you can see in the centre-ish of the picture. My Gran is buried here to, on the left not far from the path to the church. It rained the day she was buried. Aterwards I went off on my own, down to the river, to cry.

My school held services here a couple of times a year. A carol concert at Christmas and a service of thanksgiving for Lord William on founder's day. I was in the school choir, a soprano. On founder's day the teachers all wore there best gowns and mortar boards, walking single-file the full length of the aisle to sit in the dark oak pews in front of the alter. One would carry the banner with the school coat of arms, a shield supported by two greyhounds, and the motto 'Sic Itur Ad Astra', which I think means 'Thus do we reach the stars'.

Our school hymn was also in Latin. It started something like 'Bene di decat omnium salutis anchora' - I have no idea what that meant. I gave up on Latin after my first year - I found it just a little too dusty and my teacher's (Aw Henry) dry delivery didn't enthuse me with the language.

Founded in 1575 by Lord William of Thame. The original school is to be found down by St. Mary's Church. It's now offices - four hundred year old offices. That's the old school in the picture .

The original mellow sandstone school was replaced in 1879 with this large, red brick, nursing home, of a building ( in black and white for period atmosphere). This is my Lord Bill's, and that isn't just a lawn in front of my old school... it's the Head's very own croquet lawn.
When I was at the school there was a mixture of boarders and scholars.

I was a lowly, much looked down on, plebe of a scholar.

Today I count myself very lucky to have gone there at all, but at the time I felt out of my depth and class. I guess I was. David Tomlinson's sons were in my form. It wasn't easy being at school with the children of Mary Poppin's employer. He used to visit - he never flew like he did in the film though.

If you walk up from the Old School towards the high street you pass the house where Dr Beer used to live.

I can’t say that I enjoyed visiting Doctor Beer, but then I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy it either. He was a funny little bald-headed man with a walking stick and a limp. He'd fought at Flanders, and looked a little like a wizened old elf. He was a great doctor though - a real old time, any time, 'this won't hurt much', doctor.

Doctor Beer was our family doctor. This meant that when one of us was ill, (two sisters, no brothers), my Mother would threaten us with a ‘visit to Doctor Beer’. Not much of a threat really, but the slightly gloomy surgery in his half-timbered house at Church End held an odd fascination for me... and it wasn't just the dish of orange and lemon boiled sweets on the dark oak side-table in the waiting room.

I remember the long walk to his surgery from our small house at the other end of town. It always seemed to be autumn and dark, and there was usually the smell of bonfires and fireworks in the air. Perhaps I only ever got sick when summer was over and the air had turned to damp, or perhaps it’s simply one of those odd tricks that memory plays.

Either way I liked the surgery with its dark oak panelling - and in an odd, slightly terrified way, I liked Doctor Beer.

His surgery was lit with a single standard lamp and heated by two bar electric fire that was set into a huge brick fireplace. The fireplace ran along almost the entire length of one wall, the floors were massive black oak planks of varying widths, and on the fireplace mantle Chaucer and his pilgrims made their slow, holy way to Canterbury.

I loved those flat wooden figures. There must have been twenty of them, friars and millers on donkey and horseback, and the odd pardoneer or two. In the lead Chaucer himself sporting a huge grey floppy hat, a dull green coat, riding along on a dapple-grey mare. Each figure had been keyhole-sawn from a piece of softwood and painted by hand. The workmanship was exquisite and they were obviously scores of years old.

I often thought about stealing one of the figures, probably Chaucer - but I never did.





This is a view towards the Lower High Street.

In September a huge fair comes to Thame and runs the full length of both the Upper and Lower High Street. I have very happy memories of the fair and I'll probably tell you more about them at some other time.

That half timbered building in the centre used to be a sweet shop owned by Mr Bingham. On Sunday afternoons my parents would take me in my pushchair down to Bingham's and I was allowed a thru'penny bag of sweets. The sweets were kept in large square glass jars on shelves behind the counter - midget gems, liquorice, wine gums, humbugs, twists, lemon drops, acid drops, pear drops - all manner of sweets. Mr Bingham wore round pince-nez and a striped blue and claret blazer.

I honestly do remember this despite being well under four. I can see Mr Bingham now handing me my white paper bag of acid drops and smiling down at me.
"These are for you little man."

That square, Edwardian, cream house across the road from Bingham's is where Henry Blythe - my ponderous, boring, Latin teacher - used to live. He still lives there but he doesn't really know about it - he's in the last stages of Alzheimer's.

The quaint yellow building on the far right is The Rising Sun pub - where 'Shakey' was landlord.

This is the Town Hall in the centre of the town. It was built to commemorate Queen Victoria's golden jubilee. Some people think it is an ugly building but I love it. I saw the film Genevieve for the fist time, upstairs at the town hall projected onto a large sheet by an old noisy reel-to-reel cine projector. On Saturday nights the local labour party would hold 'bingo' in the same room - sometimes my dad was 'caller'. Henry 'Latin' Blythe was chairman of the local Labour Party and turned along to support the Bingo - although I don't think he had a clue as to what it was all about.

"Quiet please ladies and eyes (pronounced eyas) down for a full house...First out... Two fat ladies, eighty eight... On its own, number three... Kelly's eye, number one... Legs eleven (everyone would wolf-whistle)... Key of the door, twenty-one... four oh, blind forty... Wilson's den, number ten... Sweet sixteen (more wolf-whistles)... and so on until... HOUSE!'
As you can tell, political correctness hadn't been invented back then (thank God).

One bingo night I won a huge basket of fruit and my Aunty Lucy won the nights 'star prize' - an electric toaster, she was made-up with it. An electric toaster! Such simple pleasures in such simple times.

At sixteen I used to stand at the bus stop by the town hall waiting for my girlfriend's school bus to come in from Holton Park Girls Grammar School at Wheatley. But that's another story. I'll be going to Thame again in the future.

Maybe you'd like to come along?