'Squatter's Write' - Part 16 of Dick Sturch's memories of growing up in 'The Camp' at Millwey Rise

By Dick Sturch

Im sure our favourite visitor was Sam Enticott, the 'fruit and veg man' who also had a shop in South Street. We all thought Sam was a lovely gentleman – "always so cheerful and kind," as my mother would say.

Although his van never carried the selection of fruit and vegetables we have today, Sam would always provide us with a little treat, an orange, occasionally a peach or best of all some grapes.

After we had used up all Dad's homegrown vegtables, Mum's order from Sam would usually include a cabbage or cauliflower or even worse still, brussel sprouts. All of these were precursors to the Sunday dinner's ritual of "those greens are good for you. You will sit there until you eat all of them." Then the dreadful gagging in your throat when you attempted to do this, 'Ugh'. My Mum wasn't the world`s greatest cook, that's probably why I was one of the very few children who actually enjoyed school dinners - tapioca pudding and all!

While on the subject of school, another regular visitor I recall is the school absentee officer who would drive around The Camp trying to locate habitual truants or their parents. Once or twice I had near squeaks when, without anyone knowing, I skipped school for the day. Athough looking back, I don't think my odd days off worried the school or the officer too much as nobody bothered to contact my parents who were totally unaware I was not at school.

The 'Tallyman' - not welcome in our house

One person who was never allowed to set foot on our doorstep was the 'Tallyman'. My father was certainly a strong advocate of the idiom 'If you can't pay for it, you can't afford it.' Debt was an anathema to him. The gentleman I remember toured The Camp selling clothing 'on tick'. from the samples he carried in the back of his van.

An order was placed for the size required, a deposit paid and it was delivered the following week. From then on he'd call weekly to collect the instalments until the account was paid. I am sure he was a godsend to some families as it was the only way they were ever able to afford the clothes they needed even though they knew it was costing them more.

At this time mail order catalogues were very popular. I can remember some of the major titles in the 1950s being Freemans, Kays, Marshall Ward and Littlewoods. They were so inviting, displaying in colour their wide range of household products, clothing and a large section filled with all the latest toys. Payment for your order would be phased over an agreed period of time at so much a week. I would spend ages going through the different pages making a list of the toys I wanted but knowing full well the likelihood of ever having them was negligible. This did not stop me from pestering my mother for a particular toy, especially at Christmas.

Unfortunately, she did give in to my pleas for the Mettoy typewriter I wrote about in an earlier chapter. Unbeknown to my father, she ordered it through a neighbour who was an agent for the particular catalogue it was featured in. My mother religiously paid the weekly instalments to this person keeping it from Dad's knowledge.

A few weeks later an official letter turned up informing her she would be taken to court if she failed to pay for the goods she had ordered and received from the catalogue. When Dad saw this, he was furious. The neighbour concerned had been taking Mum's money (and others) but not sending it onto the mail order company.

Dad went to see the person concerned and confronted her. Her husband knew nothing of what she had been doing and there was no way he could afford to repay the money she had taken. I don't know how the saga finished, or how it was settled, other than from that time on mail order catalogues were forever banned from our home.

Another visitor I remember turning up on Sunday mornings was the 'Corona man'. He sold the bottles straight from crates carried on the back of a small, red lorry with the 'Corona' logo plastered across it. He always made sure he pulled up close to the makeshift football pitch where the local boys of all ages played every Sunday. He knew there would be a ready sale to those with 'threepence' in their pocket.(1.5p a bottle and there was money back for the return of the empty).

This didn't apply to many of the younger lads, including me, who looked on enviously as the 'pop bottles' were being emptied. Occasionally one of the older lads would take pity on my pitiful looks and offer me a swig from his bottle but always ready to grab it back again if he thought I was drinking too much.

Sunday paper rounds

My father and myself were visitors to The Camp when we delivered the Sunday newspapers. Prior to this he had two Sunday paper rounds which I sometimes helped him with. First he would deliver papers to houses on the western side of Axminster and then use his car to deliver them to outlying houses and farms around Membury.

When my father decided he'd had enough of spending all day Sunday delivering newspapers, he gave these rounds up in favour of deliveries to The Camp only. After a while he also gave this round up and I took it over.

Every Sunday morning at 7am I pushed my trolley to Don North's house, next door to what was then the Phoenix pub in Castle Street. Here I had to sort out the various newspapers to correspond with my customers orders plus a few extra of the more popular titles. I then pushed my trolley, full of newspapers, back to The Camp and delivered them door-to-door.

Two hours later I'd return to Don North's house with any remaining unsold newspapers and the money received for those I had sold. I then had to count and bag up the money. The majority would have been in small change, half-penny, penny, threepenny, sixpenny and shilling pieces, not a quick task. All this for the princely sum of ten shillings (50p) which in those days was certainly worth having for a schoolboy. The average adult wage then was around £10 a week and pensioners received £2 a week.

My Christmas deliveries were the highlight of the year when I received tips and 'tipples' from my appreciative customers plus the commission I earned from my sales of the popular Christmas Annuals, Dandy, Beano, Eagle, Rupert Bear etc. I would walk all the way back to Don North's in Axminster in a very 'merry' state with the knowledge that I would return to The Camp a lot richer than when I had left it earlier that morning.

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