Good
fare We were lucky in
them days, that was pre-myxomatosis days, and we used to go rabbiting in
the harvest fields, with a stick. You couldn’t afford luxury meals, the
rabbits were quite good fare for all the local folk. I went with a stick,
a walking stick or a stick out the hedge, didn’t shoot them! They cut
the corn and you used to charge along behind the binder. Rabbiting One of the greatest
things was rabbiting in the summer time. I was always out rabbiting at all
the various farms. Go out on a bicycle, rabbiting, bring home several
rabbits, sell them for about 6d. each, collect the skins afterwards and
cycle to the Hythe, there was a factory called ‘Wambax’ (?) there and
we used to sell the skins to the old boy there for tuppence each. Always
made a few shillings, you know! Catching a
rabbit Before the War,
when I was a youngster, we used to play over the marshes, and in fact when
I was four and a half, my mate and I – Ernie Hatch – we caught a
rabbit between us. Duly recorded. He tripped me up, and I fell on it! But
I managed to hold on to it and we both sort of killed it between us –
nearly! I’ve got a photograph of it, actually, so that is bona fide! Follow the
binder We were lucky in
them days, that was pre-myxomatosis days and we used to go rabbiting in
the harvest fields, with a stick. You couldn’t afford luxury meals, the
rabbits were quite good fare for all the local folk. I went with a walking
stick or a stick out the hedge - didn’t shoot them! They cut the corn
and that and you used to charge along behind the binder and first of all,
I can remember horse and cart, and I can remember Spion Kop when that was
ploughed up and had a corn field. That was only done about two years, and
that was Claude Watsham farmed that. Rabbit pie I liked my
mother’s rabbit pie and all things like that! Steak and kidney puddings
and suet duffs and that, but you won’t get a kid to eat a suet duff
nowadays! They won’t eat a rabbit pie, nowadays. We used to snare the
rabbits. My father used to have to do that to get a few shillings. When he
worked on the farm, wherever he worked, he always had the ferrets and he
had the rabbits. He used to go snaring when that was in the time for the
rabbits, he used to snare and ferreting and he used to sell the rabbits. I
used to walk from Alresford when I was no more than seven years old, go
down the Anchorage on Anchor Hill with a great big string of rabbits on a
pole on my shoulder, from right from Alresford Ford, along the wall to old
Annie Oakley, on the corner where old Bill Sparrow used to live on Anchor
Hill, and Annie Oakley kept that, and bring these rabbits there to her.
Sixpence the rabbits used to be each, they did. We ran for miles There was no Youth
Clubs or anything like that. I was in the Cubs at some time and there was
the Scouts. Summer time was great here. We ran for miles and miles, for
walks. And, of course, harvest time, when we turned into terrible little
people and chasing rabbits and killing them with a stick - which I don’t
think I could do now. We used to go to the harvest when they cut the corn
and it used to go round, ‘Oh, Mr Watcham’s cutting his field
tomorrow,’ and we’d all go up there, and then ‘Mr Bowes is going to
do his next week,’ and you’d chase over there on your bikes and that
was a great activity. Where I was living up the top of the village when I
was 12, 13, 14, and the big estate now, called Broomfield Estate, was
covered in broom - hence the name – and that was our cowboy and Indian
country over there! Chasing rabbits At harvest time
everybody used to go rabbiting. You had to chase them with a stick and hit
them with a stick. Obviously it was in the days when you had a binder so
the big binder used to go round and you knew there was not going to be
anything when they started off, but as the patch got smaller and smaller
and smaller the rabbits started to run, and you used to try and hit these
rabbits as they came out of the corn, out of the standing crop. And
sometimes you were allowed to take all of them, if you caught two or
three, you could take them all. Sometimes you’d only be allowed to take
one. Although you might kill more than one you could only take one, but
then the binder driver would get one and the farmer, and you would get
one. But, no, there was no guns, nobody had guns. But everybody say,
‘Oh, they’re cutting at Gooch’s today,’ or ‘That looks as though
that’s going to be cut tomorrow,’ and you’d see it or somebody would
see it and they’d say, ‘Yes, they’re cutting at Tye Farm,’ or
whatever the farm was, and whole gangs of boys would turn up. This would
only be after school or in the evenings. They had Double Summer Time so it
was daylight until 10 o’clock, so you’d go off on your bike after
school. I don’t ever remember missing school for it.
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