When I reached class one, we got a relief teacher called Mrs. Coad, who had a bright red face, a bush of wild grey hair, and a personality to match. She radiated enthusiasm and energy and seemed to take us for everything ­ P.E., R.I., English, Reading ­ in fact I think she could have taken the school on single-handed. She would often read to us gruesome accounts from the Bible, and stories such as Blue Beard, and take great delight in giving us the gory details for the class to savour. She was an excellent teacher, and learning was a great pleasure with her.

I had a few run-ins with Mr. Ager. Being dyslexic I was often accused of being a lazy dreamer, and I would often look out of the window for inspiration. Ager would then launch his New English Bible at me from his desk which would send me crashing back to earth with a bang. "Are you with us Mr. Crooks?" he would say. "No, we're with the Woolwich," the rest of the class would chant. (This was a catch-phrase in the 70s.)

There were a few children from the school that attended Sunday school, which was run by Mrs. Mattin and Mrs. Hunt. I remember Sally, Debby and Vicki Hunt, Julie, Sharon and Helen Clark, Fred and Ruby Tron, Claire Eley, Christine May, Nick Ainsworth, William Mattin and my brother Jason, besides myself. We used to sit on the pews near the Soames' tomb and listen to Gladys Mattin teach us the accounts of the Bible. She was very enthusiastic and if you got her questions right she would often do a little dance of joy.

We did a performance of the Nativity in 1978, when I played the part of Joseph and Christine May played Mary. I remember this one more than any other as a few days earlier I had given my brother Jason a black eye, which then forced him to play the part of the black king. There seemed to be more of a community spirit in those days, as the church was packed out with people from the village.

In the 1970s it was the in thing to be in a gang. So, my friends and I had a type of gang which tore around the village getting up to all manner of mischief for seven years. The gang consisted of William Mattin, Nick Ainsworth, Ian Bush, my brother Jason and myself, and towards the later years we also had Simon Eley. After the fire in the chimney at William's house (which was Corner Cottage) he was inspired to build a chimney in a shed by the old yew tree near the top of his garden, and this became our base from which we launched out to terrorise the village on our bikes.