Re: Hop Picking
Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2017 10:44 pm
HOPPING, like someone has said unless you went it’s hard to understand. I was born in 42 and went hopping until 60/61, even packed up jobs to go. The best years being when I was a youngster. Getting up early pushing your old prams to walk to London bridge from the Old Kent Road, then getting on the packed train listening to the clickety click of the wheels on the rails, sticking your head out the window smelling the smoke, soot in your eyes great memories. We went to many farms, Goudhurst, Horsemonden, Cranbrook, Marden, East Peckham, and finally Hunton, but the people were the same skint, work hard, have a drink and laugh. The first thing when you found your hut, find the pile of faggots (wood), light the fire make a cup of tea, fill your Palais’s with straw then off to explore and find the friends you haven’t seen for a year. Other memories I have are when we went hopping by lorry, the lorry as far as I can remember belonging to Fox's fruit and veg shop in Tower Bridge Road I think we stopped at every pub on the way, we would get just past Blackheath and to us that was the country, what I do remember about the drive was all the adults seemed to be worried about going down Seven Mile Lane doe's anyone else remember that or did I dream that.? Another memory, is the smell of lime sulphur which came out the bottom of the Oast, sitting round the fire singing songs, especially when you go down hopping, but one thing that as stuck in my mind all these years was a little gipsy girl sitting on a bin singing Freight Train Freight Train by Nancy Whisky (1957, does that stir a memory if I hear that song.
Remember putting a penny on the Railway Lines to get flattened by the train but the memory that still lingers after all these years was lying in bed on that straw mattress and listening to the steam train blowing its whistle from miles away and getting closer and closer. Even to this day sixty odd years on we are lucky enough to have a steam train run quite often pass our house and when that whistle goes. Bang! I am back in Kent, listening to the whistle watching the smoke until it disappears.
Little did I know then, that when we got married (1968) we would move to Wateringbury in that same area of so many childhood memories. Though we are across the other side of the world now (NZ) I only have to look at the picture (above) of our hopping hut and family down hopping in Hunton and though the hut is no longer there my MUM, sisters KATH & JANET are, as this is where I scattered their ashes. RIP family you are surly missed, Love Ray. X
Remember putting a penny on the Railway Lines to get flattened by the train but the memory that still lingers after all these years was lying in bed on that straw mattress and listening to the steam train blowing its whistle from miles away and getting closer and closer. Even to this day sixty odd years on we are lucky enough to have a steam train run quite often pass our house and when that whistle goes. Bang! I am back in Kent, listening to the whistle watching the smoke until it disappears.
Little did I know then, that when we got married (1968) we would move to Wateringbury in that same area of so many childhood memories. Though we are across the other side of the world now (NZ) I only have to look at the picture (above) of our hopping hut and family down hopping in Hunton and though the hut is no longer there my MUM, sisters KATH & JANET are, as this is where I scattered their ashes. RIP family you are surly missed, Love Ray. X