Extra Time – for the last time – at Britten Court

When Miriam went into labour, her husband drove her to Ditchingham Hospital, handed her into the care of the nuns – and then drove on to Carrow Road in time to watch the Norwich City vs Manchester Utd match.

Miriam was glad he went, she wouldn’t have wanted him to miss it, but she was relieved when an elderly nun approached her bed later and reassured her, saying – “It’s all right, Norwich won, 2-1.”

David recounted the mad dash – on bicycles – on a Saturday, leaving the printing works in Bungay and pedalling like fury all the way to Norwich, where he and his pals would pay thruppence to leave their bikes in someone’s front garden.

Meanwhile, Jeff talked wistfully about watching Sir Stanley Matthew play – and how the lads would try and run up and down the wing with him, but could never keep up.

And all the time the fans cheered and roared for their teams, and that took us to the massed voices of a capacity crowd at Cardiff Arms Park singing Land of our Fathers, which was proper ‘hwyl’, to a busy market day in Gt Yarmouth being brought to a standstill by a lone busker playing Killing the Blues.

Living at the opposite end of White Hart Lane, Marie really didn’t hear much from the Tottenham Hotspur supporters, but she had a vivid memory of hearing ‘Moaning Minnie’ (the air-raid siren) for the first time; 3rd September 1939.

Later, after she and her family had moved out of London, she also heard the regular testing of the alarms at Broadmoor Hospital. As she said, you could set your watch by it.

“Every Monday morning at 10am, they’d test the alarm system. Roll call wasn’t until 3pm, so if an inmate got their timing right, they would have a five-hour lead before anyone knew they’d gone.”

And whilst we nattered about ways of leaving, we were also hearing about ways of arriving – as in ‘The cow when she enters the stable says moo’, which is a German saying, used to remind children to say hello to the family, when entering the house.

It was such a lovely session; thank you to everyone at Britten Court for making us feel so welcome.