Pranks Admitted to

Derek "Sam" Cherry

My family lived in Rock House, Stoke Road, in the 40s.  That's the first Grafton-style cottage, on the right, going up the road.  Whitty Whitlock lived two doors further up in an almost identical house.  Our back gardens all ran back to a large garden owned by the Freestons in those days.  Well, Mrs. Whitlock was always quite concerned that Whitty drank too much, which he did, and she did what she could to reign the drinking in.  Whitty was cunning about this and gave me, only a school lad, some money and a bag and sent me down to the Sun, Moon and Stars to get four bottles of Guinness, hiding them in the bag.  I had to go to the bottom of my garden, through to Freestons along the back and then reach through a hole in Whitty's shed at the bottom of his garden.  I was to put the bottles through the hole and shove them under a large pile of sawdust banked against the back wall of the shed.  Whitty could enjoy his work making coffins and doing other carpentry jobs as long as I could get bottles for him often enough.  Once, when I asked whose coffin was this I was varnishing, he said it was for Mrs. Smith.  I went home and told my Dad what I was up to but he was not impressed because Mrs. Smith was alive.  Next day I mentioned this to Whitty and he said, "you don't work very fast with that varnishing so she will be dead by the time it is done" - I never asked a simple question again because Whitty was always pulling legs.

Over the years Whitty must have lost many buckets down his garden well.  He could make anything out of a piece of wood and he fashioned a long piece of wood with an openable hook on the end.  He gave me this tool and wound me down the well, aged seven, sat on a flat seat where a bucket would be.  I could see under the water and I used the hook get the handles and rescue his buckets.  I got more than just his buckets though; a total of fourteen.  When I told my Dad that's what I had been doing he was furious with Whitty.

Originator - lost in the mist!

Oh! I am forgetting to tell why Manfred remembered the large 'Thermometer'... He and the other boys would watch the falling temperatures on winter nights and when it looked as though 'Freezing' was imminent, they would collect buckets of water, and in the dark would pour it through the railings of the school yard, or down the path in the Courteenhall Road so they would have super slides in readiness for the pre-school hour the next morning ... I have since learned that a certain caretaker scattered ashes from the school stoke hole and spoiled the boys fun.

He also well remembered two canings which he received from the Hand of Mr. Cole ... one such punishment was for putting carbide in some of the inkwells which he said he had bought from 'Freeston's Cycle Shop' in the Stoke Road, alas that building no longer exists.         [calcium carbide onto which was dripped water was the basis for road vehicle lighting prior to the availability of dry batteries or the cycle-dynamo - also see Millner]