[Page 329]
162
the closed bar as I rode up, then there was a sudden silence and no sign of life; even the publican promptly disappeared after showing me to a room and giving me a sour look. I felt very perplexed until an hour later some thirsty cricketers came up from playing a match on a nearby flat. One of them knew me well "Come and have a drink Bob!", he shouted enthusiastically. Whereupon the publican suddenly reappeared with upraised hands and a prohibiting expression on his face as he looked at me. My friend burst out laughing, "Gee Bob they thought you were a copper". Within a few minutes the bar was crowded again and drinking and dicing was in full swing. Some of the lawbreakers had been hiding down in the creek or behind bushes, and a few didn't stop until they were home. Earlier, one proud farmer had been boasting that he wasn't frightened of the police, but when I arrived he had run faster and farther than any of the others: he took a great dislike to me ever afterwards.
There was dancing in the recreation hall on some Saturday nights, the music being provided by a big fat woman at the piano and her tall son playing a violin at waist level, swaying his shoulders, opening and closing his mouth and beating time with his foot. The dances were mostly hill-billy jigs, lancers and mazurkas, but some of them reached so far back into the past that my Mother could just faintly remember them from her youth.
It was impossible for a visitor to persuade a girl or a woman to dance with him, as they were all committed to dancing with only the one partner all night, even if they had to sit-out a few dances while their swains were visiting the pub. At supper time everyone sat around the perimeter of the hall and took a large cup from a big wickerwork clothes basket carried by two hefty women: this performance was repeated to provide a plate, after which enormous enamelled teapots and big trays of thick sandwiches were taken around.
Having acquired a holding under Returned Soldiers Settlement Act, I became eligible for Governmental financial assistance to the extent of a few hundred pounds at very low interest rates, and this plus some of my war-service deferred pay and my war