A/N: This is a true story of my younger years in England during and after WW2. London Colney in the county of Hertfordshire is now a suburban township feeding commuters into workplaces in London and nearby towns. Before the arrival of motorways ( freeways) it largely served the needs of the commercial traffic between London and the eastern midland counties.
The Old Farm Café
I suppose it was a desire to commune with my youth that took me back to The Farm Café in my twentieth year, on a rather grey, overcast day in June 1960.
The weather offered a perfect match for my increasing sense of disappointment at the changes I found to this once vibrant and exciting venue – a mere shadow of its pulsating past.
The Farm Café had changed, and as I sipped strong, dark 'builder's' tea from a cracked pint mug I accepted the undeniable fact that the Farm Café, a source of endless excitement, entertainment and life experiences of my youth was no more.
Gone were the gatherings of noisy lorry (truck) drivers reeking of diesel oil mixed with the taints of Capstan Full Strength cigarettes or St. Bruno pipe tobacco.
The vehicle park that each night filled to capacity, harbouring the long distance commercial traffic of the pre and post war years, lay forlorn and largely empty. On the day of my visit, playing host only to a rusting Austin pick-up overloaded with scrap metal, a horsebox and, parked near the front door of the café, a neat Morris Traveller.
In my youthful days of the late 1940's, only the well-to-do owned private cars and were never to be seen parked outside the Farm Café; known locally as a rough haunt. More ordinary people were able to buy cars in the 1960's, but seeing the little Morris parked by the front door still came as more of a shock to me than a surprise.
"Where had the lorries gone?"
My youthful gang of street-Arabs would play our games among the parked mechanical monsters; sometimes teasing their drivers and being chased by them, and at other times running their errands in return for a few pence of extra pocket money. Those drivers were tough, no-nonsense men, they had to be since they spent long unregulated hours in their cabs, driving vehicles without the benefit of power steering or air brakes, lorries whose crash gear boxes required a double-declutching routine to change gear with every shift.
In my mind's eye, I saw again the names painted on the doors of the vehicles – British Road Services, Pickford's, Hayes Heavy Haulage, Rand, Fisher-Renwick, Bishops Move.
With a sigh and a shake of my head I answered my own question.
"They've gone to the new motorways (freeways)."
The first of the new three-lane, dual carriageway super highways had opened to traffic the year before. The new M1 now carried the long-distance haulage from London to the midland shires; the drivers stopping for refuelling and refreshments at a large, service station and cafeteria purpose built at Watford Gap.
In the days before motorways, long distance travel radiated out from London into the country beyond on six, single carriageway trunk roads identified by numbers A1 to A6. Only the A1 bore a name – The Great North Road.
At that time, the village of London Colney consisted of a mile long strip of development, eighteen miles north of Marble Arch and straddling the A6 trunk road to Leicester and the Midlands. All traffic bound for the eastern midlands passed through London Colney, and the village supported the traffic with no fewer than four transport cafés: of which The Farm Café became the most popular with drivers.
Once a large house, the rectangular building sat in the centre of a two-acre site, providing standing for upwards of twenty vehicles. Each one would park against the boundaries of the parking area with its cab facing towards the four sides of the café.
The unlighted area behind the building abutted the local recreation ground and no fence or barrier marked the border. It was here, during the days of shortages and rationing immediately after the war, in the murky gloom of night, that the black market flourished. Money or services changed hands, causing items to 'fall off a lorry.'
Where there is loose money, one usually finds base entertainment on offer and it was provided by two heavily painted, raucously voiced women of indeterminate age, both of whom lived to the south of the village on Bell Lane.
The drivers, the women and the black marketeering added to the mystery and vibrancy in the atmosphere surrounding the café.
For a youngster in the days before television, the Farm Café provided an exciting platform from which to observe life in the raw, and it drew us there as the lurid lights of Blackpool or Las Vegas might draw seekers of excitement and entertainment.
"And what of Gino, what became of him?"
Italian Gino came to London Colney as a prisoner of war and was put to work in the gravel pits alongside the River Colne to the southwest of the village. The single guard allowed our gang to parley and trade with the dozen or so POW's who worked the 'gravel-basher' that washed the freshly dug ballast from the pits. They were mostly an affable bunch of souls and not once did we feel threatened by them.
Let me explain. Our street was short of 'dads' until well after the war ended when they came home from military service. Of the thirty houses in our street, all but two housed young families. I recall only two fathers and two grandfathers present during the war years, and they made up the street's total adult manhood .
Most of our 'mums' had jobs in factories during the working week, leaving us children a lot of time on our hands without adult supervision out of school. But we were supervised nevertheless, and looked after by the older children in our 'gang'. Counting the girls, there were more than dozen of us in the Aubrey Avenue gang ranging in ages from thirteen to five.
The two eldest boys governed the gang, and when it was not engaged on 'sensitive' adventures such as scrumping apples, knock down ginger or other pursuits likely to result in being chased, the youngest of us were allowed to come out with the gang – providing we could keep up. The gang leaders –sort of– became our temporary dads.
The Italians at the 'gravel-basher' appreciated our interest in them, several of whom encouraged our visits and appeared to enjoy our company. They were also keen and able to repair our shoes or make simple toys for us. Goodness alone knows from where they obtained the material to repair leather footwear. Looking back, I suppose we might have reminded them of their own families in war ravaged Italy.
The 'gravel-basher' with its Italian workers became another of our regular haunts, and especially so if something needed a man's hand to effect an uncomplicated repair to a shoe, toy or a household item.
The Italians did not do this work entirely for nothing, they hoped for some form of payment in kind, and the item they wanted most of all was cigarettes. The gang set out to seek a source of cigarettes to feed to the Italians and Uncle Sam provided it.
The Mile House public house stands alongside the A6, two miles to the north of the village, and is located among a number of large, detached houses. American Air Force personnel arrived to occupy one of them late in the war and it became one of the venues visited by our gang.
Our chants of 'Give us some gum Chum' amused the Americans and they often gave us sticks of their chewing gum – so different from the little white capsules of Wrigley's spearmint we were used to. They were also heavy smokers of cigarettes and our chant request changed as a consequence to 'Give us a smoke, bloke.'
Our antics further amused the Americans and after daring one of the boys to take a smoke, Ray stepped forward to accept the challenge.
"You have to smoke it here."
A barrel-chested airman with brilliant white teeth and upside down sergeant's stripes on his arm flicked a Camel from a pack and handed it to Ray Hardy, the oldest of our leaders. He lit the cigarette and stood back to watch Ray choke and turn green on its smoke. The watching airmen further enhanced their amusement with calls for Ray to 'Draw deeply', 'Suck it don't kiss it.'
Ray Hardy was a consummate actor for his age and could deliver the maximum amount of entertainment for them on each occasion we visited.
After the show, the Americans reacted generously to requests for extra cigarettes, ostensibly for bedridden grand parents or other family members we invented who were ostensibly suffering from various debilitating disorders. It was an unusual day for the gang to come away from what we called 'The Yankee Billets' with fewer than ten cigarettes: on one notable occasion Ray came away with a full pack of Chesterfield.
I beg your pardon to digress from the story for a moment to repeat one of the jokes the American airmen told us at the time. The back of a Camel cigarette pack of the day depicted a desert scene.
"How many song titles can you see on that pack," the American asked. We clustered around and offered up the various titles of songs we knew and could recognise on the packet.
'The Desert Song'
'The 'Camels' are Coming'
'Pyramids on the Nile'
Lucky became our name for the burly sergeant, it wasn't his real name, but the name we called him among ourselves after another favourite American of ours; Hopalong Cassidy's sidekick from Saturday morning pictures.
Each time we gave him a title he'd agree and say, "Yup, but it ain't the one I'm thinking of."
And we would have to continue guessing. He had to go about his duties eventually and brought the game to a close by asking, "Do you give up?"
To do so would mean we would owe him a forfeit, but in the end we had to give in.
"What is it then?"
"Danny Boy," Lucky answered with a triumphant laugh that poured scorn on our howls of protest.
"No way is Danny Boy there," we argued.
"Oh yes he is, you jist ain't lookin' hard enough for him," he replied, wagging a teasing finger at us.
"Where is he then?" I think it was ten-year old Eileen Humbles who stamped her foot and asked the question binding us to forfeit.
"Why he's right there, sat behind the big Pyramid, having a cr*p."
It was the first time we had heard that particular four-letter word used to express the act of defecation, and it thereafter became one of the gang's favourite expletives.
"Now a deal's a deal, and you guys owe me a favour." Lucky brought out a bucket of water and several sponges for us to pay off our debt by washing down his Jeep. Ever since then, whenever I hear 'Danny Boy', my mind tends to drift onto images of Willys Jeeps.
Back to the story!
We took any cigarettes we acquired to the Italians on our next visit to the 'gravel basher', along with any small items needing makeshift repairs. They were more than grateful for the cigarettes and none of our gang suffered from broken shoes or holed soles.
Several of the Italians, although friendly, remained aloof from us and kept us at arms length. They did things for us and took our cigarettes and bits and pieces of food we took down, but never wanted to get closer to us or to get to know us in the same way as Gino. He was our favourite Italian and really went out of his way to be nice to us, taking advantage of our visits to practise and improve his English language skills.
Gino was smaller and looked older than his compatriots. A tubby, yet energetic man, highly excitable and with a shrill, piercing voice. We loved winding him up to see his flabby jowls flap as he screeched his outraged retorts at us, habitually running his hand over the central widow's peak of his receding hairline, as if to confirm it was still in its place on his head.
I have to confess, it is down to us that Gino's English vocabulary contained several colourful words. Worse than that, perhaps, was the belief we inculcated in him that several of these words were not bad unless used singly. In a sentence, we told him, they could be used to add extra emphasis to a statement.
The prank turned back on us when we witnessed his use of this while speaking to the matriarchal chairlady of the local Red Cross committee during one of her regular visits to inspect the POW's at the 'gravel-basher'.
We were allowed to watch the inspections if we were there when they took place, but we had to be quiet and stand at the side of the muddy front yard a few yards away from where the Italians lined up for her inspection.
Gino gave her a beaming smile when she arrived in front of him, which she acknowledged with a slight flutter of the corners of her mouth before asking him.
"Are you happy here?"
"Oh Yessa, m'lady, ver' 'appy. Thanka you m'lady. Ever' body much nice to me. I is mucha, more'n ver' 'appy here m'lady. ...I can tella you, I is f***ing 'appy 'ere."
His energetic and colourful reply rendered her speechless, while we rolled on the ground shrieking with uncontrollable laughter, incapable of running away from Gino's angry screeching and his rough shaking of our arms when he realised we had set him up.
When the war ended, and the time came for the Italians to go home, Gino stayed behind. He'd been a cook in the Italian army and was taken on as a counter hand at the Farm Café, living in the main building.
The public at large in the late 1940's were not aficionados of Italian cuisine as they were to become a few years later. To most 1940's people, spaghetti came in a tin of tomato sauce with 'Heinz 57' printed on its label and was commonly served on toast for tea. The universal fare at the Farm Café was fried eggs, chips and baked beans served with doorstep wedges of bread thinly spread with margarine, accompanied by the inevitable pint mug of strong tea.
If the proprietors had used Gino's native culinary skills and included his recipes in their menus, they might have become the forerunners of the 'Pasta Revolution' that became fashionable a few years later. But they didn't, instead they taught him to fry eggs and chips and open large cans of baked beans.
He was no longer working there on the day of my last visit and the taciturn counter hand merely shrugged away my enquiry as to Gino's whereabouts. I had hoped to see him still serving behind the counter.
I sat regarding the tea leaves in the bottom of my mug, wondering if Gino had eventually improved his situation by moving into the expanding Italian restaurant business enveloping the country when the three drivers already sat in the café jumped up from their tables and positioned themselves to look out of the windows onto the forecourt of the building. Curiosity led me to join them.
We watched a low-loader lorry carrying a huge piece of earth moving equipment manoeuvring awkwardly through the southern entrance to the vehicle park. It took several minutes for the driver to inch his vehicle backwards and forwards from the main road, during which time he held up the traffic in both directions.
The drivers watching through the café windows were caustic in their comments and the more so when the new arrival made no attempt to park his truck properly alongside the two other vehicles. He drew up in the centre of the forecourt of the café, blocking in the already parked trucks and also the Morris Traveller parked beside the café's front door.
The men in the room regarded the new arrival with amused interest, an interest that rapidly turned to contempt as the man's innate arrogance surfaced.
The low-loader driver, a short, overweight man with a baldhead and bull neck wearing a baggy boiler suit burst aggressively into the café.
"Tea! Black and strong like me. Four sugars," he bellowed at the counter hand and strutted over to an empty table where he pulled a folded copy of a newspaper from his back pocket and sat down to read.
"Help yourself to sugar," the server replied, meekly indicating the bowl of sugar and teaspoon secured by a small chain to the counter top. The new arrival ignored the reply and read his paper while he waited for his tea. Conversation ceased between the other drivers, who had finished their meals and were ready to leave, but were now blocked in by the thoughtless new arrival.
Tension rippled through the room and silence reigned for several moments until a petite, elderly lady, smartly dressed in a tweed suit topped with a black velvet cocktail hat rose from her table in the shadows of the far corner. All eyes watched her in surprise as she thanked the counter-hand and walked out of the café: she was as out of place in here as was her Morris Traveller in the vehicle park.
The new arrival bellowed at the counter hand, "Plate of chips, lots of salt and vinegar." Our attention focussed back onto him.
The lady returned before the counter hand could reply, and in a firm voice softened by a polite half smile she addressed the room.
"Would the driver of the low-loader please move it, as it is blocking me in?"
The driver in question sniffed and returned his attention to his newspaper, ignoring the lady's request. She walked over to his table and gently tapped her gloved fingertips on its surface.
"Please move your vehicle, I have to be in Harpenden in twenty minutes."
She stood over the man, disabling his ability to ignore her. He sniffed loudly, pushing back on his chair and straightened his body under the table to fumble in a pocket and brought out a bunch of keys, tossing them with disdain onto the table.
"You want it moved lady, you move it, I'm 'aving me dinner." He looked past her to yell at the counter. "Where are them chips?"
The lady nodded, smiled thinly, picked up the keys and walked out without saying another word. Tension peaked and the other drivers took station at the windows once more to see what would happen next, and I rejoined them.
We watched the lady walk around the low loader on a tour of inspection, checking on each of the fastenings securing its load.
My companions at the windows approved her actions and their favourable comments attracted the attention of the new arrival. He joined us at the windows.
"What's she up to then?"
Nobody answered, no reply was necessary, because we watched her climb deftly into the cab, start the vehicle and manoeuvre it in the car park until she reached a position from which she could reverse the truck to station it perfectly between the two other parked vehicles. She switched off and came back into the café to the rapturous applause of the four of us at the windows and the acute embarrassment of the new arrival.
He stood open mouthed in astonishment, his face the colour of boiled beetroot.
"How ...how the 'ell did you do that?"
She threw back her head and laughed while tossing his keys onto the table. "Piece of piss sonny. During the war I used to deliver tanks on trucks like that."
She walked out accompanied by a rousing cheer from the rest of us and drove off to Harpenden with the applause continuing in the café, to the ever-increasing discomfort of the new arrival.
He snatched up his keys, tossed a half crown on the table and stormed out of the building pushing roughly past the bewildered counter hand bearing his plate of food, prompting the confused waiter to ask, "Don't you want your chips?"
But the new arrival had already become the newest departure from the café'.
I left shortly afterwards, enriched by yet another fond memory from the 'The Old Farm Café' and one I will cherish. However, there can be no more to come in the future; for the Old Farm Café is no more.
I have not been back to the village since that day, not physically that is, but I have peeked at its satellite images on Google.
London Colney has changed much in the ensuing years with a major emphasis placed on house building within its boundaries. Many of the sites with large areas of land such as public houses, the A1 Farm and dairy, the secondary modern school have all gone to building, including the four transport cafes. Where the Farm Café stood is now a neat close of linked houses called Kennedy Close. Where once deep, muddy ruts in the vehicle park lurked to trip the unwary walker, there are now neatly bricked driveways. Where straggly thorn and elder bushes grew in the side borders there are now carefully trimmed laurel and privet hedges. Of the old building itself, not a sign of it remains. All is gone, except in the memories of those of us who knew it in its golden age. Gone forever, but not forgotten.