Crier Profile - Meryl Moore
Meryl Moore was born and brought up in Cambridge. She served a term on the Parish Council in Swaffham Prior, having lived here for over twenty years.
I WASN'T BORN IN BARROW ROAD but I spent all my childhood there - it's
in the parish of Trumpington. My father worked all his life in the University
library and finished up as a Deputy. It was a born thing for him. He ran the
Copyright Department for many years. I've been working on a book, because
he left a diary and lots of letters, from the First World War.
He trained at the University College school of librarianship where he met my mother, who was also studying to be a librarian. He was an absolute dear, my father. I didn't really ask him about the war, but he did tell me that in the retreat in 1918 as an officer he'd carried three rifles, because the men were exhausted - and of course, then I found this in his diary.
Cambridge was very different when I was a child. It was rather more peaceful, and very unusual to see a foreign face. I remember my mother coming home saying she'd seen a black man, and what a wonderful place Cambridge was where you could see somebody like that! We bicycled everywhere. My parents never had a car. Everybody bicycled everywhere. In the war there wasn't any petrol anyway. All that new part in Petty Curie, that was just old shops.
Our parents were so good, they didn't have much money but would always take us for - very modest - holidays, they would book a cottage, or rooms. Barrow Road was very nice, we had lots of friends there. It was a much friendlier place, much safer - I mean, everywhere was safer. The childhood I remember was mostly during the war - I do remember pre-war, but only as a small child. I suppose most of the dangerous men were out fighting, poor things!
I must have been about eight or nine, and I do remember my sister coming home - we used to wander off into the fields - and saying a tramp had kissed her. My mother was furious, and I accused her of being a snob! (laughs). My parents never talked about class and I remember asking once - I must have heard someone talking about class, and I asked "What is class? What are we?" And my mother said we were middle, which was a very reassuring thing to be - neither one nor the other. But we used to walk along Hobson's Brook and I do remember seeing a man - a very disagreeable man - he was dredging the stream, wearing his old best suit, an old striped suit. We thought nothing of walking a mile to school, even at five years old. My father used to walk with us, and then continue on to the library. I remember noting even as a child that he the workman was wearing his old best suit. In those days country workers tended to wear their old suit to work. People on the whole didn't have the money to buy work clothes. Anoraks and things hadn't been invented then, of course.
We had great fun in our road - one boy, Christopher - he's an architect
now, has umpteen grandchildren - he spent a lot of the war going through
hedges, being soldiers, playing war games. We had a bomb next door. There were
a lot of bombs in Cambridge during the war. My parents discussed sending us to
Canada. I was nine when war broke out, my sister was four years younger. They
were wonderful, they discussed things with us. So we didn't go. People were
saying in 1940 that the Germans were going to bully England by bombing Oxford
and Cambridge. So we went up to the Lake District for a wonderful six weeks,
and that's when I fell in love with the mountains - switched from horses to
mountains. I'd been potty about horses for about six years. We got back
just in time for this bomb, which fell on the house next door. I was in the
bath, and I heard the plane: they had a very distinctive sound, absolutely
unmistakeable. I was so close, I didn't hear the whistle. And then the
whole house rocked! And most of my bathwater slopped out. It seemed most
extraordinary to me that the house could rock so much and not fall down! I
thought it was going to fall down on me. As soon as things slowed down my
father rushed in and fished me out and took me downstairs - there was glass all
over the bathroom floor. My mother, who was downstairs with my sister, said
very calmly "The soot's come down the chimney." The next door
neighbour rushed in in tears, she was hysterical. She couldn't get to her
husband. You could see the reflection of the flames across the front garden,
and of course, they couldn't get anywhere near him. He'd been playing
the piano, and the house just collapsed on him. Poor Mrs Crowson. The fire
engines took an eternity coming, and one of them was black, I remember. I was
very affronted at having a black fire engine! All the tiles came off one side
of our house and the chimney twiddled around a bit so it wasn't safe, so we
were taken along to our friends' house along the road and we spent six
weeks there, head to toe on the kitchen bed in their strong room. Our parents
stayed with other kind neighbours. I suppose we were frightened - after we were
back in our house we did hear the planes going over to Coventry. For a long
time afterwards we children slept in my father's study because it was
supposed to be the strongest room, and safer downstairs. We all, everybody, had
what we called "Bombinitis". I wouldn't have a bath for a long
time after without having the door open.
After the bomb, some workmen came to clear the rubble of the house next door - I'd just got to the back door, and I heard machine gun fire - they were machinegunning the men. I've never seen men move so fast. They were probably old soldiers from the first war. Young men wouldn't have been there, they'd all have been away. Then. My mother was machine-gunned too - this was early in the war - the aircraft would follow hedges beside roads and machine-gun people. My mother came out of the little greengrocer's that used to be in Panton Street. I don't know that they were aiming directly at her - but that's what she felt was happening.
After the war, we weren't in the least depressed. It's often said were were - England was pretty well broke then, but for my generation, we were teenagers and feeling pretty excited about life generally and putting England back on her feet again. We did talk about England rather than Britain. Life was rather serious - we had to earn our living, to help get the country back on her feet again.
Barrow Road was a middle class road. My grandfather bought the house for my parents. My mother said it was a bit expensive for them, but they did love it, so... I went to the Perse. Did I like it there? Not particularly. But I think it was a good school. I liked the first headmistress, Miss Catley. Quite a lot of the staff had lost their fiances in the first war. There were some very good teachers, and some indifferent ones. There was no corporal punishment or anything like that in a girls' school. My English teacher, Miss Garratt, was excellent. Garratt with an A: she always said "I am not an attic" so of course she was always known as Tic. There was a splendid copper beech tree. The worst row I ever got into was for climbing it - someone had fallen out of it once and broken a leg. My daughters were both there - It was very strange going back as a parent.
When I finished school I worked in the General Library for a year. There was a
ghost called Mr Pink - he was an exlibrarian. This was in the back of the Guild
Hall, looking onto the Corn Exchange. He was a great joke, said to appear after
dark to the last person who was in there. Then I went to Reading University and
did English and Philosophy - a General degree, they said I wasn't good
enough for an Honours degree. They have a wonderful reach on the Thames there,
racing dinghies, and I got completely bitten. I spent too much time sailing and
I thought I wouldn't pass my degree but I did. My parents loved boats, and
we went on boat trips in the Lake District and things. I was so sure I must
have failed so I sent my friend - who I'm still in touch with - to get my
results. After a while I heard footsteps running up the stairs - It's all
right, you've passed! So that was a great relief. It wasn't very common
for women to go to college, but father only had daughters and he was very keen
for me to go to university, and my sister Juliet too. She did domestic science.
I worked for a year in London for the University at the Senate House. I did the
minutes for the sub-committees. They were very different people. The Science
subcommittee were slightly bored, and they sometimes went to sleep. The doctors
were the politest, and they always got through things pretty quickly, and
sensibly. But the Arts people, they always just loved a theoretical discussion
about principles. But after there, when we started a family, I'm ashamed to
say I never worked again! My husband commuted, once we got to Cambridge - when
he stopped working for the Senate House, he worked - always as the secretary
for theses colleges Ðat the Royal Free, and then University College, and the
last one was SOAS (The School of African and Oriental Studies) and he loved
that last one especially.
I wanted to write, so I wrote a children's story - the kind I would have wanted to read. I wrote about an invented island off the west coast of Scotland, with ponies and things, for about twelve years upwards - about 90,000 words. I sent it off to a publisher and had a nice note saying it was a bit long - for that sort of book they couldn't afford to publish more than about 60,000; and it needed to be jazzed up a bit. No child would read it now, I'm sure. But I started to work on that, and then I came across my father's diaries and I thought, there's a story here. So it all got put on one side. My grandmother was a VAD - Voluntary Aid detachment, a junior nurse. She was very practical. In August 1914 they were on holiday in France - it all sounds a bit odd, but they thought it would be like 1911, when they were on such good terms with the Germans. The war all came rather suddenly - My grandmother got arrested as a spy. They were staying near Graveline, between Calais and Dunkirk. She was on the ramparts looking at her shopping list and a man came up and accused her of spying! But it all got sorted out. My father's diary started in 1916, when he was still at school, going on an officer's training course - hopeless preparation for the Front. Someone got lost, they all roared with laughter. Ludicrous, really. Eventually he got to the Somme, where there were fearsome tales of the fighting. As he gets more training, his writing becomes more professional. One of the major problems in that war was communications. That was solved in the second world war with the walkie talkie, but in the first war, no longer could orders be shouted to the men, because of the noise. Telephones couldn't be relied on because the lines would get blown up. Generals who fought in that war said no-one who hadn't fought in that war could understand what it was like because they didn't have communication. The cavalry was obsolete, and they didn't have a mobile arm because tanks weren't properly developed.
We left London in 1970 when my father died, partly to keep an eye on my mother. My husband and I split up in 1982 - We'd sort of just fizzled out. It was probably the most friendly divorce anyone could have. He got married to Sally then promptly had a heart attack and died, which was very sad. Poor Sally. He'd bought this house for me and just got me moved in, then went off to meet her: he got into Cambridge and then died. And that was that.
When I moved out here I loved it. I did have four years on the parish council - I remember being fascinated by some of the discussions between local people, true local people like Eric Day - If you ask Eric about it he'll probably tell you I've got it all wrong, but the village hall drive has a bit where it dips, and had to be filled in every so often - something to do with the spring underneath it. I loved doing it but I came to the conclusion I wasn't a very civic-minded person. The war windows in St Mary's - I recorded those for the Imperial War Museum. Some years ago, they were, probably still are, getting all the war memorials in the country recorded. I sent them photographs, and I had to measure them. I did the Quy one, and the Fen Chapel. I managed to get in there, and there is a nice little plaque on the wall, but I had great difficulty finding out who made it. That was interesting, calling in on all the local farms and asking them. But nobody knew for certain - I could only say who we thought had made the plaque.
And Wicken Fen, I love that - My father met the then director of the Botanic Gardens in the Home Guard, Mr Gilbert Carter, who was absolutely hopeless at anything practical - he would say to my father "Ansell, my tin hat seems to have turned inside out". He couldn't cope with his equipment - he had to have help getting it straight. He invited us to go with him, the students, so we all got on the train and got off at Swaffham Prior, and bicycled to Wicken Fen. My sister and I thought this was wonderful - it was quite untamed in those days. My father ended up as a pacifist after the first war. There's a bit in his diary about how he talked with Peterhouse fellows who were not pacifists about this. Quite a friendly discussion, but after a while he did join the Home Guard - "a difficult decision for a pacifist," he wrote - but he did it because he thought that domination by Hitler would be even worse.
There were some dear people I met when I came here who've died, like Bob Sheldrick. He was one of the first people I spoke to when I came here. I was wondering what on earth to do with the roses on the front of the house and he came along and told me what to do. Another day, he came past - my roses tend to flop over at the front there - "cut them down", he said. "They're all wet. They're in the way."
And now I'm planning a move to Burwell. I don't want to go in the least, but this house isn't suitable for me any more. I've got people coming to look round. But the estate agent says they won't push me to move if I haven't found anything. We'll have to see.