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- 3 Mrs. Miggs was married sixty-two years ago, in Barley Church, from The Grange where she was then in service, and where she met her husband-to-be, who was one of the gardeners, and they went back there for a year or two, until her mother died and it was her job to return home, a hundred yards away, to the cottage she had been bom in. There, she looked after her father and her husband and, later, her dead sister's three children. The Miggses had, as she put it, 'no cuttings' themselves. She remembered the dances at The Grange, every Christmas, and Midsummer, for all those in service in the house, and the rest of the village, and the balls for the carriage folk, and the parties for the girls from the orphanage. Barley was a large village once. It had two shops, a cobbler, the inn, a butcher, a baker (who only stopped baking five years ago and is still living in one of the almshouses). There was the mixed school and the orphanage and a Men's Evening Institute, and a Methodist chapel as well as St. Nicholas Church, and each place of worship had two choirs. Mrs. Miggs lent me a bound volume of Parish Magazines of ninety and a hundred years ago, and there, among the records of baptisms and marriages and burials, were some of the names of our present neighbors, Elder and Miggs, Harrow and Ash, Baker and Plum and Dove. Many of them still live in the same cottages, though they are greatly enlarged and modernized now. And there are young generations, too, grandchildren who work in the city, unless they are farmers, but who still live in Barley, and great grandchildren at the village school. There is a house called the Old Forge, and the farrier, Mr. Dove, still occupies it, though it is no longer a forge in the strict sense, for his forge is his van, he is a travelling blacksmith, as they mostly are nowadays. His son John is a blacksmith, too, and last Easter Monday John Dove got married in Barley Church .... [From: The Magic Apple Tree, by Susan Hill] (To be continued in the May Newsletter) 'WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT Michael Caine's autobiography is honest, funny and touching - full of amusing anecdotes, for example: My mother, who was a sort of Mrs. Malaprop, always mis-pronouncing words, gave the best description of Beverly Hills that I have ever heard. The gardens are so lovely,' she said, pointing out of the car window. 'Look at all that hysteria growing up the walls.' She had hit the nail right on the head and she hadn't even got there yet. Somehow or other our conversation turned to the Middle Ages one day and I asked her if she would like to have lived then, and she said she wouldn't, because everybody died of the Dubonnet Plague in those days. Her favourite singer was Mick Jaguar, and when the war in Europe was over she proudly announced that the happiest day in her life had been VD Day. It really is an excellent read. LAST WORDS A smile is a powerful weapon; you can even break ice with it. Anon. A smile is a curve that sets everything straight. Phyllis Diller A laugh is a smile that bursts. Mary H. Waldrip Start "every day with a smile and get it over with. W.C. Fields If you don't have wrinkles, you havent laughed enough. Phyllis Diller Tony Scammell Editor