Interview with Ken Daly

Interview with Ken Daly

Interview with Ken Daly, aged 89, in 2008. Ken Daly sadly died 15th January 2009 just 14 days before his 91st birthday

Ken Dally aged 89

I was born in the November of 1941 in a nursing home in Chippenham when my family was living in Calne. Later my parents Kenneth (better known as Ken) and my mother Kathleen (Kay) rented some rooms in a house on Poulshot green from a Mr and Mrs Vallis. My father was in the RAF and was stationed at Yatesbury.

A neighbour, Reg Collett, used to make small metal propellers for me to play with and fire up in the air (I regularly lost them and he would patiently make me some more). I also remember Reg’s brother Bert. One of them (Reg?) had a son as I recall (Geoff?), that I would play with on the green. Would that be the G. Collett on the Parish Council I wonder? He would be a little older than me. I also remember farmer Baber who used to give me rides on his horse and on one occasion gave me a goose egg for tea. I also note you have a Mr J. Baber on the Council, a relative I am sure. Mr Hoddynott lived a couple of doors away with his housekeeper but I have forgotten her name (Betty?). I visited them regularly.

I used to live in fear of the geese on the green as they used to chase me home and stick their heads through the gate hissing at me (I suspect that I have might have teased them). Dad used to dress up as father Christmas and deliver toys to 2 or 3 children in his Ford 8, having got permission from me to use it, which included a child at the Raven pub. I was in big trouble for letting Father Christmas use Dad’s car without asking for permission!!! According to Dad the landlord was an ex-jockey who had ridden mainly in France and had a French wife. Father was famous (maybe infamous) for his firework displays and one year fired a verey pistol flare into the village bonfire by mistake giving an early start to the fire!!!

I became a nuisance at the school because I was fed up with being on my own and used to climb through the fence at playtime and then file into school with the other kids. Three children into a 2 seater form desk didn’t fit, so I was escorted off the premises. Eventually the teacher got so fed up with me that she said if I really wanted to go to school so badly I could come to school the next day. I raced home to tell Mum as fast as my legs would carry me. I can’t remember how old I was but I was certainly under normal school age (not a chance that would happen these days).

I think we left Poulshot in the winter of 1947 which was a particularly bad winter and set off for Leeds in Yorkshire in the Ford – it took us 2 days. We called into RAF Banbury en-route and we were the first travellers they had seen for a week. We returned a few weeks later to live with grandmother in Guildford. The family travelled around with Dad to Germany, Malaya and Gibraltar and finally settled in Pitsford near Northampton. Sadly Mum died at the age of 59 but here is a picture of Dad who is still alive and kicking which I took last week. He will be 90 in January. I wonder if anyone remembers him?

Poulshot Village Trust

5/11/2008

Poulshot Village Trust

Mr Ivan Dally

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Ivan Dally

Ivan Dally
Ken Dally

Camberly, Surrey