[21L. 18/02/85]  If I remember rightly the chocolate in the machine at the station was Frys.  I don’t think there was anything but chocolate.  I think there was only one machine.  It was at the end of the booking office facing toward the village.

The last train from Banbury at night got in about 8 o’clock, as it came in on the far side any passengers had to cross the rails and Mr Miller the Station Master was always very alert as there was an express train to London due through just about that time. 

Some of the time I was in school in Banbury I went on the first train in the morning about 7 o’clock.  I always remember standing on the platform one morning and hearing the noise the frogs were making croaking in the watery ditch at the other side of the field at the back of the station  Now-a-days you never see a frog.  I never heard anything like it before or since. 

At one time there were two porters at the station.  Ted Stratford and a younger man named Hemmingway.  We had a social for the Cricket Club one time and Hemmingway said a monologue entitled “I’m always away when required.” Ted said that was the truest words he ever spoke.  Ted lodged with Miss West who used to live in your house. 

There used to be three if not four trains each way every day at one time.  They used to tell the tale of an old man who was just going up the station road one day as the train went out. Someone said “Ah master you’ve missed it.”  He replied “I’m not going for that one.”

[16L. 23/03/84]  There was a man in Cropredy, Sam he wasn’t quite 100%.  He worked at Prescote and once they had two new girls coming and he was sent to the station to meet them with the milk float and mule.  I think they must have been a bit nervous because one said “Is your horse quiet?”  Sam replied “It ent a aws, it’s a mewal.” 

After I stopped playing cricket I was going to Banbury on the bus.  Sam was on it too.  He said, “Cropredy got any cricket on to-day?”  I said “I think so.” “Don’t play now do You?”  I said “No.”  “Ah! Got beyond it.” he said.  He was right too, but I hadn’t thought of it like that before.

 [10L. 19/01/81]  Thank you very much for your letter and transcripts.  We were very interested in reading them.  I had heard Tom Bradley’s story of Louis Lambert.(1)  Another about him was when he went to see a girl one Sunday.  I don’t know where to, but somewhere the other side of Bloxham.  He was walking home at night and he was coming through Bloxham it rained fast and he took shelter in the church porch.  There was a service going on and he could hear them singing the hymn “Lead kindly Light.”  He said he thought the lines “The night is dark and I am far from home” were very appropriate.  He lived in a stone cottage that stood about where Mrs Tagg’s bungalow is in the High Street.