Living in a small Essex village 80 years ago, pretty well everybody knew everybody; there were no strange faces. There were two bakers baking every day; a fishmonger, two greengrocers; one butcher and a wool shop.
One’s parents friends were always politely called “auntie and uncle”.
These were the days before the NHS. We had to pay the doctor. One local GP held a regular Saturday surgery in a house by the green. Any villager who need help could attend and pay what they could – sometimes nothing.
Many years later, when discussing an approaching operation with the surgeon and anaesthetist, I talked of this doctor, who had been held in deep affection
by everyone, a bit of a local hero.
The anaesthetist smiled and said, “That was my Dad”.
I had two “Uncle Earnies”.
One Uncle, with Auntie Minnie, came to live over the road. They were Austrian Jews who came to England just in time before the war. They engendered sympathy and admiration for their bravery and became family friends for life. Auntie Minnie taught me to crochet and I just loved her delicious sauerkraut. Uncle Earnie was the typical jolly uncle.
The other Uncle Earnie and Auntie Dora came to live next door. He was a retired PhD of Botany. We children were regularly asked to Sunday tea when we could watch television.
Although I was a regular attender at the Baptist Sunday School, I wanted to be confirmed in the Church of England, like my friends.
First, I had to be Christened, as I had not been baptised as a baby. Auntie Dora and Uncle Earnie were asked, and agreed to be, godparents. So I attended a “Baptism for those who are of Riper Years”, and was duly confirmed.
Although I am now a Quaker, I still feel I have a foot in both camps: like Terry Waite, I am a “Quanglican”.
Many years later, looking at old photos, I found out that my dear godfather Uncle Earnie was, to quote my parent, “a black Jamaican who came to England to study and stayed on”
Dear Uncles, one Jewish and one Jamaican – I remember both with real affection.
Paula Seddon from Wokingham Quakers on behalf of Churches Together in Wokingham