Page 39 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - October 19

removed from their nice warm chicken house to endless supply of jokes. We made a huge dinner
a larger coop. Then we had to clean out the area
for the next brood of chicks. We would place the
wire trays, which contained all their droppings,
into small ponds of water and scour them with a
scrubbing brush. By now, autumn was over and
winter had set in. There were days when we had
to break the ice and stand in the freezing water,
which invariably rose above the level of our
wellington boots.
Because we had a communal laundry, I would
turn up in a different pair of dungarees each day.
And since my bike was usually being repaired I
would also arrive with a different bike nearly
every day. The other young people who worked
there could not get over my relative “prosperity”
when our wages were less than two pounds a
week.
My next job was in the Rose Gardens near to
Hurst grange, and it must have been around
Xmas time as we had to pack hundreds of small
rose trees which were sent off as presents. We
would spend the days pruning roses in the fields;
time passed very slowly, the large church clock
struck every hour, but to me it seemed like hours
had passed. When it got dark, we would go
inside a barn-like structure where we wrapped
the bushes. One old man, (he was probably
around forty years old), used to wink at me slyly
and say: “Ar, I hear there’s great goings on at the
Grange”. One evening there was an electricity
cut and he took advantage of this to try to cuddle
me, I ran off and thus ended my second and last
outside job.
After this, like most of the other girls, I worked
in the house. We took it in turns to do the
housework, which included cleaning, cooking
breakfast and calling everyone on the farm in at
eleven for the famous Reading “Dockie”. This
was a sort of breakfast cum lunch with piles of
toast, peanut butter and jam spreads and hot tea.
We would stand around the warm kitchen and
tell each other our latest pieces of gossip, and
Lionel never failed to make us laugh with his
39
for all at night. Another job was to make
sandwiches for all the outside workers. Reading
had only a small farm and a German refugee,
Mr. Weiser, ran it efficiently with the help of
Frank (tomatoes and greenhouses), and a few
others. Thus most of the men would work
outside and some of the girls, who insisted on
being treated as equals, would try to get jobs
outside as well.
Apart from work, we were also expected to
study Hebrew, and to take part in the “cultural”
life; we also held numerous meetings about the
most ridiculous subjects, but each item seemed
extremely important at the time.
Every Friday evening we held an Oneg Shabbat,
which was our way of celebrating the Sabbath
Eve in a secular fashion. Each week one of us
was responsible for the programme and we
usually wrote a piece of flowery prose on any
subject we chose, which would be read out by
the writer and some of the other members. This
was invariably accompanied by background
music by Sibelius or Holst who were great
favourites. At Passover, apart from the
traditional Seder, we also held a “Third Seder”,
which consisted of our humourous versions of
the real Haggada and we would write original
renderings of the songs. We would make fun of
ourselves and our way of life. This is a quality
that has existed in all our activities throughout
our lives as members of Habonim and I believe
that this is what has helped us to survive.
I shall never forget the rumpus that was caused
when Mrs. Williams, the WIZO representative,
came down to visit. She was in charge of our
wellbeing and hygiene at the farm and her own
son, Louis, resented this and deliberately turned
his room into a pigsty. All the partners would
run off with their sheets and towels into one of
the girl’s bedrooms and the boys would then
move in together, for she must not know that we
were living in sin.