Chris McCooey is an accomplished ‘raconteur’ who has over the years collected dozens of stories, many of which have been published in a series of books. However he started his reminisce by telling a nice little story about the cycling Vicar of Chiddingstone whose bicycle was thought to have been stolen until he remembered where he had left it the night before – after having been told to preach on the Ten Commandments by the Bishop. I am not going to explain as he may well want to add it to a new book!
That is of course the difficulty of providing a write-up on Chris’s stories – although to be fair, a copy of the relevant book will doubtless provide the full story!
On the table Chris had laid out all of his books and he explained to us that he started his books by thinking up a title and then set out to fill it in accordance with the title such as Tales, Tit Bits and Trivia or War, Women and Weather. His latest offering, yet to be completed, has the title The Quest – Quaint & Quirky of Kent and Sussex. Any ideas welcome!
This of course gives the perfect excuse to nose around for stories to record for posterity and Chris described how one or two of these came about, along with several entertaining side-tracks! A family of three brothers who all died in WWII and are remembered in wild flower windows in a church in Hadlow Down that he nearly missed because the church did not appeal to him! But he did with such a positive if sad resulting story.
Sitting beside a man in his 90’s at lunch in Crowborough he teased a story out of him about his escape from the beach at Dunkirk over three days whilst all around him died, only to find himself back on the beach prodding for mines at the invasion – and he had survived. The side story was that of an American visiting France shortly after the war when he was asked for his visa. He replied that the last time he came on D-Day he wasn’t asked for a visa!
The story of the inventor of Table football – or Subbuteo, Peter Adolph who lived in Langton Green is another of the stories from Tales, Tit Bits and Trivia with the interesting explanation of the unusual name. This one I am going to spoil! It seems that Peter Adolph had called the game ‘Hobby” and, after a simple advert in Boy’s Own Magazine produced £10,000 worth of 7/6d postal orders and cheques he thought he should check officially if he could use the name only to find that he couldn’t. Being a knowledgeable bird watcher he picked the Latin name of the Hobby Falcon which is Falco Subbuteo!
The story of Oliver Cromwell’s head owned by a family from Kemsing was quite extraordinary especially that it was not until the 1960’s that this came to light.
Chris McCooey himself spent 10 years teaching in Japan and this reminded him of the story of a man who has a memorial in Uckfield after a lifetime of missionary work in Japan. It’s these sorts of stories with local connections that he finds very attractive. A story about a Tamworth pig that he bought as a Christmas present for his children and the escapologist piglets provided an amusing illustration of his own domestic life – maybe a while ago!
A couple of final stories rounded off an entertaining evening.
