October 2011
Reading James Hannaway’s latest Rants & Pants in the Rex Cinema programme about the closure of Berkhamsted Post Office (now an M&S but the post box still remains) reminded me of one of the best days of my life. Back in the early 1960s I became addicted to postal betting. In those days you could place a bet by post as long as it was time-stamped before the start of the race.

I would nip out in the school lunch hour and post my bet at the Berko post office. Accumulators were my speciality. Usually they all lost. But one day a letter arrived through the post containing a cheque for the then princely sum of £8! Amazingly my one-and-six each way (about 8p) 8-horse accumulator had come up, yielding odds of 100-1. Buoyed up by this success I promptly lost the lot in less than a week!

Having failed the 11-plus some 50 years ago I was heartened to have the opportunity to re-take it thanks to a sample test reproduced on the BBC web site. I always assumed that if you failed an intelligence test at 11 why would you be any more intelligent 50 years later. Wiser perhaps. Anyway I passed, but alas too late to get into Dr Challoners (or Amersham Grammar School, as it was then.) A friend of mine illustrated the mystery of the 11-plus for an 11-year-old with a question he recalls as being slanted against the intelligent but less-well educated child: Which would you rather have, half a ton of sovereigns or a ton of half-sovereigns? Post your answer below.

As an occasional listener to the Archers I noticed they have belatedly added a Book Club to the daily storylines. We’re not exactly ahead of the times but even Piccotts End has had a Book Club for nearly 3 years. Wake up Ambridge!

Good to see the Old Town’s Halloween House of Horrors back again despite being for sale. I heard that the owners are planning to move to Devon. Maybe the house should have a clause obliging the new owners to continue the Halloween tradition.