Previously unpublished

Cross-Eyed Ramblings 3

It was to be 1917 before anything of record affected the pub again. 'Not thee malaria, nor thee scurvy, not thee cholera, nor thee plague. Taking us from Tavern to graveyard, King and Queen and country save'! So wrote local poet Joseph Jacobs before he too was taken to 'a war so fierce with armies so weak'. Jacobs himself, Frank Jeffries, Mortimer Calvert, Tom Shilton, Ray Barry and Neville Collyhurst all lost their lives. 'The Hops Lounge gave Flanders their best drinkers and Flanders took them all' commented Jacobs' wife Hetty in her diary of 1921. Again between the years of '39 and '45 the pub's residents were lost to 'the diptheria, the pertussis, the tetanus of war'. Some twenty years later, The Rambler had it's first ever entertainment! 1965 saw the Village Life note that previously entertainment would be 'no more than a good yard of ale and a deck of cards'. Now the pub provided an area where 'billiards, dartboard or game of chess or draughts could be partaken'. Local vicar and spoil sport Desmond Shreeves said 'this village is on the precipice of sin and the Cross Eyed Rambler is its Lucifer’s Arcade'.

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