An everyday tale of country folk

A local policeman once told me there was something very interesting about the town I live in. Buckfastleigh is one of the very few town names where no letter is repeated. That distinction hasn't drawn in the crowds, but the town has another attraction which definitely has.

The Valiant Soldier is a pub where time was never called

The Valiant Soldier is a pub where time was never called. When it shut down in 1962, everything, including the change in the till, was left as it was. It is now a museum and has begun to collect stories of time past.

Recent recordings of those who regularly used the bar tell of how, on cold winter days, mill workers and drivers would take hot pokers from the fire and plunge them into their glasses to warm their cider. Hundreds of GIs stationed nearby, waiting for the D-Day landings, came in to drink the local brew, which they called "invasion juice."

John Bragg was growing up then, and he remembers one particular annual ritual - the goose shitting contest. This is a true story.

"Us used to rear goslings in the orchard. Then about six weeks before Christmas, us'd take them up to Deepy, up the road to be fattened up for slaughter.

"The goslings were fed on corn. The contest began when we had to take the birds up. Us boys used to line up with our welly-boots on and we'd all have a shilling to put up. You'd have to be perfectly honest and not cheat - these were the rules.

You had to count how many shits your gosling did before you got to the slaughterhouse

John Bragg

"There'd be 14 or 15 of us in a line across the road. You'd pick up your gosling and put him under your arm and then you had to count how many shits your gosling did before you got to the slaughterhouse.

"You'd hear boys shouting ..one, one two, four and so on. This would go on all the way up the hill. I won once. 19, mine did, altogether.

"People would say 'Look at they rabble!', but us was having fun.

And do you know of all the lads I knew, all grown men now, none of them was a bad one".