'Britain explodes nuclear bomb!', 'War in Korea!', 'Troops in Suez!, 'Street fighting in Budapest!' These are some of the headlined fragments of history that have richocheted around the prefab's aluminium-lined walls.
During our first decade here it was the wireless (with its two gleaming black dials) and the Daily Mirror (with its tension-packed Garth cartoons) which were the two main sources of news. If one of the prefab residents happens to be is a solicitor (admittedly this is a shade unlikely) you can be almost certain that it will be the Daily Telegraph which will thud on to the front door mat. If one of the prefab residents is an office clerk (this does happen) it will be a Daily Express thud. If one of the prefab residents is a labourer (and this is not a big 'if') there will be a Daily Mirror thud.
The warmest corner of the prefab is the North-West Passage (Canada is turned on it head here). This is where we have strategically placed the wireless. It is next to the fireplace and a half a dozen strides away from the draughts that sometimes whistle in through the door to the kitchen. The wireless has brought us nerve-tingling episodes of Dick Barton - Special Agent! (cruelly taken off air in 1952) and- from 1953 on - Jet Morgan's Journey Into Space. In 1954 we were ordered to end our football game on the green in order to listen to the broadcast of Wolverhampton Wanderers' epic 3-2 victory over Honved.
From 1951 on the latest hit songs were broadcast on Radio Luxembourg. If the old man was on his settee sleeping berth he would cry out "Turn that dirge off!" the moment we found the famous 208 metres frequency wave band. Of course if we hit wavelength 208 during the advertising slot when the velvet-smooth voice of 'Horace Batchelor' ('Horace Batch' to his pals) was slithering its way down the ether no "Turn that dirge off!" would ever be heard.
Today it is hard to believe that world famous K-e-y-n-s-h-a-m was once a nondescript Anyplace Anywhere Town known only for its chocolate factory and the rather lewd gnomes that were kept in its front gardens. Ask people to name the inventors of epoch-changing technology such as the electric light-bulb and the jet engine and their minds will go blank. Ask them to name the inventor of the 'infra-dig' method of winning money on the football pools and Horace's name will be delivered in seconds. The eight illustrious letters of Horace's home town are whispered into the Radio Luxembourg microphone with a hushed reverence. Saint Keyne (who founded the famed settlement in the fifth century) would demand nothing less.
A few sour and discordant voices say that K-e-y-n-s-h-a-m only found its place on the map of world consciousness in order to ensure that 'Big Pools Win Seeking Postal Orders' safely winged their way into Horace's K-e-y-n-s-h-a-m Post Office account. In fact Horace was a "most sincerely, folks!" Hughie Green kind of guy who genuinely believed that wealth, like muck, should be spread around. Since his famous 'infra-dig' method was first revealed to the world back in 1948 no less than twelve million pounds has poured from Horace's own post office account into the coffers of the masses. Whether Horace himself actually made any money from his 'infra-dig' method is what air cadets learn to call a "known unknown".
In recent years the word 'Batch' has come to be used as shorthand argot for the musty off-putting odour that batchelors who refrain from regularly washing their bed linen, socks and under-garments are said to reek of. 'To Be Batched' means succumbing to the illusion that winning Instant Wealth on the football pools also delivers Lifelong Happiness. Yet snaring the fickle Goddess of Happiness is a far trickier business than this. Traps sleeping under bridges in Winter have been known to pull it off, while some multi-millionaires sob themselves to sleep in luxury hotel suites. This is a truth that 'Horace Batch' never came round to spelling out to his listeners. That said, without his K-e-y-n-s-h-a-m incantations and 'infra-dig' dreams the nineteen fifties would have been a more sombre decade.