The prefab estate was a hotbed of debates. As soon as someone said something like "That Plato fellow had a few good ideals" we were off. It was only after our class at Twiverton School was
made to stay behind for an extra hour and chant 'good idea' that we realised a Somerset "good ideal" is called a "good idea" elsewhere. If you want to land a job with the BBC (admittedly this is not a typical career goal of most prefab residents) then mastery of 'Received Standard English' is vital. Going around asking "Received By Whom?" will get you nowhere.
Some days after the Soviet Union sent its Sputnik satellite into space (this would have been in October 1957) a completely new word - prefabnik - rocketed its way into the local lingo. This was not (as many people thought) a theft-implying slur on the character of those who dwell in prefabs. Consult the Dictionary Of Prefab Argot and you will find it simply refers to "someone who has resided in a prefab for a number of years." A prefab (or fabpre as the cider drinkers up in Englishcombe Village call it) is defined as "a slim-line pale-faced low-slung single-storey temporary bungalow with a sprout that was mass produced in the late nineteen forties and has never won the recognition it deserves." In its technical appendix the Dictionary adds that most British prefabs were made of aluminium (with asbestos being thoughtfully added as well), weighed almost a ton, and covered nearly a thousand square feet of floor space. A prefab can be erected in a few days by a gang of men with a crane. "What an erection!" gasped ninety-three year old Mavis Slade when she saw ours go up.
Perhaps it is because they live in plush accommodation with an inside toilet, a refrigerator, an electric cooker, airing cupboards and associated mod.cons. that prefab residents have acquired a
reputation for a shade complacent and self-satisfied. Yet although prefab residents have it all they can occasionally feel gripped by a sense of restlessness and unquenchable ambition. Blaise Pascal's observation - "All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone" - is valid even for prefabniks. This is especially so at spring time. Go to any prefab estate in the country, and you will see people with access to every mod.con.imaginable, and with gardens at the front and the rear as well, who continue to harbour secret yearnings for mythical utopias!
This is not the case on chill winter mornings when an icy wind is lashing the earth's delicate skin. Lounging around in bed and dreaming of golden beaches and palm trees is not an option at this time. The prefab will not warm itself up! Prefabniks must seize hold of the day, move fast, hop down the back steps, unlatch the coal shed door, shovel coal into the grey bucket, zoom back into the sitting room HQ, clean out the grate, remove the ashes, race outside again and dump the ashes on the back garden path, return to the icy HQ, deftly place the fire-wood into its optimum heat-generating formation, crumple up yesterday's newspapers (remembering to keep a few pages in reserve in case the toilet paper runs out), push them into the sides of the grate, strike a match against an un-balded segment of the sanded edge of an England's Glory matchbox, blow puffs of air at the smouldering lumps of coal, and shout "ignition!" in Cape Canaveral style the moment a flickering purple flame leaps forth.
Only then can prefabniks begin to ease up, draw some breath, sweep up the flecks of debris scattered across lino-covered floors, saunter into the kitchen, gather up a slice of crisply burnt toast, brew up some tea, watch the winking flames sparkle in the fireplace, thumb through a few pages of Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, work out an hour in the afternoon when there will be time "to stand and stare", and serenely celebrate the onset of a new day.