YESTERDAY IN MELTON MOWBRAY

PATRIOTS WE. I wondered recently, if our beloved nonegenarian Queen Elizabeth was aware of the 100 or so almost frozen souls who were ensconced under leaky tents or the sagging canvas sheets which had been painstakingly erected on the empty spaces of the little track which services the rear of our gardens here in our little part of Melton Mowbray? The memorable occasion was the 60th anniversary of Her Majesty's  accession to the throne following the untimely death in 1952 of her beloved father, King George.  Dutiful and royalist citizens that we were that day - and remain so of course - ensured that close to a 100% uptake of those invited to the bash from the houses linked to the track by the residents of Ankle Hill and Burton Road, arrived in good time and gritted teeth humour to assist in setting up the plastic barricades against the relentless heavy rain which showed great promise of remaining for the rest of the day. In a hastily thrown together area nearby which

FOREWORD People of a certain age in the market town of Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire will occasionally speak of a ‘murder’ which occurred in their town during the last war when a local and popular tailor was brutally attacked and robbed of his earnings at his place of work. Although the victim was left to fend for himself in a battered and unconscious state, the occurrence fortunately did not end up as a murder though it could well have done if different circumstances had prevailed. This is re-telling of that incident which happened during those anxious ‘blackout’ days of World War 2 during which this small market town in the East Midlands of England had remained largely untouched by any aggressive war situations or the usual and expected going-ons common to the the larger cities nearby. Melton was in those dark days, home to an increasingly eclectic mixture of armed forces personnel and civilian 'Dad's Armies' who were currently grouped in great numbers across the