Emails and phone calls have been flying around the country with friends from those days still in touch and now widely scattered, although many still live locally.

I know all those on the fifties photo. Marvellous!

I could write a book on my childhood in Mellis in the fifties. Times have changed beyond all recognition.

I have a couple of photographs of the pub at Mellis. One shows my grandfather with a bike and was taken in about 1930. The other, much older photograph (c.1900) is a "blow up" of a postcard that I obtained from the shop (long since closed). It now hangs in my hall in London as a reminder of my blissfully happy childhood at Mellis.

I was puzzled by the reference about travelling two miles for water in the original story (written by a Diss Express reporter in the 1950s).

From Mellis, in less than two miles you would reach Yaxley in one direction, Burgate in another, Thrandeston in another or Gislingham the other way. There was a well near the school, pumps at different locations, and various homes/farms had their own pump/well.

Perhaps the article may just have been referring to a drought in the 1920s (way before my time, but it was often talked about) when most of the pumps ran dry but the old well did not.

Perhaps then, people who could not obtain water from dry pumps, had to use the old well, entailing a longer walk, but still not two miles.

The well must have been sunk very deep. You wound the pail down and, coming back up, it kept hitting the sides, spilling the water, so for all your effort the best you got was half or three quarters of a pail-ful.

A friend of mine's daughter in Stowmarket turns to Memory Lane as soon as she gets her Diss Express. Her uncle is in the school picture.

The "little Dutch girl" in the school picture was called Joke Van Drynn, pronounced Yoka.

Descending from a long line of Suffolk ancestry, my early years were spent at Mellis, before my family moved to London when I was eight.

My grandparents (with whom we lived whilst in East Anglia) were at the Railway Hotel (as then known) from 1929-1956).

I spent all my school holidays with them whilst my mother was at work, travelling alone from the age of about 12.

My grandparents went into the Railway Hotel on May 21, 1928, and were there for 29 years with one week's holiday.

I have the original valuation of the contents when grandfather took over, including floor cloths (I ask you!) in most rooms, value £35-7-6.

The document was sent in an envelope clearly marked Wortham. I have an envelope stamped Mellis, sent to my father after the Second World War. The postmaster of course hand-franked all mail sent from his post office at Mellis.

The 'hotel' at the time (later re-named Tavern) had no electricity, mains sewerage or piped water. There was a bath but, with no plumbing was not used; Friday night in the tin tub (brought in from the back yard), being a weekly ritual for all the family.

There were mice (meece, Suffolk-speak) in the pantry, their droppings being a regular sight and my grandmother was very excited to find one, almost daily, in a mouse-trap (one less to run over the shelves, covered with newspaper).

The beer glasses were washed in cold water that was changed once a week. A primus stove was used to heat a kettle of water, which took about half an hour, all meals being cooked on the fire or Dutch oven, heated by coal, in the wall of the kitchen.

The draymen, Lenny Bloomfield and Basil Crane delivered the barrels of beer then went and sat inside and downed a pint... before driving off. There was no breathalyser in those days!

No food was served to the public but crisps, nuts and big biscuits called 'wads' (like Arrowroot or Rich Tea) costing an old penny each were available.

There were two lavatories (one for private use, the other for the public) that were the bucket type and emptied into a ditch once a week.

Using this facility on Tuesday mornings, prior to emptying, was pretty unpleasant.

Hot water, carried upstairs from the kitchen, was poured into a bowl on the marble wash-stand in bedrooms, for daily washing.

Clothes were washed by hand using water heated in a copper, and rinsed from water drawn from a pump in the backyard.

Once, a man called Mr Shepherd alighted from the train (that stopped at Mellis station) and asked for accommodation but although a 'hotel', guests were not normally taken in. Enquiring into the possibility of staying a few days until he could arrange some alternative, he stayed for nine months, obviously not over-bothered by the lack of comfort.

It was, however, the social hub of the village, there being little else to do when people's mobility was restricted.

A man called Ernie (uncle of Derek and Myra in the school photograph) tapped a florin (10p piece) on a tin tray whilst either his daughter Pat or another lady played the piano. Favourite songs – "Lily Marlene" and "Underneath the Arches" were sung by everyone present.

Speaking to a former Mellis resident the other day, I mentioned Pat Faulkner (nee Whiting), daughter of Ernie. She is very kind, very unassuming, in her 70s, and has lived in Mellis all her life. Without her (and another lady who sometimes played) social evenings in the pub would have been non-existent.