Ivor the Humber Box

Sometimes, the re-enactment world is more bizarre than even the general public think it is . Sometimes, the re-enactment world is bizarre to the re-enactors themselves.
Granted, there are several different levels of re-enactment for many eras, and for the 1940s, people who recreate various aspects of it range from the hardcore living historians, to the swing dancers, to the 'promenaders' who dress in anything from approximations of imagined impressions of wartime apparel adapted from anachronistic items, to those whose attention to detail would call up the expression 'more wartime than wartime' in order to pose on the platforms and ride the steam trains at various railway events. Let us not also forget the battle re-enactors and the military and classic vehicle enthusiasts who may or may not match their obsession with having the vehicle spot on to the last cross headed bolt with their own appearance when driving or displaying the ever-demanding cash and petrol guzzling mistress.

The 1940s weekend at Haworth, West Yorkshire is a place for people- watching. Haworth, usually more famous for the Bronte Parsonage, the Bronte Tea Rooms, the Bronte Antique Shoppe , the Bronte Mauseleum and the Bronte Toilets goes all red white and blue bunting and criss-crossed masking tape windows every Maytime around the date when Victory in Europe was declared in 1945. The steep cobbled mainstreet is closed off so that various jeeps and trucks and staff cars, gleaming Austin 7s, Ford Populars, sleek Vintage Rolls Royces can prowl and purr and prink while a thousand seamed stockinged, fur-stoled, killer heeled, rather less than svelte Rita Hayworth wannabe lookalikes pose beside them to the click of a thousand camera shutters.


There isn't much to do apart from looking at the shops , queuing, (but then queuing always was and always shall be a way of life in England), then finding a vantage point such as the raised seating area outside of the Black Bull pub, from which "Winston Churchill" with his obligatory bowler hat and, just in case anyone is in any doubt of whom he is meant to be, a cigar the size of a baboon's cock between his teeth, drawls the Victory speech accompanied by what appears to be some kind of strange furry animal but is in fact someone impersonating Queen Elizabeth (wife of George VI- the one who stayed in London during the blitz and was pleased when a bomb dropped on Buck House so she could hold up her head in the East End- Mum to our current monarch). From such a place the comings and goings of the crowd can be observed, the puffed up Military Police, blowing whistles you really yearn to shove somewhere dark, telling people to get out of the way. This is often a difficult thing to do because women get their heels stuck fast between the cobblestones and cannot move until men in hobnail boots which have absolutely no grip whatsoever on the slope slide gingerly to rescue them.

Bottlenecks occur as the shuffling crowd heaves and suddenly comes to a standstill when two small groups , one travelling up hill, the other down hill stop to talk to each other, or someone stops dead to take a photo of an old pram containing a life-like baby doll in a full suit gas mask that some poor bloke sweating in Home Guard Hairy Marys and a fat woman with very swollen ankles ,curlers hanging out of her turbanned head-scarf, and a dead ferret with six legs slung around her neck are pushing up and down the hill as if it were a broken down Austin 7.

A cold wind wuthers off the moor and people shiver. The real Yorkshire people bound up and down the hill like sheep dogs in a Hovis advert, the visitors complain bitterly about backs and feet and legs and varicose veins. They hang around the ENSA stage, which someone, as usual, has put by the steps of the church so no one can get through to the steps to the car parks to get out. You are trapped by the nightmare strains of a ukelele and a George Formby impersonator. The crushing crowd and the smell of mothballs, the feel of old fur on your neck (you hope against hope it hasn't got fleas) the puckered lips of old ladies smacking your cheek or worse, mouth, as they shriek that you remind them of some long dead flame , all combine to give you a panic attack. Clouds bank up blackly and the jeeps , those who do not know Haworth Moor weather, scramble to put the canvas on the tilts.

A group of German SS joke around , their black uniforms sinister. What they are doing there, promenaders portraying Axis troops in an English village reliving Victory in Europe Day, has been a cause for concern and question for years, but they are allowed to come. It helps bring home what the war was about. At least that is one way of looking at it.
Attention this year is diverted from them by the Japanese bloke, dressed in full Eastern Theatre uniform, with his wife in traditional kimono , obi, tabi socks and pattens, the whole geisha works. No one complained at the incongruity, the inappropriateness, the total lunacy- instead they all wanted their photographs taken with them. And the Japanese soldier and his lady complied with never ending patience and miles and miles of white toothed smiles.

It was the most surreal thing I have seen in years. What was also surreal is that I knew I should express disapproval as I usually do with the presence Gestapo, but somehow this smiling couple was symbolic of something more than old enmities. I felt sort of ashamed that I had ever objected to these very friendly chaps doing the Nazis- the leader, when I got talking to him, I have always turned my back on them in disgust before, turned out to be a car park attendant in Blackburn and his politics to the left of Trotski, and their representation of 'what might have been' extremely accurate. The Jap was showing part of his country's history that he was not proud of, but we cannot erase it, and neither can he, and to see him and his wife confront it in this most unlikely place was at once humbling and a lesson in what courage can really mean. It has caused me to rethink a few things, including my own arrogance.




We go down the hill to talk to the military vehicle friends and are offered a ride in Ivor's Humber Box , done out for 8th Army Desert Rats, that won best wartime vehicle in last week's show. Ivor has not done the Haworth procession before, neither has Brandon in the big Dodge 6 wheeler. After the procession is shepherded down the hill and directed to turn around and wait in a narrow side road that no one has measured to see if large Dodge trucks can get down, never mind turn around and wait as instructed, Ivor is beginning to regret deciding to show off the Humber. Brandon defies the MP and drives past the end of the lane. A message comes across John's walkie Talkie that Brandon is lost.

The parade starts. By the time it gets to the top of the mainstreet, and Ivor realises that he is supposed to drive down the 1 in 4 cobbled gradient behind a jeep which is having difficulty with its brakes, through Kami Kazi crowds leaping in front of him with cameras, crowds that will not stand back far enough to allow all wheels to run over cobbles and not feet. We get to where we started and Ivor whistles with relief. Then he is told to do a second circuit. He wails that he is sure his brakes are now shot, but he does it, swearing that no way will he go around a third time. Twice with no casualties was a miracle, three times would be pushing it, not to mention the cost of the petrol. And no one does.

The old blue and cream bus disgorges its cargo of evacuee children clutching gas masks and teddy bears. They get better at looking like bewildered waifs every year. I think I know how they felt as we head out for the car park and home as it begins to spitterspat with moors rain, my opinions and nerves in tatters, not quite knowing where to go in my thoughts of what is right and what is wrong from here. My world, yet not my world. 'They have this thing called Spring in the country, Mum. They have one every year.'