First Light describes Laurie arriving with his mother and the rest of the

family at a cottage in the Cotswolds village ofSlad, Gloucestershire. The

children gorge themselves on berries and bread as their harassed mother tries
to get the cottage and the furniture into some kind of order. The house relies
on a small wood-fire for the cooking and a hand pump in the scullery for its
water. They are visited by a man in uniform who is sleeping out in the
surrounding woods he visits them in the mornings for food and to dry out
his damp clothes. He is finally taken off by men in uniform as a deserter. The
chapter ends with the villagers riotously celebrating the end of the Great War.

First Names describes Laurie still sleeping in his mother's bed until he is
forced out of it by his younger brother, Tony, and made to sleep with the two
elder boys. As he grows older, he starts to recognise the villagers as
individuals Cabbage-Stump Charlie, the local bruiser, Albert the Devil, a
deaf mute beggar, and Percy-from-Painswick, a clown and ragged dandy who
likes to seduce the girls with his soft tongue. Owing to its location, the cottage
is in the path of the floods that flow into the valley, and Laurie and his family
have to go outside to clear the storm drain every time there is a heavy
downpour, though even this sometimes fails to stop the sludge despoiling their
kitchen from time to time.
Village School

The village school at that time provided all the instruction we were likel

The dame teacher is called Crabby B, owing to her predilection for suddenly
hitting out at the boys for no apparent reason. However, she meets her match in
Spadge Hopkins, a burly local farmer's boy, who leaves the classroom one day
after placing her on top of one of the cupboards. She is replaced by Miss Wardley
from Birmingham, who "wore sharp glass jewellery" and imposes discipline that is
"looser but stronger".
The Kitchen This chapter describes the Lees' domestic life. At the beginning
Lee makes a reference to his father, who had abandoned them, saying that he
and his brothers never knew any male authority. After working in the Army
Pay Corps their father entered the Civil Service and settled in London for
good. As Lee says,

Meanwhile we lived where he had left us; a relic of his provincial youth

Lee describes each member of the family and their daily routine, his sisters
going off to work in shops or at looms in Stroud, and the younger boys
trying to avoid their mother's chores. In the evenings the whole family sits
around the big kitchen table, the girls gossiping and sewing as the boys do
their homework and the eldest son, Harold , who is working as a lathe
handler, mends his bicycle.

Grannies in the Wainscot describes the two old women who were the Lees'
neighbours, Granny Trill and Granny Wallon, who were permanently at
war with each other. Granny Wallon or 'Er-Down-Under spends her days
gathering the fruits of the surrounding countryside and turning them into
wines that slowly ferment over a year in their bottles. Granny Trill or 'ErUp-Atop spends her days combing her hair and reading her almanacs. As
a young girl she had lived with her father, a woodsman, and she still seeks
comfort in the forest. The two old women arrange everything so that they
never meet, shopping on different days, using different paths down the
bank to their homes, and continuously rapping on their floors and
ceilings. One day Granny Trill is taken ill and quickly fades away. She is
soon followed by Granny Wallon, who loses her will to live.

Public Death, Private Murder describes the murder of a villager made good
who returns from New Zealand to visit his family, boasts about his wealth
and flaunts it in the local pub. The police try to find his attackers but are
met by a wall of silence, and the case is never closed.

Mother is Lee's tribute to his mother, Annie (ne Light). Having been forced
to leave school early because of her mother's death, and the need to look
after her brothers and father, she then went into domestic service, working
as a maid in various large houses. Having left to work for her father in his
pub, The Plough, she then answered an advertisement, "Widower (four
children) Seeks Housekeeper" and met the man who became Lee's father.
After four happy years together, and three more children, he abandoned
them. Lee describes his mother as having a love for everything and an
extraordinary ability with plants, being able to grow anything anywhere.
As he says,

Her flowers and songs, her unshaken fidelities, her attempts at or

Winter and Summer describes the two seasons affecting the village and its
inhabitants. During one particularly cold winter the village boys go
foraging with old cocoa-tins stuffed with burning rags to keep their
mittenless hands warm. The week before Christmas the church choir goes

carol-singing, which involves a five-mile tramp through deep snow. Calls at

the homes of the squire, the doctor, the merchants, the farmers and the
mayor soon fill their wooden box with coins as they light their way home
with candles in jamjars. In contrast, the long hot summer days are spent
outdoors in the fields, followed by games of "Whistle-or-'Oller-Or-We-shallnot-foller" at night.

Sick Boy is an account of the various illnesses Lee suffered as a young boy,
some of which brought him to the brink of death. He also writes about the
death of his four-year-old sister Frances, who died unexpectedly when Lee
was an infant.

The Uncles is a vivid description of his mother's brothers, his uncles

Charlie, Ray, Sid and Tom. All of them fought as cavalrymen in the Great
War and then settled back on the land, though Ray emigrated to Canada
to work on the transcontinental railway, the Canadian Pacific, before
returning home.

Outings and Festivals is devoted to the annual village jaunts and events.
Peace Day in 1919 is a colourful affair, the procession ending up at the
squire's house, where he and his elderly mother make speeches. The
family also makes a four-mile hike to Sheepscombe to visit their
grandfather and Uncle Charlie and his family. There is also a village outing
on charabancs to Weston-super-Mare, where the women sunbathe on the
beach, the men disappear down the side-streets into pubs and the
children amuse themselves in the arcade on the pier, playing the penny
machines. There is also the Parochial Church Tea and Annual
Entertainment to which Laurie and his brother Jack gain free admittance
for helping with the arrangements. They finally get to gorge themselves on
the food laid out on the trestle-tables in the schoolhouse and Laurie plays
his fiddle accompanied by Eileen on the piano to raucous applause.

First Bite at the Apple describes the growth of the boys into young
adolescents and the first pangs of love. Lee states that "quiet incest
flourished where the roads were bad", and states that the village neither
approved nor disapproved, but neither did it complain to authority. Lee is
seduced by Rosie Burdock underneath a haywagon after drinking cider
from a flagon:

Never to be forgotten, that first long secret drink of golden fire, juic
There is also a plan among half a dozen of the boys to rape Lizzy Berkeley,
a fat 16-year-old who writes religious messages on trees in the wood, on

the way back from church. They wait for her one Sunday morning in Brith
Wood, but when Bill and Boney accost her she slaps them twice and they
lose courage, allowing her to run away down the hill. Lee says that Rosie
eventually married a soldier, while Jo, his young first love, grew fat with a
Painswick baker and lusty Bet, another of his sweethearts, went to breed in
Australia.
Last Days describes the gradual breaking up of the village community
with the appearance of motor cars and bicycles. The death of the
squire coincides with the death of the church's influence over its
younger parishioners, while the old people just drop away:

... white-whiskered, gaitered, booted and bonneted, ancient

Lee's own family breaks up as the girls are courted by young men arriving
on motorcycles. This marks the end of Lee's rural idyll and his emergence
into the wider world.

The girls were to marry; the Squire was dead; buses ran