We walked the mile to school - on our own (two of us) - from an early age. The road sweeper always chatted and he remembered any unusual vehicle without a local number, as there were so few. We roamed about 300 acres of woodland, but kept away from one area (didn't know why we were told not to go there, but later it became clear that was the pheasant rearing patch of the local gamekeeper).
Farmhouse was usually unlocked. The regular weekly callers were the baker (3 times a week?), butcher, coop order clerk, coop delivery man, laundry man and egg man. They all stopped for a cuppa, I think. Postie didn't stop for a cuppa very often. The local cattle feed merchant, mobile hardware fellow came about every two weeks, or monthly. Newspapers (and comics etc) were left at the farm gate (about a quarter mile down the drive) and the coal merchant and cattle feed delivery men nearly always had a cuppa at delivery times.
Oh, and the prison worker often walked to and from the farm, if he was not picked up at the gate house of the local nick. Guns stood in the hallway, including the rifle.
Yep, days when life was a little less frantic than nowadays. Telephone number had two digits and you spoke to an operator for anything other than local exchange numbers.
Even back in the war days, the hard working German POW walked the fields with a gun (before my time). No shortage of bunnies for the stew pot, on the farm and he had no intention of escaping - he was 'safe'.
We knew we should stand behind the cutter bar while oiling the knife/fingers on the mowing machine, etc. We knew which cows were OK to hand milk or ride on their backs, to keep away from the sows after farrowing - and so on....
