Memories are made of this

Outsiders
One way of earning money generally involved getting up very early in the morning during summer holidays. Following cornflakes and a quick wipe with a flannel, Esther and her brother were off on their bikes. Twenty minutes later she rested against a stone in the belly of their pretty town where, decades since, village life had been administered. Feeling cold and tired she hoped her brother would not waste too much time in the shop where pet food nestled near chocolate bars and where her uncle had his hair cut too.
They had already discovered from previous potato-picking days it was always best to get there as early as possible in order to find the best spot in the field. Whatever was her brother doing? As she stood against the stone, she recalled the words of her Aunt Rose. How she had been quite eager to tell her that, once, their village had been run from that particular stone by the supposedly important folk of the town, and there was little vandalism. She told her how you could leave your doors open as well as leaving milk checks on the doorstep. No talk of muggings, rape or murder, either- so it seemed to her then! She was a kindly and loving lady. As she beat the hell out of four eggs in a brown earthenware mixing bowl, before finally deftly scattering the self-raising flour into her mix, she had recently talked of the past…her past…and that stone.
So it was that as Esther leaned on the same stone, still waiting for her brother to reappear from the shop, she thought of ‘Pottery Bill’ and how her aunt said he would arrive from the next village in his old van, then proceed to carefully set out boxes of china and loose tea-sets, as well as odd cups and saucers, along with other oddments which he carefully spread around the same stone. People would visit after a gentle stroll and buy one or two nice bits.
Her auntie had said, as they stood in her best room, where one day she would be laid out, how she recalled her and a friend seeing a man from her same street buying a bedroom toilet set. How folk had laughed when the same unfortunate purchaser had dropped the bloody lot and himself as well through the hedge of Wisteria Cottage. What an awful shock the courting couple had received quietly laying there as a po landed on their heads and they were forced to hurriedly pick shattered china from their Sunday-best underwear. At last Esther’s brother reappeared and she ceased her musings as he willingly shared salted crisps from a small white paper bag.
As she cycled alongside her brother down Station Road, their metal buckets swinging and rattling against their bikes, it started to rain. In a way they welcomed this, for it would mean less competition in the nearby potato fields; feeling freer to crawl in the earth and claw the muddy potatoes from the freshly overturned earth as the tractor moved away into the distance and toward the derelict old mill. With all the effort it took, why did she lend the money she grafted so hard for to her stepfather Joe on a rather long, non-return basis?
Up they went on their bikes past the old cemetery where some of her ancestors were buried and then quite close to the cricket field where, in summer-time, there could be heard the crack of bat on ball, chanting and clapping, whilst over the road was a converted school, where a bulldog romped on the lawn. Boys had played marbles or fought and where her brothers had tumbled only a few years since. Right next door to this was the church, where a progressive young vicar had faced fury from his flock when he tore out a few pews so there was room for kids to play.