village and could cycle further
afield with accompaniment.
Bill had a son Ronald and
daughter Hilda. During
World War Two, Hilda
married a man called Tom
Hayes, Alan’s grandfather.
Tom worked as a Prudential
Insurance agent. “He’d always
do his Carterton rounds on this
pushbike which I’ve still got,”
Alan says. “I think he stole it from
The Eagle.”
A group trying to break into Tom’s
garden on one occasion would realise
he was not someone to be messed
with. “There was a fence at the end
of the garden that they attempted
to climb,” Alan remembers. “Grandad
grabbed his air rifle and went charging
up the garden to greet them.” They
fled fairly promptly.
Hilda and Tom had a daughter called
Sue, who went on to marry Alan’s
father, our Carterton Character, Robin
Cartwright.
Born in Maidenhead, where his dad
owned a nightclub, Robin came to
Carterton in the sixties as an RAF chef.
“He became one of the first English
people to be in the RAF here after the
American takeover,” Alan says. In 1951
RAF Brize Norton was given to The
United States Air Force, who stayed
there until 1965. “Dad was there as it
was changing back to a UK controlled
air base,” Alan says. “He taught the
Americans how to make Yorkshire
Pudding.”
After his time in the RAF, Robin ended
up as a Prudential Insurance agent –
like his father-in-law.
“Dad and Grandad were pretty well
known,” Alan tells me. “They sold
insurance to all of Carterton. They
were on pretty much everybody’s
doorstep.
“Dad was always dressed very nice in
a suit and he smoked a big fat cigar.
He’d go into a client’s house and even
if
they
didn’t smoke
he’d still be puffing on it.”
Robin would spend most of his time
going door-to-door to see his clients,
and they would come to him in his
own house. “When I was 17 and living
at home I had three hearses because
that was my thing – I liked hearses,”
Alan says. “So they’d be on the drive
when my dad’s clients turned up to
discuss life insurance with him.”
Also into banger racing, Alan was
often in possession of battered cars.
“Dad was trying to run a Prudential
office and I had all these cars smashed
to bits outside.”
Occasionally Robin would have to
take the trip to the Prudential office
in Burford. “He always had run-ins
with his supervisors there,” Alan says.
“They’d want him to do stuff one way
and he wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t
stick to any rules. The company would
try and make him sell things to people
that they didn’t really need. And he
wouldn’t do it. He wanted to sell
people what they needed, not what
they were told they needed.”
Robin and Sue on their wedding day
Alan sits in-between his
dad Robin and mum Sue
97
