Press the reverse button of your time travel machine (they must have been invented by now!), go back to the year 1953, and you will see that the window ledges on the front of our prefab have been draped with three Union Jack flags. The most any other prefab on the estate could muster was two!
Mantelpieces are chock-a-block with Coronation memorabilia. Not just commemorative Coronation spoons, commemorative Coronation knives and commemorative Coronation trays -but commemorative Coronation mugs as well. "Mugs with mugs!" was the catchphrase of members of the Oliver Cromwell Society who met up at the Hat and Feather on the London Road. In the 1930s theatrical types and claimants to the throne always headed for this public house. (The hat and feathers had once been the insignia of the Cavaliers.)
By the end of June 1953 there was hardly a five year old in the country who could not spell 'Coronation' and draw a coronet as well. Canny captains of industry re-branded their mints, sofas, lollies, and evaporated milk as Coronation mints, Coronation sofas, Coronation lollies, and Coronation evaporated milk. Barbers would say "Any Coronation items for the week-end, sir?"
A month earlier, in May 1953, we crowded into 'Tubby' Lard's sitting-room to watch the television broadcast of Blackpool's 4-3 Cup Final win over Bolton Wanderers. Stanley Mortensen (whose career was to reach an even greater climax when he joined Bath City) scored a hat-trick.
Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary climbed Mount Everest (someone claimed they carried a Bath Bun in their knapsack) and in 1956 an ex-Bath schoolboy - Roger Bannister - ran the mile in under four minutes.
We can now see that the period from May 1953 to May 1954 was the zenith of classical prefab civilization. Historians call it 'Prefabnia Extraordinus'. Yet no commemorative memorabilia were ever made for prefabs. Not a single plate or spoon - let alone a mug - was ever made to commemorate them. No captain of industry ever had the iconic symbol of a prefab printed on one of his products. No barber ever tactfully asked a customer if they needed "any Prefabs for the week-end?" Even in their Indian Summer of the early 1950s prefabs' exuded an absent presence.

Our prefab has five rooms, or six if you include the hall. Most other houses seem to have more, so it is no wonder that prefab dwellers have long been fascinated by the Biblical line "My Father's House has many rooms." ('Tubby' Lard's unorthodox reading of the text is that the Almighty works in the hotel industry.)
The front of Bath Abbey is dominated by two sculptures of Jacob's Ladder. The angels are shown flapping their wings in an upward ascent towards the heavenly heights. Look more carefully and you will notice that a couple of angels have lost their footing and are tumbling down the hierarchy of virtue. This is what happens if you go astray.
Hierarchies are everywhere, and that includes prefab estates. Take no notice of those who say prefab residents are all roughly (and they mean roughly) of the same status. The slick salesman who lives in the immaculate corner prefab says "au contraire!" This is someone who is never seen wearing the standard prefab string vest or drinking out of the standard prefab bottle of pale ale. His evenings are spent listening to Bach and mulling over the ideological differences between Jacobins and Jacobites. It was no wonder he was offended by the photo-journalist from the 'style section' of the New Yorker who published a picture of him in his sitting-room armchair under the headline "A British trailer-trash interior."
Working out just where our own prefab stands on the estate's Jacob's Ladder hierarchy is a tricky exercise. The old man only has one string vest, and has never had much of a liking for bottles of pale ale. When there has been plenty of work with Derro Enamels life in prefab number twenty-four looks "rather good" (a favourite phrase.) If there is a long work-less spell at home life gets less predictable. When the old man returned home after an exacting debate on the impact of inflation on living standards in the Golden Fleece he collided with the front gate (it has never been the same since) and our Capability Brown-style light green speckled hedge started looking a shade forlorn. Passing by Bath Abbey a week later I noticed that one of the falling angels had slipped down another rung.

The catchy slogan of Twiverton Baptist Church in the 1950s was "Fight truth decay!" Potential true believers were enticed through its portal by blandishments of coloured drawing paper, crayons, rubbers, and - this was perhaps the clincher - aromatic bottles of glue.
"They have gone to the other one!" a miffed recruiter from Saint Michael Is No Angel was told at prefab number twenty-four when an entire squad - yes, an entire squad! - defected to the Methodists after news got out that chocolate cakes and lemonade were to be included in its Sunday School largesse. Never before in the history of Christain theology had so many treats been bestowed in return for listening to such slender morsels of divinely revealed doctrine.
Friedrich Engels noted that people are to be judged "by what they do and not by what they say." (Which makes judgements about Engels himself - who was at one and the same time a
revolutionary communist and a Manchester textiles capitalist - a shade tricky.) The cigarette cards and cakes handed out by Twiverton's competing Sunday Schools had a very ephemeral impact. What really impressed the local population was the fact that not a single Twiverton Sunday School teacher's name ever appeared on the list of criminal convictions published by the Bath & Wilting. ("Married Sunday School teachers were a different kettle of fish" Dai 'Tolstoy' Lectic would say in a witty aside.)
Towards the end of the 1950s religious observance in Twiverton went into decline and its "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" was heard as clearly here as it had been on Dover Beach. Although in its formative years some New Testament texts had been wilfully given a sinister
anti-Jewish edge (thereby implicating Christianity in all kinds of atrocities culminating in those of the twentieth century) the narrative of the slaves' heroic struggle for human dignity against the merciless power of Rome remained a great source of ethical inspiration to Twivertonians.

Just down the road from the prefabs was Saint Michael (Is No Angel) church. Michael was the 'top dog' archangel whose most important job was to stand up for the people of Israel. Given what happened to the people of Israel in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s you start to have doubts as to whether this 'top dog' archangel was all he was cracked up to be.
Church of England Sunday School meetings in Twiverton never went on for too long and always ended with a treat. A hallowed tradition in the 1950s was the vicar assistant's solemn and much appreciated closing ceremony of handing out cigarette cards of tanks and fighter planes and various other gruesome instruments of war. "Any means necessary to win over young Christian soldiers!" would be the peace loving vicar's assistant's cheery words.
Bert Downhill was coaxed out of his marathon Sunday morning kips in prefab number nineteen by the rumours of cigarette card largesse. Reg went on to be confirmed in Saint Michael's and at one point there was even talk of his being granted a place on the coveted front row pew! The coveted front row pew had a pedigree which went back into tims immemorial. It was a place on the coveted front road pew which assured the gentry that the established social order remained secure. Although Bert would one day go (there is no other way of putting it) downhill - the Englishcombe Village cider house has a lot to answer for - no one would ever forget the time he came within a hair's breadth of taking his place on the coveted front row pew.
Take a stroll through the tranquil grounds of Saint Michael (part Saxon/part Norman/and part D-I-Y) and you will almost feel touched by the balm of Gilead. While many of the inscriptions on the gravestones have been eroded by the biting west wind, there is one which refuses to be bowed by the passage of time. For one time residents of Twiverton's prefab estates it has come to act as a lodestar which guides them through the travails of life.

"Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents and innocent as doves." (Matthew 10:16).

Poets inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke (especially his 'Ever Again' verse about resting "Among flowers. Facing the sky") wander towards this churchyard at dusk. This is where intimations of the future can be heard being whispered through the trees.