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.