It is hard to pin down the precise date when a group of us decided to "have a go!" at setting up a Prefab Philosophy Club. (The "have a go!" phrase was inspired by Wilfred Pickles, the folksy Yorkshireman who hosted the "Have a go, Joe!" BBC radio quiz broadcast which ran from 1946 to 1967).
One of the first projects of the Prefab Philosophy Club was to take a leaf out of Walter Benjamin's book and encourage residents to make "maps of their own lives." Benjamin's idea of "aura" had impressed us all. This was only to be expected since prefabs are saturated with a very distinctive aura or atmosphere of their own - and the idea of mapping out our own lives was made us appreciate this all the more. Here is Benjamin's own effort (he lived from 1892 - 1940) at sketching out his own 'life-map' in pre-First World War Berlin.

"I have evolved a system of signs, and on the grey background of such maps they would make a colourful show if I clearly marked in the houses of my friends and girl friends, the assembly halls of various collectives, from the 'debating chambers' of the Youth Movement to the gathering places of the Communist youth, the hotel and brothel rooms that I knew for one night, the decisive benches of the Tiergarten, the ways to different schools and the graves that I saw filled, the sites of prestigious cafes whose long-forgotten names daily crossed our lips, the tennis courts where empty apartment blocks stand today, and the halls emblazoned with gold and stucco that the terrors of dancing classes made almost the equal of gymnasiums."

This was the life-map conjured up by one of the members of the Prefab Philosophy Club (her nom de plume was Spinzoza Dice). What Walter Benjamin had done for pre-war 'Berlin'we would do for post-Second World War Twiverton!

"We have evolved a system of signs, and on the green background of such maps (laid out on the baize of subbuteo table football pitches) they make a colourful show. We have clearly marked in the prefabs of our friends and girl friends and our key gathering places. These include the 'jug and bottle' entrance to the 'My Full Moon' public house, the fish and chip shop run by Mr and Mrs Tobins, the open bedroom window of prefab number thirteen through which - on one quite unforgetable occasion - a young lady dressed only in her swimming costume gave us a friendly wave, the kerbstone on the corner of Woodhedge Road where we sat and pondered our futures, the bendy tree in the 'wooly bed' in Pennyquick Wood, the not-over-prestigious cafe hut in the football ground, the playing field that stands on top of the old coalmine, the secret pathway to the Gothic turrets of Brunel's railway tunnel, and the green emblazoned with daisies and buttercups on which the dazzling prowess of our sporting skills would be displayed to an awestruck world.

For all of 'Tubby' Lard's faults, it has to be said that he was the inspiration behind the setting up of the Prefab Philosophy Club. He started everything off by asking: "So why should supporting a football clun called Bristol Rovers have a claim to moral superiority over supporting a football club called Bristol City?"
When news of our Prefab Philosophy Club first got out the number of people who were asking the council to re-house them further away from the declined, while the number asking to move into the prefabs increased! The chap who works for the Admiralty who keeps a terrapin - a freshwater turtle - in his back garden in Camelot Green was seen doubling up with laughter when he was told that a seminar on Immanuel Kant was being held in Woodhedge Road. It was only after Nina Chapmain told him it was a "categorical imperative" that he attend the next one (Nina must have been one of the first Twivertonians to get to Cambridge) that the terrapin-like smirk vanished from his "So the prefabs Kant get enough of Kant!" face.
Some members of the Philosophy Club take part in the wireless football results rota on Saturday afternoons. There is always a short quiz before the results are broadcast at five o'clock. 'Tubby' Lard always finds a killer question to floor everyone. "Which language was spoken in seventh century Edinburgh?" was an especially memorable one. (It was Welsh - the Welsh-speaking Goddodin tribe was living in Edinburgh at this time.)
The football results would be listened to in almost complete silence - at least until the ones from the Scottish Football League came on. This all changed in 1958 when a Scottish international called Charlie 'Cannonball' Fleming was signed by Bath City. The one time East Fife and Sunderland player scored fifty goals in one season! Soon the Prefab Philosophy Club was planning a conference on Adam Smith, David Hume, and Adam Ferguson. 'Tubby' Lard (who used to shout out "Who on earth are Stenhousemuir!" as soon as the Scottish results came on) became a fervent follower of the club held the Scottish Qualifying Cup trophy aloft in 1902. When 'Cannonball' was in Bath we would all be on tenterhooks as we waited to hear the result of Partick Thistle brushing against the Heart of Midlothian and prepared our research papers on the impact of the 18th century Scottish Enlightenment.

Jokes told in public houses in the 1950s would often start with the words: "There was an Englishman, a Welshman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman." Professor Dr. Sigmund Freud's book on the Psychopathology of Everyday Life (page 161 of the 1938 Pelican edition) explains what is going on by pointing to the following quotation:

Goethe said of Lichtenberg:
"Where he cracks a joke, there lies a concealed problem."

Underlying all the "There was an Englishman, a Welshman, an Irishman and a Scotsman" jokes was a frantic bid at relieving the tensions that are part and parcel of living under a multi-national state. It was only thanks to the mutal tolerance of Englishmen, Welshmen, Irishmen and Scotsmen that the United Kingdom had survived at all.
Scotsmen were strangely absent from the old man's drinking circles, and this could have been partly because of the tyranny of distance. Scotland seemed a heck of a long way from Somerset. Getting from South Wales to Somerset only took a couple of hours. Even Dublin was just an overnight ferry trip and a train ride away. There was a feeling that Glasgow was a place just to the south of Iceland.
Although the "There was an Englishman, a Welshman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman" jokes always seemed to be well received, the laughter which followed them always felt a shade contrived. As could also be the case with some of the passages of Professor Dr. Sigmund's Freud's famous book, it could be impossible to make heads or tales of what they really meant.