Christmas at Ritty Farm

Leaving behind all the cares of home in Cambridgeshire, we set off for wildest Herefordshire in high spirits. The trip took us about 4 hours plus a stop or two on the way and so it was dark when we wound around miles of narrow hedged-in lanes to the tiny village of Michaelchurch Escley. From there we made several stops along the final stretch while I got out of the car with a torch to read any signs that might give us a clue how near we were to our final destination at Ritty Farm.

Turning off the lane we descended a farm track to a stream with a narrow bridge and then onwards up the other side of the valley to the cottage. My first thought was that we might need a 4x4 vehicle to get back out, but the need never arose. If it had snowed (as we hoped it might) we might have been in trouble. Even so, as long as we had food and drink, it would have been a Christmas to remember, possibly a Happy New Year too.

The cottage itself is what I would call a classic little Welsh stone farm-house with a porch and footpath leading up to it. Inside we found it to be warm and cosy with a lot of features reminiscent of my Gran’s cottage in Swaledale, including a big fireplace and a drying rack. I particularly liked some of the pictures on the walls, especially a huge black and white hand-made print of a salmon.

Whenever we rent a cottage we order a delivery from Sainsbury’s, but it’s always a bit of touch-and-go to see if we can get there before the van arrives. This time we were well ahead so our son Dan kept opening the door to look for his dinner. Fortunately, the delivery man knew exactly where he was and we had most of the food and booze required for a Christmas stay. The final ingredients would be ready for collection in Hereford at the last minute.

Soon after dawn the next day we had a chance to take in our surroundings. I had imagined a place on a hillside close to the Black Mountains and Hay Bluff with great views and, hopefully, some wildlife. That’s just what we found. I love Herefordshire but I get really nostalgic when I get close to the border with Wales because I used to explore the area on a Lambretta scooter while living in Newport in Gwent during my teens. On a Sunday I might ride up the Usk to the Beacons or into Crickhowell, on to the Black Mountains and then down to the Wye Valley for a quick way home. The outlines of the hills are etched into my memory.

Another tradition, besides ordering food for ourselves, is to get hold of some bird food and feeders if required. I scattered a liberal amount of seed along the kitchen wall and had an instant response from blue tits, great tits and nuthatches. The tits were not so much of a surprise except there was an awful lot of them, but the nuthatches were special for me as they have almost disappeared from where I live. By the second day we had built up quite a following with coal tits, chaffinches and a few sparrows joining in. Bigger birds included a resident cock pheasant, a jay, crows, green and great-spotted woodpeckers, blackbirds and a mistle thrush that held sway over the lower part of the garden where there was a spectacular spread of holly and mistletoe. Flying overhead there was often a kite or a buzzard and I heard ravens cronking somewhere out in the fog one morning. During the week I saw 25 species of birds in the garden area or overhead, and added a few more on the drive over to Hay-on-Wye where we also saw roe deer.

The Ritty provided a great base for us to explore by foot or by car. We loved discovering Longtown with its castle and brilliant local store. The drive to Hereford where our son lives often took 40 minutes with traffic jams adding to that time as there is only one bridge across the river into the city: quite a contrast with life out on the hills where we met very little traffic. We learned to avoid going into the city and meet up elsewhere.

I think it was one of the best Christmases we have ever had, especially since we got to meet up with some of our scattered family while we were there.

A proper twitch

 Tuesday 20/10/2020

I spent today on the North Norfolk coast around Holme-next-the Sea. It was an unplanned day out as I have a long to-do list and the weather outside was dismal, wet and gloomy. It looked like being like an office day.

Most days I check the internet for the previous day's bird news through Cambridge Bird Club and the Norfolk Ornithologists' Association. Monday had been a real red letter day. I don't think I have ever seen so many bird names in red ink; the colour used to denote species that are cosmically, mind bendingly, off the scale in terms of rarity and desirability. 

For some birders rarity is the attraction, presenting the chance to add a new "tick" to your life-list. I must admit that I am a bit drawn to that. Despite having seen a huge variety of birds in different parts of the world, there will always be more birds that I haven't seen than those that I have. Even so, only a few of them are on my birding to-do list. 

To make my list they have to be charismatic, gripping to look at, or perhaps exotic in some way. Some birds are symbolic of other things, other places, other times. Birds of prey, all birds of prey, even little kestrels and merlins, are majestic; they exude power and wildness. And I suppose some birds are just comical; they have novelty value. 

Monday's red-letter birds included an Eastern stonechat, a dusky warbler, an Eastern rufous bush-chat, Pallas's warblers and a two red-flanked blue-tails. All of these birds are well out of their normal ranges, in Asia and Africa. 

It was the blue-tails that had me hooked because, like robins, redstarts, wheatears, flycatchers and stonechats, they simply look perfect to me: perfectly proportioned and, well, a bit cocky. This is a bird I have always wanted to see and so off I went. I never do that.

Birders at Home Dunes

After half an hour on the muddy road through the Fens, splattered by lorries and tractors I was ready to quit and go home but I pushed through towards King's Lynn and saw the sky begin to brighten. By the time I had passed Hunstanton there was a big patch of blue and the sun was coming out. This could be the day.

I joined over a dozen birders who were stood in a socially distanced semicircle as though at an outdoor production in a natural amphitheatre. Yes, the blue-tail had been seen sitting on a fence not long before I arrived. I stuck it out for an hour and decided that this scene wasn't for me. I’m too impatient. I might have to wait all day for just a glimpse of a little bird and, anyway, I don't like crowds and I hate queueing. I just not a member of the twitchers' fraternity. I'm an outsider who likes to go his own way and I can't keep still for long. So I left. Perhaps I’m not dedicated or hungry enough to merit seeing a blue-tail.

At the Holme Dunes Bird Observatory it was relatively quiet. It’s a place that always produces something for me as it has a variety of habitats, a shop and a cafe. Now this was more my scene. I wandered on my own with a hot Cornish pastie in hand, stopping whenever a movement caught my eye. The warden at the ringing station told me where a second blue-tail had been seen and I spent another hour or two pacing the same length of path over and over until most of the other visitors had gone, leaving a hide vacant. It was as good a place to stare at as any and I needed to sit down. 

Out of nowhere a little bird popped up from the brambles, paused, looked around and promptly moved round the corner out of sight. It wasn't what I expected in that it wasn't blue, it was pale cream and orange, like autumn leaves in the sunshine. Nor was it pugnacious like a robin or a chat. It was active but skulking like an American warbler. This was a bird that was happiest low down in the middle of a bush. But it was stunning to look at, so I just looked at it and tried to burn the image to memory, using my eye and brain as a camera…Camera? I didn’t take a picture, there was no time.

Female red-flanked bluethroat. (Debbie Pain)

I spent another hour in the hide, hoping my bird would pop up again, convinced that it was still in the same few bushes. The clouds were gathering and I thought I might go back to the first bird in the hope of getting a photo before the light went. Just as I left the car-park two photographers stopped me from running over this handsome toad-in-the-road. 

Toad-in-the-road

By the time I was back at the golf course the sun had come back and I had high hopes of seeing the bird and having it to myself. There was only one birder there but he told me it had not been seen all afternoon.

A whole day devoted to getting a mere glimpse of one little bird? Is that insane? I decided to end on a "high" by visiting Thornham Harbour where I spent the hour before sunset notching up bird sightings and simply enjoying being where I was. The tide was out and the beds of the muddy creeks were littered with shellfish, tiny crabs and marine worms all accessible by dunlin, redshanks, egrets, godwits, oystercatchers, ducks and gulls. 

Spotted redshank

Redshanks are not the most numerous of waders in the wash by a long way, but they are confiding and photogenic. One of the redshanks in the creek was running downstream, lifting its stilt-like legs high in a goose-step. It was behaving more like a greenshank, running around chasing small shrimps. It was built like a greenshank with slim, long neck, long legs and an exaggeratedly long and thin needle-like bill This was a spotted redshank and not something expected to see.  A flock of little brown finches called twites fed on seeds in the salt-marsh before going to bed. Far off I could hear brent geese and pink feet calling. A flock of snipes flew round me, possibly disturbed by an approaching marsh harrier on its way to roost at Titchwell RSPB Reserve. 

Dunlin

I watched the sun set on the marsh and set off home. The only talk-radio that I could tune into was BBC Radio Norfolk where the news featured the fact that, on today’s exceptionally hide tide, the largest number of knots ever recorded in the Wash had assembled at Snettisham. The count was roughly 140,000 birds, all from Canada or Greenland. Where else but in Norfolk would this be headline news? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-54592215

Sunset at Thornham

"Steve" (James) Stevenson. 1915-1964

Only a week ago, we discovered that Alex and I have a sister and brother (twins) that we didn't know about. We found out through Alex's daughter Lisa who lives in Oregon and was searching for ancestors. After submitting her DNA to Ancestry.com she was surprised to get a very close match with twins in England. Since then we have all been in touch with each other and both families are fascinated. There seems to be no doubt that Dad fell for a lass in Canterbury long before he met our Mum and the relationship was scotched by his CO. Discovering their real dad means a lot to the twins and this is our effort to share memories for the next two generations who are also keen to know more about our Dad, "Steve" Stevenson.

Edinburgh:

No visitor to Edinburgh can miss Arthur’s Seat, the massive, lion-shaped extinct volcano that dominates the skyline from all over the city. A lot of the best photos of “Ould Reeky” are taken from on the upper slopes with Duddingston Loch and the grassy parts of Holyrood Park in the foreground.

Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh

I scrambled on my hands and knees like a mountaineer, crawling between my Dad’s protective arms up the last and steepest bit of the rock. I was very young at the time and can’t believe we climbed the whole thing. He must have carried me a lot of the way, but he made sure I had the satisfaction of climbing to the top. It was a big adventure. 

On these early visits to Edinburgh we would stay with a lady across the road from Dad’s parents. John and Elizabeth Stevenson had a small flat in a three-story house at the bottom of Arthur’s Seat, close to the famous Sheep Heid pub with it’s skittle alley and near the ancient Duddingston Kirk where grave robbers like Burke and Hare used to operate. It’s a magical place. Bonnie Prince Charlie stayed at the other end of the street when he was in hiding but the big attraction for my brother Alex and I was the little corner shop where we were sent to buy baps for breakfast. We devoured the American comics that we could buy there, such as Superman, The Flash, The Green Hornet and comedy ones that featured whacky cartoon characters. I can smell those comics now. On one visit we bought cap bombs from the shop and walked back along the cobbles delighting in the massive BANG, CRACK and KA-POW that echoed off the canyon wall of stone houses that lined the Causeway. There were complaints. 

John and Elizabeth Stevenson in 1954

Dad was born on March 10th 1915 when his parents lived at Number 4, Ferguson’s Place in Duddingston. It seems to have vanished now. He had an older sister called Catherine and a brother who was called John after their father.  

John, Cath and James (Steve) Stevenson

Their father worked at one of Edinburgh’s great breweries as a Cooper and brewer. My dad joked that he made his money at the brewery and spent it at the Sheep Heid. They didn’t get on and his brother John was always the favourite. I never met John but I did meet my grandparents who were very old by the time we saw them. In later visits we would stay with dad’s sister Cath and her husband Alec in a classic Edinburgh tenement in Thistle Place. 

Family gathering with (l-r) James, Elizabeth, Dad, Uncle Alec,
Grandma, Kathleen and John.

Cath had polio which left her disabled and shortened her life. When we knew her she was confined to a wheelchair which must have been incredibly awkward for her, living up several flights of worn stone steps. I’m sure Uncle Alec carried her up and down; there was no lift. The flat was cosy and Alec was a lot of fun. On a wet day, he advised us to go to the Edinburgh Museum as he did as a boy. “What’s there?” I asked. “I dinna ken. I just went there talent spotting” was his reply. Dad mentioned a huge pike he had found flapping on the loch-shore. It had a smaller pike stuck in it’s jaw and he had taken it to the museum. Perhaps we could see it there. We did see a skeleton that could have been Dad’s pike but it wasn’t labelled. 

My dad and Alec were 'thick as thieves' and good fun to be around. Alec said things like “Gee Whizz” and called people “Guys”. My brother Alex is named after him. Alec was a craftsman, restoring furniture and doing marquetry. He also made fine bone ornaments and brooches. I suspect that he joined forces with my dad before the war to help him get going by sharing his workspace with him. I have a business card on which my dad deals in radios and Scottish ornaments. I bet he did the radios and Alec made the ornaments. The address 108 Hanover Street is rather posh these days. On our last visit I think dad was already aware he had cancer. Kathleen had died and Alec was with aunty Eileen who became a good friend to us. We borrowed a tenner from Alec and set off for the Isle of Skye.

In those days (around 1960), there was no Forth road bridge so we queued for ages at the old Queensferry service that ran beside the great old Forth Railway Bridge to cross into Fife and head for the Highlands. On previous trips we had managed to get to Calendar where “Dr Finlay’s Casebook” was set and to Loch Lomond and back to Edinburgh in the same day, but this was a major expedition by comparison.

I think my memory has muddled a few of these trips together. I thought we spent the first night at the top of the Small Glen on the minor road to Kenmore where we took out the fishing rods. Unfortunately the keeper in his kilt spotted us from up the brae and we had to hide the fishing gear under the car while he poked around our camp. Alex thinks that was another trip and we camped above Glen Coe. It is possible that it was the same trip as this is the “Road to The Isles” by “Tummel and Loch Rannoch and Locharber” as the song goes. It would be Spring Bank-Holiday and we had snow as we climbed out of a brooding Glen Coe and set up camp on the rushy moor. Soon the stars came out and the temperature fell even more. It was freezing in the tent so Dad got us off the camp beds and put them against the walls so we could all huddle up. At dawn the nesting curlews bubbled and whistled as they shook the frost off their backs. The milk and the water we brought with us was frozen solid.

A visit to Grandad Stevenson

On the second day we made it to the Skye ferry and put our tent up near Dunvegan at the top of  a coral-sand beach among clouds of midges. It was an astonishingly beautiful evening and we all slept like tops. I will never forget the dawn. The sea and sky merged completely together as the water was like a mirror. I couldn’t decide which shapes were clouds and which were islands until a grey seal swam by and disturbed the surface, turning its Roman nose in my direction. I lay on a rock and pretended to be a seal and he came over to say hello, but he wasn’t coming out of the water and I wasn’t going in. The white beach was littered with sea-urchin shells and jelly fish. I had never seen anything like it at the point. It had a profound effect on me.

The ferries didn’t run on Sundays and the shops didn’t open so we had to eke out our supplies until Monday which meant we were back in Edinburgh a day late. Uncle Alec must have been worried but I am so glad we made that last Scottish trip as a family. 

The Causeway in Duddingston. The Sheep Heid on the right.
Steve's parents lives in one of the tall houses on the left.

Dad talked about some of his time as a child and young man in Scotland. He sang in the choir in Duddingston Kirk and fished in the loch. Holyrood Park, the loch and the crags on Arthur’s Seat were his playgrounds where he met his schoolmates. Toys were few in those days but everyone improvised with sticks and bits of rope.They played cowboys and indians on the broom and bracken hillsides but no-one had a toy gun. He stole the click-gun that was used to light the fire because it sent out sparks. When he pretended to shoot one of his friends, he was surprised to see him grab his chest and topple backwards out of sight. In his enthusiasm for ham-acting he really went for it, toppling like a stunt man off Salisbury crags. He walked away from it apparently. Kids are amazingly resilient. 

A way to escape the claustrophobia of home life was to take up cycling. As a young teen he would join thousands of others who toured central Scotland and beyond on their drop-handlebar bikes, knocking up hundreds of miles over a weekend. That’s how he got to know Scotland so well and why he was delighted to teach Alex and I how to maintain a bicycle properly. He would also take a little tent and stove with him and forage from the countryside as he travelled. Camping and brewing-up became second nature to us all.

Escape is definitely what he wanted as he could never please his parents and spent as much time out of the house as he could. He stopped using the name James at some point around this time and called himself Steve to avoid being called “Jammie". When he left school he took an engineering apprenticeship in Glasgow. He described an upstairs workshop where he learned to work in metal and wood, and how a dynamo works. Best of all he made a brass steam engine from scratch that really worked and a crystal-set radio that used an old Will’s tobacco tin as its case. He made me one much later. It had no speaker so I had to use a pair of old bakelite earphones to hear the Home Service, very faintly. They were a bit of a craze during the war.

Marriage and the Army:

After the apprenticeship he went back to Edinburgh and set up shop, but war-time loomed and it didn’t work out . About this time he married Helen Webster Gilchrist Graham (no details yet) and they lived in Portobello or Musselburgh. He signed up and joined the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. (see military records) and, after cadet training, went to Kent in time for the Blitz and the Battle of Britain.

REME is not a Scottish regiment per se but has a lot of Scots in it. He was a Warrant Officer (2nd Lieutenant) based in Kent for most of the war where he supported the artillery, especially anti aircraft guns defending Dover and Folkestone. His base by 1948 was at No 3 AA (ant-aircraft) Workshop. 

Steve in his Warrant Officer Uniform

One of his tasks was to fit wedges to the foot-controls of the anti aircraft guns that made them “pan and tilt.”  These guns were designed to shoot upwards at enemy aircraft but, being on top of the White Cliffs of Dover and Folkestone they often had to aim downwards at aircraft that came in low over the sea to bomb and strafe the town. The gunners would latch on to a distant plane and follow it through its dive and its run in. Unfortunately this meant they were doing the Luftwaffe’s job for them by shooting up the town. The wedges stopped the gun from traversing over the houses and docks. While Steve was repairing one gun someone fired the one behind him and blew his eardrums. He became permanently deaf in his right ear. He blamed an army surgeon for the fact that it never healed and he had to keep a wad of cotton wool in his ear for the rest of his life. 

He did go to France just after D Day but was injured again when attending to an upturned gun in the dark and medi-vacced home with broken ribs. 

Post-war London:

He was a natural musician and he played trumpet and drums with jazz bands at the end of the war . He must have spent a lot of time playing and going to gigs. He could really dance too. He played with George Chisholm at one point, a genius ( but comedic) Scottish trombone player who was also a mate of Milligan, Sellars and the other Goons. Him and Mum particularly loved Humphrey Littleton and his band. (I met Humph much later when he brought his band to the nature reserve in Scotland where we lived.) Humph chaired “I’m sorry I haven’t a clue” on Radio 4 for years. He was a hero of mine too. Humph more or less hit the big time after he played at the Leicester Square Jazz Club where Steve was a member.

Steve teamed up with our Mum in London around 1948-49, probably at one of the jazz clubs and I was born in Woolwich in March 1950. They had a lot of sorting out to do, including getting our Mum a divorce from her estranged husband. They had no money and no job and I don’t think Mum wanted a confrontation with her Dad so they went to stay with her grandad in Lanchester. They were married on the 23rd of May 1951 in Durham Registry Office.

Swaledale:

Steve took at job at Catterick, selling and installing radios and TVs and we lived temporarily in Helaugh before moving up to Mum’s home village of Gunnerside where she had her Mum and friends around her. Her dad, who had been the village policeman, was ill by then and was soon unfit to stay home. We lived up the steps next to the King’s Head in Troutbeck Cottage. 

Gunnerside in Swaledale

Dad commuted down the Dale on a motorbike, which must have been lovely in summer. In winter it was a different story and the route is notorious for flooding and snow. On his way home one foggy night he turned left through a new gap in the wall which he mistook for the road and he came a cropper. I can remember Mum crying well int the night thinking he must be dead, but he had a few broken bones and a lot of bruises and was soon home.

Coronation Day in Gunnerside.

In 1953 there was great excitement in the village because of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. There would be a parade and I was entered into a fancy dress competition, dressed as a cowboy.  Dad brought a euphonium home and stood it bell down on the floor so I could blow raspberries into it. Thats’t the instrument he played in the parade. Mum was busy with my new baby brother Alex who was born ion February 23rd. Quite few people crammed into our living room to watch the Coronation on our TV as it was one of the first up the dale. The TV reception would have been terrible because of the hills.

Troutbeck Cottage. The porch was a later addition.

I have a strong memory of going rabbit shooting up Gunnerside Ghyll with my Dad and Uncle John (my Mum’s naughty brother). As we left the cottages behind and crept up the hill we lay down in the dry sandy turf and took aim with a 2.2 rifle. There was a light “crack” and the hillside came alive with rabbits running in all directions. We came home with a dozen or more which Gran and Mum prepared in the sink. I watched with fascination. John was a crack shot and Dad probably was too. All the rabbits were hit in the head as I recall. 

Gunnerside 1953

Country people took a pretty utilitarian view of the countryside and it seemed perfectly natural to eat chickens and farm animals and to add to our diet with trout, wild mushrooms and rabbits. In fact, wild food was important as there was very little money about and rationing of food and clothes was still in place. John and Steve were adept at foraging and they taught me how to catch trout and how to tickle them too. I remember them trying to hit trout with rock and even shoot them from a bridge. People didn’t catch fish to put back in the river in those days. Later John’’s poaching career got him into trouble, which is ironic, but not unusual for a policemen’s son. 

Moving South:

17, Chamberlain Road today, with palm trees.

We left the dale in 1954 or 55 and moved to near Winchester for Steve’s work. We lived in a flat in a very posh doctor’s house in Wanston and I went to school for the first time a mile or so away in Sutton Scotney. Mum acted as a part time housekeeper in the big house and I was allowed to wander all over the grounds at will. I liked it there and “helped” the road-men to repair the roads and eat their lunch. The school was awful though. We used slates to write on and It was truly Victorian. Fortunately we were only there for a year as Dad took a much better job with Moxham’s in Southampton. He did very well there and we bought our own house at 17 Chamberlain Road in Highfield; owning a car took a bit longer. Part of his job was to fix or install projectors and sound systems on the big ocean liners like the Queen Mary. Mum had a load of menus off those amazing ships. He also did a week or so in Avonmouth each year, working long into the night repairing AV equipment for the County Council. It paid well but he came home with eye trouble and severe headaches. 

At work in Moxham's c 1962

Pubs:

When we lived in Southampton Steve didn’t play professionally but was the resident drummer at our local pub, the Crown Inn in High Crown Street. He had false teeth by then and couldn’t play jazz trumpet any more. I was often sent up to the pub to bring him home for dinner. I could hear those drums from a long way off. 

Like most men back then, Steve enjoyed a pint or two. So do Alex and I. He almost never had a beer at home unless it was a special event. A day out usually included a visit to a pub, but he was picky. The Green Dragon at Lavington in Wiltshire was our favourite because we could play mini cricket outside and they had great lemonade in fancy bottles. In the New Forest we had a similar favourite but, unlike today, we didn’t go to pubs to eat, we took a picnic. Local to our home in Highfield, we could enjoy a walk along the old tramlines on the common and go to the Bassett Hotel where there was a cage for a bear. Thank God that was out of use bye then. The site is now a care home (for people, not bears.) On holiday in the Dales, Tan Hill (the highest pub in England) was a great place to go. At the Punch Bowl in Low Row, we thought we had made it into the grown-up world when he ordered us glamorous sarsaparillas.

Music:

I have to say Steve was a bit of a jazz snob. That’s to say, he worshipped good musicianship and dismissed most of the pop music of the time. My mum’s friends the Jennings in Bromley were very good to her at the end of the war. They were lifelong friends and their daughters Lana and Carol would send Steve 45 rpm singles to prove their point. He fell for their bait and liked “24 Hours from Tulsa” by Gene Pitney and a few others like Dionne Warwick's "Do You Know the Way to San Hose?"  

We watched “Six-Five Special” which was probably the first pop music TV show. Dad enjoyed the more band orientated stuff and even put up with Don Lang and his Frantic Five and Lonnie Donegan but the new boys, Tommy Steel, Marty Wilde, Adam Faith and Cliff Richard left him cold. At least he let us watch them. “Top of the Pops” would have been a step too far. Thankfully there was still some decent music on the radio. We would listen to the Billy Cotton Band Show for example.

I talked to him about jazz a few times. I wondered why we didn’t have any Miles Davis and he said he liked that stuff and had some Dizzy Gillespie, but he didn’t really get Charlie Parker. The conversation turned to drugs and addiction and a warning to stay away from them. At that time I just liked the music and hadn’t any knowledge of the scene. 

He had an extensive collection of 78s that featured all the big wartime jazz bands. Every track was labelled “fox-trot”, “waltz”, “quick-step” etc. There was a bit of be-bop too. We had a lot of Sinatra, Nat King Cole. Ella Fitzgerald and Bing Crosby as well a bit of classical music. 

Dad played a chromatic harmonica very well and he played that for us regularly; whatever tune came in to our heads. We all liked music and were encouraged but not pushed to be musical. When the vicar came round the school and asked for choirboys to audition, I was the first to join. It took my parents by surprise. They never said so, but it must have worried them that I had committed to two services on Sunday, two evening rehearsals a week and the odd wedding on a Saturday but they were proud of me and came to services when I had a solo. Alex joined as well. Steve taught us the basics of reading music and we used a Melodica to match the notes to the score.

Dad's singing was a bit of a novelty. I'm sure he could croon very well, but around the house he often sang in the Glaswegian style of "Fly me to Dunoon" where the beat stretched out in places when he found a note he liked. It could be on the word "fly" as in Sinatra's American version, or he might hold the "noon" for an age. The final consonant could be stressed too, so "Dunoon" would become "D'noooo-Na".

Also part of the Scots in him was the way he spoke, which was with an Edinburgh accent. "H" was pronounced "Itch" and he would say "Aye" quite a lot. I wouldn't say he had a broad Scottish accent, nor did he use a lot of dialect words unless we asked him to. He shunned the twee tartan-chappie image that some TV entertainers adopted. Unlike his parents he was well spoken, quite a good speaker who you would enjoy listening to. I wish we had a recording.

I don’t remember new record albums coming into the house. We had some LPs from films and shows such as “The King and I”, “High Society” and “The Sound Of Music” but I think those were our mum’s choices. Alex has all the discs and it would be nice to list them and try to record some of them too. 

We played the records on a system he made himself using a good quality old gramophone case. Under the lid was a Garrard deck with a sliding speed control. You couldn’t select 33, 45 or 78 so you had to use an optical illusion to get the correct speeds or just play the record how you think it sounded best! Sadly it didn’t work backwards, which might have been amusing. If you remember the old cowboy films, due to the frame rate of the film there came a point when waggon wheels appeared to go backwards. Using that same effect, this deck used a circular card that sat on the spindle. It had three concentric rings of black and white stripes, like a bar code. You can download one at https://soundsclassic.com/ttsdteg.html At 45 rpm the second circle would appear to be stationary but if you sped it up it would appear to go backwards. 

In the cupboard underneath was the valve amplifier and we stored the records on the shelves beneath that. The most hi-fi component was the speaker. It was installed solidly into the corner of the room. The front face was made of two boards of thick plywood with sand sandwiched in the middle to stop the wood from vibrating. The main speaker was at least a foot across  and there was a tweeter to replicate the high notes. There was a vent for the bass to escape. It sounded great and I bopped to it a lot when I started buying my own records. The first album was “The Rolling Stones” and the first 45 I bought was by the Goons. It was an EP with “I’m walking backwards for Christmas” and “The Ying-Tong Song”. Which brings me to humour.

Humour: 

I loved Spike Milligan and the Goons. I thought Dad would too, given their musical and military background. Peter Sellars and Spike Milligan both played in the jazz and dance bands and Milligan was a gunner who spent some of his time on the south east coast when Steve was there. He thought they were just silly. His favourite kind of comedy was probably the wise-crack stand up routines that he would have known from the clubs in Glasgow and London; people like Chick Murray. Scottish humour could be quite dry and I never really got some of it until I lived there myself. I had to listen to the Goon Show on headphones late at night. I think we all liked “Round the Horn” and “The Navy Lark”. There were variety shows on TV every week and Tommy Cooper often appeared. I think, if there was one thing that really made dad laugh it was Tommy Cooper. 

We watched old comedy movies together, especially Bing Crosby and Bob Hope’s Road Movies which were really a string of wise cracks. 

Cyril Moxham was the boss's son and a bit of a joker. One holiday weekend he presented Dad with a big pork pie to take home. It was huge and looked delicious so we saved it for Sunday lunch with a ton of (overcooked and over salted) veg. We all sat round and Dad cut it open and……Sawdust! It was filled with sawdust because it was a shop-window pie. Mum broke into tears. If dad thought it funny he was wise enough not to show it.

Toys, Games and Play:

We didn’t have or need a lot of proper toys but we played board games and some card games.

When we had the pocket money we mostly bought Dinky Toy cars and military vehicles. The old Anderson shelter in the back garden was demolished but the concrete base was still there. We built roads and tunnels all over the garden for our toy cars. Mostly we played outdoors. 

Our first car at Ivelet near Gunnerside, 1954

Chamberlain Road was a cul-de-sac where it was safe to play in the street. There was a baby boom on, so there was always someone to play with. We all had bicycles. Peter Thursby had a metal peddle car that was done up as a WW2 Jeep, but we came with something special that Dad brought home when we lived in Wanston. It was a green and yellow wagon with four big metal wheels . Ive never seen another one but I recently found one on-line. It was a postman’s mail-cart from Ireland. You powered it by pushing and pulling on the handlebars. We also made our own go carts that Dad called “guiders”.

Mail cart. 

When there was a craze for roller skates around 1960 we were both given adjustable, strap-on Jaco Skates. We were amazed when Dad strapped them on and skated gracefully up and down the street. Quite a few neighbours came out to watch. Later we would flatten the skates out, screw them to planks and make skate-boards. 

When he worked on the big ocean liners Steve made friends with some of the crew members on board. He would be assigned a “minder” to make sure he didn’t interfere with the ships structure by drilling holes in the walls…that sort of thing. He used his contacts to get things for us such as fibre glass fishing rods from South Africa and a compete split cane fly fishing kit from Japan. One sailor made very intricate plastic kits of cars and ships which he gave us. They showed us how to up our game with a paint brush. I can remember Dad helping us to make our first plastic models of Spitfires and Messerschmitts. We had a lot of trouble with biplanes collapsing before the glue set so he showed us how to fix that. Mostly he was an enabler though. He would show you how to do something and then it was down to you. 

We loved cowboy films and dressing up. Somehow Dad found a second hand “Roy Rogers” cowboy gun set with two realistic Colts and a studded leather belt with holsters. I had a Davy Crockett hat too. We made our own bows and arrows. I remember kites as well. 

One  school friend had a Scalextric track and another had an electric train set. We begged for both but ours was a cheaper Airfix track and the train sets were always clockwork, not electric. We had a couple of construction sets. Dad was particularly keen on us using Meccano and helped us to build a crane. We had a big second hand set supplemented with some new bits. We also had a Bako Set that used metal rods and bricks to build 60’s style houses.

We kicked a ball around on days out and we played cricket together and it was fun. I was never seriously interested in sport though. Steve was very keen on football and he did the Pools every week. We all had to be quiet when the pool results were read out on the TV each Saturday.

Fishing:

Fishing is an ideal activity for men to spend quality time with their children. It worked for us with our dad, though not so much for me with my children. We started out with a bent pin and stick with some string. You could use red wool to catch sticklebacks too. Then came the 6 foot South African rods that were good all-round rods for starters. We put cheap Intrepid Monarch reels on them and 4 lb line and caught all sorts of fish. Steve set us up with the gear and showed us how to use it and we were off on a lifelong hobby. 

The start of a life-long obsession.

The war-time generation generally saw fishing a s away to get food and Dad was no exception, though he plainly enjoyed it. With him and uncle John we learned to catch trout using worms. We also learned how to kill the fish by putting out thumbs in the fish’s mouth and pushing the head back to break the neck. On my first sea fishing attempt off the pier in Southampton I caught an eel and was just about to put my thumb in its mouth when another adult stopped me. It could have been very messy. On one trip to Stourhead Gardens, we caught almost 100 rudd and brought half of them home in a back-pack. They were indelible, though we tried. We tried to eat our first pike too. After it was cleaned and beheaded, it was lift to soak in salt water in washing up bowl. The lead for the electric kettle dropped into the bowl and the headless corpse jumped about until the fuse blew. 

On TV at the time there was programme called “Out of Town” presented by Jack Hargreaves. It covered fishing and all aspects of the countryside. We watched it together every week and talked about it quite a lot. It was a cheaply produced, home-spun show that was made in Jack’s garden shed, or so I thought. I went into the tv studio in Southampton once to take part in "Saturday Banana" which was like Tiswas.  In the corner was a metal cage on wheels with all the parts and contents of Jack’s fake shed. 

Holidays:

Day’s out, long drives and camping trips brought the family close together for hours on end. We got to hear adult conversation from the front seats and we could chat all we wanted. Dad loved his cars and loved driving them too, though many Saturdays were spent underneath them. We did a lot of touring and every year we would go back to Swaledale for a week or two staying at our gran’s house. Sometimes we went on to Scotland. We would walk and fish or Mum and Dad would picnic on the bank while we fished or re-arranged the stones in the river. We were always doing something. Steve taught us to play “ducks-and-drakes” by skimming flat stones over the water and he would set up targets of tins, stones and sticks for us all to throw stones at. 

On holiday. Jim, Gran Pescod, Mum and Dad.

Visits to Swaledale were fabulous and we boys had a huge amount of freedom. The grown ups had to do a bit of socialising with the aunts and neighbours and this often led to Dad fixing a tv or a radio or two on his holiday. Although we had lived there for only three years or so, he seemed genuinely popular and readily adopted Swaledale as his own. I think, because he had played soccer in the village team and was in the band, he made a lot of friends quickly. He was close with some of the men his age, especially a farmer called Matt Cherry who was technically advanced in that he built his own hydro electric supply.

Rock-climbing on limestone.

I only once found the long hours in the car too much when Mum decided we had to visit the Glen Eagles Hotel. I lay on the floor of the car and would not look at it and refused to get out when we stopped. Years later, to make up for it, I took my mum back in my beat-up car and she was so impressed that a liveried doorman stepped forward and opened the door, greeting her like royalty. 

Alex remembers our last trip to Scotland, "There were two not just to Skye but also to Oban. We had a puncture at Mallaig and camped on the side of the road. The sand was white and beautiful. I think that was the final trip. I remember having a meltdown because I couldn't have an ice cream. I didn't know dad was I'll and how hard up we were. I don't remember dad ever losing his temper or admonishing us and even then he put up with it but I've always felt I spoiled the last holiday we ever had."

Cars:

Alex thinks the cars we owned were an Austin 10, Morris 8 and an Austin Somerset. We rented a Morris thousand andAustin A40 and some older Morris or Austin cars that had running boards. Those black pre-war cars were rented out from somewhere near the Railway Station in Southampton and one in particular looked like it would never get to Yorkshire. The first steep hill we reached was Pepperbox Hill near Salisbury. By half way up the clutch was slipping badly and there was a strong smell of hot oil and metal. By some extraordinary coincidence (or prior knowledge) Dad produced a box of Fuller’s Earth that would absorb the oil that was getting onto the plates. He found a way into the clutch housing by taking out the matting from the floor and there it was with a hatch in the top that seemed to be designed for this very purpose. I guess we used a hundredweight of the stuff when we got to Yorkshire, or he may have replaced an oil-seal that was leaking. 

He spent a lot of time on his cars, they were washed and polished and serviced a lot. Feeler-gauges were important tools used to measure the gaps in spark plugs and to set the timing. He discovered that you could get the gap right at a pinch using a fag packet which just happened to use the right thickness of card. By coincidence there was always a fag packet around. 

Clothes:

Steve had style. He made a major effort to be Frank Sinatra and always dressed well. He was charming I think. He didn’t have a big wardrobe but there was always a nice hat with a brim and a flat cap for driving. The trousers I liked were brown chords but he had some woollen ones in grey too. He had a few nice shirts, a cardigan or two and some cravats. I wore those myself after he died. My favourite item was a battered Harris Tweed jacket that I wore for fishing. He had overalls for work and for maintaining the cars we had.

Dad and Alex at the Glenfinnan Monument. 1963.

Final days:

We hardly have a photo of Steve without a cigarette and he died of lung cancer in 1964 at the age of 49. He was very ill for three years or so and it must have been extremely hard for him and Mum. We saw him right to the end when he was bed ridden. He had a lot of radio-therapy and when he came home he must have been pretty radio-active. We think that’s why all three of our thyroid glands are wrecked. Alex and I still think on many occasions about what he would have said if he had been here through these crazy times, the good and the bad. He missed out on seeing us grow up and so saw none of his grandchildren. I’m hoping that through these words and pictures they will have some sort of record of his life. He was a good man; very hard working, sociable, talented and multi-skilled. 

A Summer Spent at Home.

Southampton Common’s tall oaks beckoned me from the end of my street. My brother could often be found sitting high up in their branches but, for my lookout, I preferred the top branch of a solitary Scots pine that stood clear of a thicket of elder and birch. This outlier of the New Forest was our patch where we had adventures as cowboys, commandos and super heroes. We built dens and explored endlessly all year round, often catching snakes and lizards. Our school was housed in Nissen huts from the war and our playground was an open part of the common which was dotted with birch, gorse and broom.

Between the common and the University were the brickfields with old piles of rubble where toads would hibernate. There were treacherous boot-sucking clay pits where we would catch newts and come home looking like New Guinea mud-men. Mum made us drop our clothes at the back door. 

All of the primary school children in our street played on the Common, which seemed boundless to us. There was Peter, Rowena, John, Lorna, Mark, David, Kirsty and a few others; all of us born around 1950. Older brothers and sisters were almost invisible, bound up in homework and the cares of further education. Some were on National Service in Kenya or Cyprus.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, it all came back to me when I was thinking about what to do when so many of our options were closed to us due the Coronavirus lock-down. My busy 2020 Google Calendar became a work of fiction overnight. Trips to the Norfolk Coast were off, most local nature reserves, stately homes, garden centres and pubs were shut. Even the local reservoir was closed. What could I do for exercise and stimulation? There was only one option and that was to get to know my patch. I wouldn’t be building any dens or climbing many trees but I was determined not to miss a day on my patch and make an effort to get to know it better.

In order to put some shape on my explorations I started by cataloguing the wayside weeds, one a day, and poting the results on the village Facebook page. I remembered trawling the common for groundsel for Sammy, our pet budgie, and acorns for Thumper, our bad-tempered buck-rabbit and that provided a starting point for a more personal view of our common weeds than you usually find in books. It turned out to be a great way to get to know my plants a bit better. At the same time I was looking out for the year’s markers; frog spawn, toad spawn, newts, grass snakes, butterflies and the migrant birds.

I have always had a patch. Before the common it was Swaledale and later, in my 6th form it was the Brecon Beacons. At teacher-training college it was Frenchay Common on the outskirts of Bristol and my first teaching post sent me to Salisbury Plain. When I started working in Nature conservation my new patch became Arundel in West Sussex, then Loch Leven in Scotland, then Cousin Island in the Seychelles and finally here at Little Paxton and around my home in Brampton. After so many exotic and scenic locations I’m afraid I have taken my local patch for granted, but now it’s my salvation. It feels like being a youth again with every day bringing a new discovery. 

For my 70th birthday in March my wife has bought me a light trap for catching moths. I haven’t run one since Salisbury Plain in the 1970s so I have a lot to learn. I bought a battery-powered kit so I could take it away camping, but that’s all cancelled now so I bought a mains adapter and have run the trap every suitable night in my garden. I’ve caught a few spectacular hawk moths but it’s the weird little ones that are so fascinating. They have strange names like Setaceous Hebrew Character, Chocolate Tip, Old Lady and Burnished Brass and, in super close-up they look like furry miniature aliens, angels perhaps.

It was the garden that sold this house to us and it is always a work in progress. I don’t think the garden or the house have had so much work done on them in many years.  While Hanna, who is working from home,  has organised the interior decorating, I’ve been working on the outside paint jobs and maintenance. In the garden, my first job was to build a new pond that has proved a huge boon to wildlife. Out in front we sowed wild flower mixes in the borders and they have come up beautifully. Our neighbours appreciate the face-lift and the bees and butterflies enjoy the nectar.

As restrictions relaxed we started to get out more using our old bicycles. I spent many hours and a fair bit of cash fixing the bikes up. It was a job I really enjoyed, reminding me of my first proper bike I bought for ten shillings (50P) in about 1961. I painted that old bike dragon red and put fresh tape on the drop-handlebars, tightened the spokes and replaced the saddle and brake blocks as well as most of the bearings. It lasted me about eight years and gave me a lot of blisters in places you don’t want them. This year’s bike project is a Dutch style man’s bike with Sturmey-Archer three-speed gears. I painted it British Racing Green, like a Bentley, only cheaper.

Our son Dan has Angelman Syndrome and can’t ride a bike. When he was smaller he sat on the front of a special tandem with me. It’s a German bike with a recumbent seat and peddles on the front but a normal sit-up position on the back. Very sensibly, the person in the back does the steering and it’s a fabulous bike. However, as Dan entered his late teens he became to heavy to hold up on a two wheeler, so now he has a three wheeler side-by-side bike.

Because of lockdown, our local country park at Hinchingbrooke closed its special bikes programme. Rather cheekily I asked if we could keep one at home for a while and, very generously, they agreed. The Van Raam tricycle was enormous, taking up most of our garage, but it was an immediate success and gave Dan a completely new interest that provided him with a  decent bit of exercise. We dreaded having to give it back so Hanna scoured the internet for a second-hand one and, by extreme luck, one came up for sale in North London. I hired a van and picked it up. It seemed to be in perfect condition but it was extremely hard to peddle. I fiddled with the brakes and oiled all the chains but it made no difference. We called in an expert who said it had to be the tyres. Having a puncture when your passenger is a disabled person can be quite a complicated situation so the previous owners, an Association for the Blind, had fitted solid rubber tyres. It seemed a good idea but they stuck to the road like glue. After re-fitting pneumatic tyres it was like having a new bike. Best of all, our village is half way through constructing miles of new cycle paths so we can take Dan for miles without worrying about traffic.

Apart from exploring the village itself, we have spent more time than we used to in Hinchingbrooke Country Park and Brampton Wood; both brilliant places for wildlife watching. Then there’s the river. The Great Ouse lazily wanders through Huntingdonshire taking its time meandering and detouring its way to the Fens and the Wash. 

Hanna and I were married close to 40 years ago when we both worked at the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust in Arundel. The staff and volunteers bought is the most extravagant present in the form of a Canadian style canoe. (It is a three-seater so I guess they were making a hint). It has been with us in Scotland and around the country but for most of the last few years it has hung from the ceiling of a barn at Paxton Pits, collecting bird droppings. We brought it home, cleaned it up and started using it again to discover uncharted backwaters off the Great Ouse. What a delight that has been.

All-in-all, getting to know our home patch has made us feel very thankful to be where we are. For years we have considered moving to a National Park; somewhere more wild and scenic, but the practicalities for a family like us left us feeling a bit stuck. Not anymore. We love it here. 

My Patch

1958: The ancient oaks of the Common beckoned me from the end of our street. My brother would be up there sitting unnervingly high in their branches with his chum Rowena (aged five). I made for my own lookout on the top branch of a Scots pine that stood umbrella-like above of a thicket of elder and birch. My hands and shorts would soon be covered in sticky resin that smelled pleasantly of pine for the rest of the day.

Chestnut Avenue.

This outlier of the New Forest was our local patch where we had adventures as cowboys, commandos and super heroes. We built dens, caught lizards and explored endlessly all year round. Our school was housed in Nissen huts from the war and our playground was an open part of the common, dotted with birch, gorse and broom where yellowhammers, long tailed tits and red-backed shrikes nested.

Between the Common and the University lay the brickfields with the their old piles of rubble where toads would hibernate. Treacherous boot-sucking clay pits were where we would catch newts and come home looking like New Guinea mud-men. We were always made to drop our clothes at the back door.

All of the primary school children in our street played on the common, which seemed boundless to us. We were all of born around 1950. Adults and older brothers and sisters were almost invisible, bound up in homework and the cares of adulthood. Some were on National Service in Kenya or Cyprus.

First singing chiffchaff.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, it all came back to me when I was thinking what to do with myself during the lock-down. Trips to the Norfolk Coast are off, most local nature reserves, stately homes, garden centres and pubs are shut. Even the local reservoir is closed. What could I do for exercise and stimulation? In my view there’s only one option and that is to get to know my patch. I won’t be building any dens or climbing many trees but I'm trying not to miss a single day on my patch and I’m going to try and approach it with same wide eyed wonder that I had back in the day.

In order to put some shape on my explorations I have started cataloguing the wayside weeds and posting the results daily on the village Facebook page. I remember trawling the Common for groundsel for Sammy our pet budgie, and for our bad-tempered buck-rabbit, Thumper. That's the inspiration for tomorrow's posting on groundsel. I'm finding a lot of other interesting plants in cracks in the pavements and roadside verges and quite a few in my garden. I thought I knew all their names but a little research proves that I don't. I'm finding it a great way to get to know my plants a bit better. At the same time I’ll be looking out for the year’s markers; frog spawn, toad spawn, newts, grass snakes, butterflies and the migrant birds that are already arriving.

The first cowslips. Not a soul around.

I have always had a patch. Before the common it was Swaledale (grouse, dippers, common sandpipers) and later, in my 6th form it was the Brecon Beacons (buzzards and crossbills). At teacher-training college it was Frenchay Common on the outskirts of Bristol (water voles and tree sparrows) and my first teaching post sent me to Salisbury Plain to see all the chalkland orchids and butterflies, plus breeding stone curlews and wintering harriers. My next patch was Arundel in West Sussex (for orchids, nightjars and nightingales), then Loch Leven in Scotland, (with pinkfeet and peregrines) and  Cousin Island in the Seychelles (for a tropical paradise stuffed with endemics). Finally I landed here on the Reserve at Little Paxton and around my home in Brampton in Cambridgeshire. After so many exotic and scenic locations I’m afraid I have taken my local patch too much for granted but now it’s my salvation. It feels like being a youth again with every day bringing a new discovery.

Moth trap, just unwrapped.

For my 70th birthday my wife bought me a light trap for catching moths. I haven’t run one since Salisbury Plain in the 1970s so I have a lot to learn. I bought a battery-powered kit so that I could take it away camping, but that’s all cancelled now, so I’m going over to a mains supply kit with a plan to run the trap every night in my garden and record what I find there. It was the garden that sold this house to us and it is always a work in progress. I think it will get more attention this summer than ever before.