Marriage and Life in Brief

People seem very curious about other people's relationships, so I thought I'd tell you all I'm going to tell you about mine straight away and get it over with. Then I can get on with writing what I really want to write. It may well become apparent during consumption of this meagre fare that I have been married three times. Don't ask me how it happened. I haven't a clue. Along the way I collected two divorces and one other serious relationship which didn't result in a wedding. There are two sides to every story, I know, and I accept my share of responsibility for the break-ups.  However, I am very happily married now and will do everything I can to remain so.

That, in my case, is life.
Now take the fact that I still cannot make up my mind what I want to be when I grow up, if I ever do, and you find on this page a confused man who, for some unfathomable reason, has an urge to write about his life. Oh, he scribbles a bit now and then, but at time of writing, whether or not he ever will complete the story of his life so far remains a subject of conjecture.
I've been really lucky for many good things have come my way, especially my wonderful wife, children and grandchildren. I'm ridiculously proud of them all and cannot really believe that I had anything to do with it.
So thank you up there, whoever you are, and long may it last. Thank you.
Enough said.

Prisoners of War down on the Farm

Not far from our farm in the upper Thames valley was a hill, and on that hill was a prisoner of war camp. 

During the war it held lower rank German soldiers. 

There may have been others, but I was not aware of any. 

At the end of the war these prisoners-of-war (p-o-ws) were ready to be repatriated, but Germany lay devastated and for many men there was no home to go to immediately. They had to wait.

Many of them were highly skilled. They included engineers, mechanics, drivers, electronics experts and others. Life in the camp must have bored them, so when they were offered the chance to work on local farms they leapt at the chance. Likewise, my father was pleased to offer them work for a number of reasons, not least because Britain was also severely damaged by war and farms were still called upon to produce as much food as possible. 

Very soon we got used to welcoming the army truck that called at the farm every day, bringing 'our' bunch of p-o-ws. And what a cheerful gang they were. We, and the other men on our farm, soon made good friends, as far as I remember, with every one of them. Some became lifelong friends. 

After being cooped up in a prison camp for months and years, they must have found our farm a blessed release.  

I remember three of them in particular, Ade, Phillip and Heinrich. All three became personal friends of the family and joined us for meals. This was daytime only, because they all had to return to the camp each evening on the lorry which came back to collect them. However, now the camp gates stood open for long periods of the day and they had much more liberty.

I was only five or six years old at the time, but one thing which imprinted memories of Ade, Phillip and Heinrich on my mind was that they made toys for me and my brother Mark. My sister Sarah was only just about making her debut on the world stage about this time. 

Toys were unavailable in shops so soon after the war, and I can remember the joy these unexpected gifts brought to us. As I mentioned, these men were highly skilled and thus able to make, from all sorts of scrap materials, marvellous toys, tools and gadgets. Some toys I recall in particular. One was a circle of pecking hens, made from an old broken table tennis bat, string, a heavy lorry wheel nut, some odd drops of paint,bits of wire and scraps of wood. It was multi-coloured and worked perfectly for years, giving us hours of fun. Another toy was a bright red monkey with green eyes standing on a barrel. By pressing the base of the barrel you could make the monkey jig and dance. Also they made for us a large board with numbered hooks to hang on a wall. Then, armed with a handful of rubber rings made from an old bicycle tyre, we could throw the rings at the hooks on the board to get as high a score as possible.

Best of all the toys they made for us was the garage.

It was just like the real one in nearby Clanfield in miniature. It had three fuel pumps on the forecourt, green, blue and yellow. Each had a face, like grandfather clocks, but instead of the time the one hand showed how many gallons had been dispensed. Around the forecourt were tiny Castrol oil cans, car tyres and other garage bits and pieces, including a little wheeled tray of the type mechanics used to get underneath cars. Behind the forecourt the garage buildings had been beautifully modelled, with lift off roofs. And inside, model cars! Of course it was an instant hit, the Christmas they gave it to us, and Mum had to almost prise it out of our hands at mealtimes.

They also showed my brother and I how to make some toys ourselves. One was a kind of crawling device made from a tintack, a cotton reel, an elastic band, a pencil and a small amount of candle wax. Just press a tintack near the hole on one side of the cotton reel, loop the elastic band over it and thread the rest through the hole. Loop the other end over one end of the pencil, wax that side of the reel, wind it up and watch it go. Armed with a couple of those, Mark and I held races all over the house on various domestic terrains.

My favourite toy by far, though, was the one which Phillip showed me how to make. I must have made dozens over the years since then. All you need is a pencil about 10cms or more long and a similar length strip of light wooden batten. Drill a hole exactly halfway along the batten, small enough to be a tight fit for the pencil.

Now fashion the batten into a simple propellor, and fit it to one end of the pencil.

With practice, by putting the pencil between our palms and rubbing them quickly together, Mark and I were able to make our 'helicopters" soar up into the sky. We would try to get them to fly right over the big barn. The only trouble with this was trying to find them afterwards on the other side. Often they'd be stuck up in the gutter.

One of the Germans, I think it was Ade, was an expert clock maker, and he made Mum and Dad a wonderful kitchen clock out of an old radio casing and a restored alarm clock movement. It looked beautiful, as though straight from a Bavarian 'alpine' workshop. And it worked for many years. My parents used it as their kitchen clock well into the sixties as I remember.

The most memorable times of those days were at Christmas. Our new friends had permission to stay with us well into the evening on Christmas Eve, and we all enjoyed a magical mix of English and German customs. To be honest, I can't remember details of those wonderful Christmas times. It's all a warm glowing mish-mash in my mind of mince pies, Christmas pudding, apple juice and German novelty presents. I can still feel the warmth of the large log fire in the sitting room. Mum, Dad, Ade, Henry and Phillip, sitting in armchairs and along the big old sofa, basking in the warm glow as they raised their glasses, topped with home-made wine, to a variety of bilingual toasts. 

Happy memories for a six year old boy.

Eventually our friends got the call that they could return to Germany.

Some went home and stayed there, losing touch with English friends. 

Some went home, and then returned on holiday with their families to introduce them to English friends.

Some stayed and married English sweethearts.

But some went home, found and married their girlfriends, and returned with them to live in this country.

Such was Phillip. He set up home, not far from us, and his family and ours remained friends ever afterwards. 

I felt immensely honoured that he called his first son Patrick, because he had so enjoyed his time with us on the farm. Later, sadly, Phillip met a very untimely death here in England. He was working at his job on an estate nearby, when the tractor he was driving flipped over and crushed him. There were far fewer safety guards in those days. But he will always be remembered with warm affection as long as I and other family members live. Thank you dear Phillip.

Some years after the war, my mother and her sister Maureen were treated to a wonderful never to be forgotten holiday in Germany as guests of Ade and the others. 

But there is a sad footnote to these happy memories.

As I grew older and began to understand what war was about I realised the cruel madness of it. Months before our happy times on the farm getting know our new friends from Germany, we could have been trying to kill each other as sworn enemies. We would have been expected to do our utmost to capture or kill each other as our duty to our respective countries..

Is this crazy, or am I wrong?

________________________

The Wises go Scandinavian - Denmark

We couldn't afford a flight south to the sun, but we longed for an overseas holiday that would suit Rosemary and I, and our two small children, Richard and Rebecca. The travel agent selected a huge pile of brochures from the brimming racks, filling a carrier bag, and handed it to us with a smile saying, in effect, go read.
We did. When we could.
I had a busy shop to run and my wife Rosemary was very spending any time she had exploring an interesting and creative new job in botanical illustration at Oxford University. She is a superb artist. Meanwhile Richard and Rebecca devoured the brochures, almost literally. They covered them in chocolate, blackcurrant jelly and stickers of fantasy monsters as they explored the exciting multi-coloured pages. Gradually we narrowed down what was still legible.
Most of the holidays we ruled out immediately on price. A few looked good, but we rejected them because we couldn't make out what they were beneath the edible layers. Others we cut as being either unsuitable either for children or sensitive, cultured adults like what we are.
Favourites among the few remaining legible trips were a couple of Danish bed and breakfast farm holidays. Pictures of adorable piglets, (did the children realise the connection with Danish Bacon?), cows and calves in buttercup strewn summer meadows shone from the pages and called to us across the North Sea. We chose one which offered accommodation in a huge Hans Christian Andersen type thatched farmhouse on the island of
Funen.
A few weeks later we boarded the ferry and set out across the North Sea. On board we discovered one of the best children's playrooms I have ever seen, simply a large carpeted room containing nothing more than a six foot mountain of loose Lego. Richard and Rebecca took one look and dived into Lego heaven. Now and then we dragged them out for meals and visits to the toilets.
Next day, as we sailed in to Esbjerg, Richard discovered the riches of other languages.
"Daddy! Daddy! There's a rude word on the wall!"
"What? Here?" I asked, admiring the nesting storks squabbling around chimney pot nest sights and stilt walking along roof ridges, "Are you sure?"
"Yes! Look! There!" he urged, pointing.
And there, on the dockside wall, in letters two metres tall, was painted the word FART.
"Ah, erm, no, Richard. In Danish people's talk I think it means 'trips' or 'voyages' or something like that, erm ... It's not rude."
"Our teacher says it is and we're not supposed to say it."
There followed the usual tortuous conversation of trying to explain to a small child why you can say just any word in some countries and some words in every country, but you mustn't say any words in every country. By which time my brain was hurting and I suggested we explore the availability of chocolate with Mummy instead. I'm still not sure whether he was convinced Daddy knew much about languages.
In those days Customs was only to be dreaded on return to UK shores. Going to mainland Europe was relatively easy and we were waved through with a smile. Even in our old jalopy, It didn't take long to cross Jutland because the roads were first class and, compared to our crowded island, the traffic was light.
Soon we were pulling up in front of our holiday address, a magnificent, huge thatched, traditional Danish farmhouse with whitewashed walls.
The children were amazed, because it was straight out of their Hans Christian Anderson story books. The front door opened and Mr and Mrs Joseph came out to meet us in a flurry of smiles and handshakes. And in Mrs Joseph's case, fluent English. More of Mr Joseph's linguistic skills later.
It soon became apparent that we had come to stay on a proper traditional farm, with cows in willow lined meadows, pigs in beautiful clean straw styes and chickens contentedly scratching around everywhere. Once we had settled in we were offered a guided tour of the farm by Mr Joseph. Off we went through immaculate cowsheds, dairies, barns and meadows, patting and petting animals wherever we went. This holiday was getting off to a wonderful start, especially with Richard, who was very taken with the pigs.
First day, so we relaxed, watched Mr Joseph give the pigs their morning feed by scooping food from a hopper and putting a measured amount in each pen's trough. In the afternoon we took a very pleasant stroll around the farm and came back to find our wonderful hosts had prepared a sumptuous cream tea, in the large rambling old garden, sun shining, bliss.
Nobody noticed that Richard had wandered off.
Suddenly we were jolted out of our dreamlike state by a squealing cacophony from the pig-pen. Mr Joseph, closely followed by the rest of us, ran towards the noise. We found all the pigs standing on their hind legs at their pen gates, squealing at the pen at the end, the only pen of pigs not making a din. These little piggies were contentedly tucking into a pile of food and ignoring their agitated companions. Richard had so enjoyed the morning visit to see the pigs being fed that he thought he'd go back and have a go himself. His mistake was not realising that all pigs are equal, and he gave all the food to the pigs in the first pen and none to the others, a sure way of creating chaos in the piggery.
We spent the rest of our week in Denmark visiting famous sites including Copenhagen's Little Mermaid and Tivoli Gardens, the Odense home of Hans Christian Anderson, and Legoland.
Becky acquired a lovely colourful helium balloon in the Tivoli, which we carefully tied around her wrist. She kept fiddling with the string because she wanted to make her balloon dance, but our knot seemed to be secure. It jiggled along with us all the way across Copenhagen to our train, amused cigar smoking grannies during the one and a half hour journey from Jutland to Funen, and followed us into Mr Joseph's car for the final leg to the farm. Indeed, it followed us to the farmhouse door, where Becky finally managed to undo it's string so that she could 'make it dance'.
It danced, up, up, up and away into the evening sky, while Becky cried for it to come back. She learned that parents can be useless in some of life's most distressing moments.

The House

The year was 1941. Mum was in agony for five days in the Maternity Unit of the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, because I was awkward and unable to arrive. However, the doctor insisted and I was born five days late, looking as though I'd done ten rounds in the ring and lost badly. Mum was horrified when she was offered this battered scrap, and convinced that I was maimed for life. In later life I've often thought that I was, but somehow I've muddled through my three score and ten.
When we'd both recovered sufficiently my father took us home to the farm we rented on the Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire border, but not before we visited my Uncle Randall, who lived in Wytham, just west of Oxford across the Thames. I grew to love him dearly as I got to know him.
My father, H F 'Jim' Wise, farmed all his working life. When he met and married my mother Dorothy she was working as a nurse in the Birmingham Children's Hospital, and was on a holiday cycling tour from London to the Cotswolds visiting distant relatives along the way. She'd heard about a branch of the family farming in the upper Thames valley, and eventually found her way to their beautiful old stone farmhouse near Faringdon, then in Berkshire, where my father farmed.
They started married life in the large old Cotswold farmhouse, where Mum soon got used to looking after her parents-in-law, an aged aunt, various cats, dogs, chickens, ducks and an ever changing variety of sick or orphaned farm animals.

It is worth noting, at this point, that our lovely house, and it was lovely, had no electricity, no bathroom, no telephone, no TV, no central heating, no roof insulation, no anything that could be considered modern at all, with one exception, our large, old box radio. More of that later. 
I was born the year after Mum and Dad were married, and shared feeding time with whichever needy piglet or calf was around at the time. I would be in the crook of one arm being breast-fed while Mum's other arm would be wrestling a bottle-teat into the mouth of a struggling piglet. As far as I'm aware she never mixed us up, and it could explain my lifelong love of animals, more kin than kine.
Our old creaking, whispering farmhouse was alive. As a small boy, on dark winter nights, I was led up our creaking stairs to bed by Mum, holding out a delicately flaming candle which threatened to go out with every breath of air. I clung to her warm and comforting free hand. On every side shadows danced and dodged closer. I knew that I'd soon be alone with them when she went downstairs.
In winter my bed was cosy because she warmed it beforehand with a warming pan full of hot ashes from our living room fire. I sank as deep into the bed as I could, pulling the feather eiderdown up to my chin, while Mum looked along my bookshelf suggesting stories I might like to hear.
In the way children often do, I chose creepy, scary ones that I knew I would regret as soon as Mum went back downstairs, but which I couldn't resist because they conjured up such vivid pictures in my mind. Often it was Grimm's Fairy Tales, so heart-breaking, so cruel, so irresistible. I was particularly scared of the dogs which guarded the Tinderbox. Their eyes got bigger, their teeth sharper and their growls fiercer each time I heard the story. For ages afterwards I would be wary of any trees with holes round their roots, and I listened for low, throaty growls.
Other choices, just as rich in this small boy's imagination, included the Ice Queen, the Little Mermaid, the Wizard of Oz, and my favourite, which would surely be frowned on these days, The Tales of Brer Rabbit. He was seriously clever and managed to escape each dastardly plan to capture him. He was my earliest hero.
Whatever the story, it would eventually end, Mum would kiss me, and then take the candle downstairs again.
I was alone with the darkness, although it wasn't really the darkness that scared me. It was the sounds. Old houses talk. They creak and groan and whisper, as ancient timbers and masonry adjust to changing temperature, humidity, wind and weather. I know that now, but I didn't then. Monsters, ghosts and ghouls stalked the stairs and roamed the attics. And I hid under the sheets.
When I was a little older this passed, and I heard our gentle, giant cart horses shifting in their stalls, cows lowing to their newborn calves in the sheds across the yard and our old sheepdog yipping to itself downstairs as it chased a hare across a dream.
Such was our sound track. Our nearest neighbours lived across a field, and no TV blared from open windows.
We had no TV. Neither did anyone else where we lived. Dad had a big old box wireless (now known as radio) downstairs on which he occasionally listened the news and cricket commentaries on the BBC Light Programme and the BBC Home Service, now Radio Two and Radio Four. Mum, when she had a moment, listened to The Third Programme (Radio Three), which broadcast classical music. They all went off air late at night. After all, who wanted to listen to the wireless in the middle of the night?
Radio One did not come along until the sixties, in answer to rapidly expanding pirate radio. The front of our wireless had a wonderful programme dial with a 'clock' hand that was turned by the large knurled tuning knob. I say it was wonderful because it promised a whole wide world of wireless shows from such exotic sounding places as Bangkok, Hilversum and Johannesburg. Many times I tried patiently to summon up these stations by careful tuning, but never succeeded. BBC from London was the only thing available in English, although had I been multilingual I might have enjoyed the snatches of French and Spanish that occasionally drifted in and out on the airwaves.
In summer the house was a very different place. All the windows, except for two very small ones, faced south and the sun streamed in through the open windows. It was warm. Sometimes so warm that we closed the internal wooden shutters across the open windows to give some shade and cool relief. Dogs lay on the roasting flagstones in our doorways, panting but happy, while the cats crept into shady parts of the garden, looking for a just so corner in which to curl away the hot afternoons. All idyllic for a small child like me, playing in the cool clear brook that rippled by our kitchen path, but less so for the grown-ups, who still had work to do.
In later years, as I grew and my brother and sister arrived, the house began to yield many secrets to my inquisitive mother, a born historian and excellent researcher. Likewise Dad, who had virtually no formal education, displayed a strong interest in Law and became surprisingly knowledgeable on the subject. What might he have become in other circumstances? What might any of us have been in another life? We'll never know.

HURTIGRUTEN

We travelled along the Norwegian coast in a Hurtigruten ship which was named after the founder of the service, 'Richard With'. These amazing vessels ply the rocky, island strewn pcoast between the old Hansiatic port of Bergen and the far north industrial town of Kirkenes, near the Russian border on the Barents Sea. They do this twelve months a year. Founded in the early 1800s, Hurtigruten, meaning express route, used to be the official Postal carrier and, even though times have changed, the Company ships still have the honour of flying the Norwegian Postal flag. Nowadays they deliver a wide range of goods to all the principal coastal towns and villages between Bergen and Kirkenes. People use it like a bus and others pjust go along for the ride. The round trip is frequently listed as one of the great travel experiences of the world.
On the sixth day our ship reached the Troll Fjord, a geological wonder some hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle.
It is extremely narrow, yet very deep, allowing small ocean-going liners to go in, very carefully.
We arrived at midnight. The Arctic twilight lingered and a bright crescent Moon shone from a clear starlit sky. Our ship slipped in gently on the deep oil dark water, and the sheer, black granite walls on either side towered hundreds of feet above us, so close one felt almost able to reach out and touch them.
Haunting cries of kittiwakes echoed around us, giving the place an unreal atmosphere, as though we were in a film set from Lord of the Rings.
Nearby, two ladies from Lancashire stared at the dripping walls of rock gently sliding by as seabirds wheeled and called above us, their cries echoing from cliff to cliff. Without turning to her companion, one of them said quietly,
"I've 'ad that many anaesthetics I couldn't count. Some of them were OK but others made me sick for hours. It were agony with me stitches, something' shocking'. Some anaesthetics what they give yer are different. I 'ad one, it were a sort of gas. It didn't knock yer out. Yer sort o' knew what was 'appenin' but yer weren't bothered. Before they give it to me one doc said, 'What sort of music would yer like to like to listen to on yer 'eadphones?'
I said Country an' Western, but 'e said 'We 'aven't got no Country and Western, but I got some Tchaikovsky. 'e wrote a good tune. I think he said it was called The Sugar Bum Fairy and asked if that would do would do?'
Really I was passed carin'.
Any'ow, my 'usband, 'e went in to have some of 'is toes off 'cos 'e were walkin' funny. Worked a treat it did. 'e were walkin' straight as a die fer months afterwards, but 'is old trouble come back. 'e wanted the same treatment again, but the consultant told 'im 'e 'adn't got enough toes left to do it no more.
I was 'avin' trouble walkin' at the time. My big toes were givin' me gyp, so I went in an' asked if they could do the same fer me.
'You can't come in 'ere askin' to 'ave yer toes off. That sort of thing 'as to be decided on medical grounds. That's why them surgeons 'as years of expensive trainin'. Anyway, big toes is important. You needs 'em so you don't fall flat on yer face. Your 'usband, 'e 'ad 'is second and fourth toes off 'cos they were jiggered and don't matter anyway. We could 'ave someone look at yer corns, though. 'ow about that?'"
Somehow the magic of the Troll Fjord had passed by these lasses from Lancashire. But no doubt they enjoyed their visit. We did.

Elms ~

My earliest memory of life on the farm is when I was three years old. I was toddling along a cow track in the rough pasture behind the cowsheds with our much loved collie dog called Tuscan. On our way to fetch the cows for milking we passed a pair of giant old elm trees. I knew these two elms in particular because they were twins, towering straight up to the open sky like cathedral pillars. Their branches were as waving tracery, causing the sunlight to sparkle and jig like diamonds of light on rippling sunlit water.
What I loved about them, at such an early age, was that they were joined just above ground level by a massive root. It linked them forever. So they stood only inches apart, their trunks side by side like barrels on a double-barrelled shotgun. Their crowns and canopies, swaying in the breeze high overhead, were home to a noisy colony of cawing rooks. The rooks returned to this, their rookery, every year to patch, repair and rebuild nests lost or damaged in equinox gales.
They often fought each other. Sometimes, unable to fly and fight at the same time, they would crash down through the branches, still scrapping as they hit the ground. Feathers and dust would fly in all directions until, as suddenly as it had started, the ruckus was all over. Stalking off in opposite directions, the two ruffled rooks would give themselves a hurried preen, straighten out ruffled feathers, do a quick check of personal damage and dignity, then flap up rejoin their kith and kin high overhead.
While the protagonists were fighting, neighbours would rob their nests of choice materials to enhance their own domestic structures. Robbing each other was common practice, erupting into full fights only when caught red-handed.
Rooks are truly lords of their manors, and should a buzzard or other opportunist bird of prey stray too near, a flight of rooks will immediately scramble and attack, just as in aerial dogfights. They continue until they have seen the intruders off, usually minus a few tail feathers.
For we ground anchored creatures the rookery was fascinating to watch, a way of timing the year, and very entertaining.
Seventy years later they still are. Time has long ago taken away the rookeries of my childhood, but new generations in different landscapes keep my memories alive and give me great joy.
Elms were beautiful trees. They lent grace, stature and spectacle to most of the British landscape and way beyond years ago. As a small boy I became very aware of the beautiful sound they made. I could see several elms from my bedroom window, and on windy nights I loved to lay in bed with the window open wide to the darkness, listening to the soothing rushing whooshing flow of air's ocean playing through the branches, lulling me to sleep.
Later, in another life in the iconic sixties, disaster struck.
The mighty elms were destroyed, in the space of just a few years, by a tiny beetle which spread what was known as Dutch Elm Disease. To our horror these mighty trees crumpled, one by one, brought down by this small insect, and we watched our treasured English landscape being totally changed, just as villages would be today if all church towers and spires were knocked down, as once happened to a large extent.
There are glimmers of hope that elms may once again grace and dominate our countryside, but sadly not in the lifetimes of most of us.

Holidays can be fun, can't they?

We were waiting for a train in Llanberis. It was going to take us to the top of Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales. My wife Rosemary and I sat on one of the station's wooden back-to-back benches with our two small children, Rebecca and older brother Richard. They were curious about everything and asked many, many questions. It was a bit wearing at times, but we encouraged it because we liked to see them learn.
Rebecca had gone with her mother to find the lavatories, while Richard stood on the bench beside me. He was looking around the cafe outside table area, asking questions and making comments as usual.
"Daddy!"
"Yes, Richard?"
"That lady is as fat as Aunty Sue!"
Sue, daughter of my Uncle Randal, was indeed on the large side, and she had a huge, warm, huggable character to match. She needed to be big. Small would not have housed her. Her character shone with warmth and love for all wherever she went.
"Is she?" I said, idly enjoying my choc ice.
"Yes. Look at her. She's ever so fat! Does she eat a lot?"
He pointed over my shoulder.
"People come in all shapes and sizes", I commented, taking another bite of choc ice.
"Yes I know. Aunty Millie is thin, and Nain (Welsh for grandmother) says she eats like a sparrow. That's not much, is it?"
"No Richard."
"But this lady is ever so fat! She must eat lots and lots? Look at her!"
To keep him happy I turned around.
To my horror the woman in question was seated immediately behind me; we were almost back to back! Her fingers drummed menacingly on the bench.
"Shall we look in the shop?" I blurted, grabbing his wrist and rising to go ... rapidly.
We met the Rebecca and Rosemary by the shop.
"We saw a lady with a fat tummy, Dad", said Rebecca. "Mummy said that she was pregnant with a baby in her tummy."
"That's interesting", I said.
"Yes. How do you know if someone has a baby in her tummy or is very fat?"
"Ask Mummy", I blurted. "Ladies know more about babies than Daddies".
I didn't dare look at Rosemary.
Moving on, next day we again sat in the afternoon sun, this time by the pool and fountain in the beautiful Italianate village of Portmeirion. Pastel washed ornate buildings decorated the village with pinks, blues, oranges and white, giving us a feeling of being on the shores of a sun warmed Mediterranean.
Our infant children Rebecca and Richard were fascinated by the pool and fountain gurgling and sparkling behind us. Behind us we could hear the gurgle and splash of the fountain as we started to eat our picnic.
I like people-watching. Where are these people from? Where are they going? What do they do for a living? How do their lives compare with mine? My mind wandered as we relaxed in the sun. We were on holiday.
Gradually I became aware of people giggling and laughing. They were all looking past us at the pool. We turned round to see what all the fun was about, and were horrified to see Richard, soaking wet and paddling about in the middle of the pool. It came up to his waist and he was not at all concerned about scene he was creating, but he did seem worried about something.
"Richard", I called. "Come back! Look, Mummy's got some nice cake for you."
He looked at me, muttered something which I couldn't understand because of the laughter all around, and carried on. He was seemed to be looking for something in the water.
"Oh no!", I thought, "He's lost a toy and I'm going to have to go in there and get it, and him, out. Back then I used to find this kind of situation acutely embarrassing. Age has cured me of this, thank goodness, but back then I could have died of shame. But on that afternoon I had no choice.
My wife clutched our daughter Rebecca tightly while a puce faced Patrick waded into the sparkling pool, and people around laughed and cheered me on.
"Richard", I hissed, "What ARE you doing? You mustn't play in this water. It's not a paddling pool."
He looked up at me, clearly distressed.
"I can't find where it gets out, Daddy! Will we die?"
I bundled him under my arm and, accompanied by rapturous applause, hurried out of the limelight.
"No we won't", I said. "Why do you think we'll die?
"There isn't a plug-hole, like in the bath."
"I'm sure there's one in there somewhere", I said.
"I couldn't find it and the fountain hasn't got a tap on so you can't turn it off and it'll keep squirting water and fill up the whole world and what about us?!"
There followed a highly technical discussion in toddler talk about plumbing and fountains and plug-holes, but I don't think he was convinced. Re-assured? Maybe. Comforted? A little, but not convinced. This was going to take time.
We had wonderful holidays with our children. More to come in a future post.

Sunday night on the Cardiac Ward (almost word for word)

Peace reigns in the ward, men dozing, staring into space, lost in thought. The only sound is from subdued activity around the nurses' station nearby. Two men, in adjacent beds at the end of the ward, start a slow, ponderous conversation. It is quite loud as they are both fairly deaf.

BILL: How's your bowels?
BOB: Regular enough. Every two hours.
BILL: Mine works. Always have. D'you get much sleep in here?
BOB: Nope.
BILL: Oh. Why's that then? Is it the lights?
BOB: No. Every two hours.
BILL: Ah.
BOB: And me bladder.
BILL: Your bladder?
BOB: Yes. Every two hours. Round the bloody clock.
BILL: Well, at least they're symphonised.
BOB: No they bloody ain't. Every hour. First one, then t'other. Up and down all sodding night.
BILL: Hells bells! Were you like that when you was working?
BOB: It's why I had to stop working down the mines. The doctor wrote a letter and I had to come up and go on the warehousing. At least the kazi was closer. I had to pack up in the end. Management got complaints.
BILL: Where was that then? Where did you used to work?
BOB: Byllconnyavon.
BILL: Billy bobby ... Where's that near then?
BOB: You know, little place, over by Connybyllaron.
BILL: Don't know it. Where's the nearest big town?
BOB: Don't know. Never had time to go there.
BILL: Must have been interesting down the mines.
BOB: Not really. Just coal, a lot of coal. And shovelling.
BILL: Ah. Yes. Look after us well in here, don't they?
BOB: Yes. Yes. Angels, them nurses. Angels. Work like hell. Going like little demons all day.

Pam Ayres wrote, so I did too

The lovely and very talented Pam Ayres once wrote a poem that described the calling of dry stone walling as 'appalling'. I couldn't resist a reply.

WHAT'S APPALLING ABOUT DRY STONE WALLING?

By Patrick Wise (aged 71 and a bit)

Come rain and wind and squalls
I builds dry stone walls.
Whatever the weather I'm there.
To some, heaps of stones
Just looks like old bones,
But to me they looks lovely and fair.

Each one is a beauty.
I takes it my duty
To find the right place for each one.
I shapes up its face
And pops it in place
So it works well in rain, hail and sun.

One day a smart bloke
Came strolling, and spoke.
'That's easy' he said, 'Looks real cushy.
Just placing one stone
On top of another. Job done, what?
Fancy some sushi?'

''tis more than you think'
I said with a wink.
'Wallings a skill that few know.
You place one stone true
On top of the two
That you placed on the one down below.'

So see a stone wall,
Look closely and all.
It's a work of fine art, I elect.
I find dry stone walling
In no way appalling.
I'm an artist, so show some respect!

The Poem That Nearly Wasn't

I've got to write a poem
By Thursday at the latest.
Rhona set us homework
And I know that she'll be waiting.

It's got to have emotion
And be first person singular.
But I haven't got a notion
No ideas in particular.

No time to write an epic
Of complicated verse.
My tempus has all fujit.
Oh heck! What could be worse?

Now get a grip there, Patrick.
You've shelled out for this course.
You've got to think of something,
For better or for worse.

I'll think about my heroes
Who wrote great funny lines;
Spike Milligan and Ogden Nash,
Who sometimes ended a verse with a line so long it almost ran right off the edge of the page and down the margin and didn't even rhyme.

Tick! Tock! The time is passing.
My nerves are getting fraught.
My head is full of empty,
Not a single bloomin' thought.

My heartbeat rate is rising,
As time for class draws near.
But at least I've got emotion.
Yes, panic, dread and fear.

Aha! I know! I'll write it!
I'll write these nervous thoughts.
Who knows? Perhaps they'll like it?
On the other hand ... P'raps not.


By Patrick Wise
(aged 66 and 3/4)

Who do I think I am?

Yes, me. Who am I? Ordinary me, sitting in a hospital bed thinking, 'I know! I'll pass the time writing something, but what?
Write about something you know, is the advice in many books. Well, I knew about me, or at least thought I did. I was interested in the subject, but would anyone else be? I had no idea. Did it matter? Well, yes, it's no fun talking to yourself. So, I had to try to make it interesting. At least I wanted to know what happens next in my story. So I had one person in the bag. Then the doubts started creeping in. Did I really want to know what happened next? If I'd known, back in February 2010, what was going to happen next, I wouldn't have been bird watching on the north Norfolk coast in February.
I had a heart attack.
If I'd known that our lovely break would end with me flat on my back in Norwich University Hospital, would we have been there in the first place?
Three months later I was flat on my back again, this time in Cheltenham General Hospital, where I wrote this, inspired by the fact that Cheltenham Literature Festival was taking place just a stone's throw away, and I was missing out. My wife popped round at visiting times to tell me what I was missing. Would I have wanted to know this was going to happen beforehand? I think not.
As I sat in that hospital bed, my thoughts wove around ideas of the past, present and future, and what do we know about them? It's a common subject for writers to explore, from science to science fiction.
Is the future already fixed, or is it created as we travel through time? Is history a record of the past, or the past as each writer is convinced it was. Each one sees it differently. My past is not remembered by me as it is by you, even if we experienced it together, same time, same place, same events. My story of it will almost certainly differ from yours, even though we are both convinced that we, personally, are right. There are two different histories already, and we've only just begun.
This came home to me once in my late teens. I had to do a Year's practical on another farm, not the one I'd been raised on, at the insistence of the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, as a requirement of the short course I was to take there. That is why I was riding on a very old trailer towed by Bert, my colleague, using an equally ancient tractor. We had been working with the sheep, treating them for various minor ailments such as foot-rot and fly-strike, two of the many disgusting problems they are prone to encounter. These things are best attended to after lunch, not before when one is about to eat one's cheese and tomato sandwiches from a battered Oxo tin. Wash my hands? Where? With what?
It was the end of the working day and we were rumbling along the Burford road back to the farmyard. As we approached a blind bend, a car came hurtling round it from the opposite direction, tyres screeching and going far too fast to get back on its right side if the road. It was heading straight for us.
Tractors are not nimble. There was no way we could get out of the way in time. There was going to be a crash. The certainty of it slowed my perception of the event right down. Bert and I were right in the firing line. I sat and watched the inevitable.
The car struck the tractor, taking the entire front axle and wheels out from beneath it. The tractor engine block dropped to the road in a huge thump of spraying hot oil and water, and belching boiling steam. The impetus of the mangled car took it through a stone wall and into a field, where car and tractor axle rammed into the earth like a meteorite strike. For what seemed a long time there was silence, and then terrified screams. I was numb, but uninjured, saved by the inertia of the heavy load. Bert was bleeding and climbing from the wreck of his cab. We dreaded what we would find at the car, but Bert sent me running to the farmhouse to get help, while he went to do what he could at the car.
Amazing as it seemed, the two children in the back seat were shocked and bruised while their mother, who had been driving, was badly shaken and had a broken arm.
The accident lead to a court case, which in those far off days, was held in the nearby Burford court-house. Bert and I were called as witnesses. I stood in the witness box and gave what I believed to be a truthful and accurate account of the event. I was then shown to a visitor seat and watched Bert go through the same process. I was horrified. His account of the accident was very different. Worried that the court would think that I, or Bert, was lying, I asked a constable sitting next to me what I should do?
'Nothing,' he said, 'Happens all the time. No two ever the same. Even coppers do it. Court are used to it.' He nodded towards the lawyers.
So much for true histories. Yours, mine or the other person's?

Uncle Randall ~

Randall looked like Mr Punch. He had a red nose, bright twinkly eyes, and he loved telling his nephews ever so slightly naughty limericks. 'Randal!' Aunt Nance would snap at him, 'Not in front of the children!'
Of course 'the children' meant my brother Mark and me, and we loved Uncle Randall's rhymes. And him.
We also loved him because he had a real Colt .45 six shot revolver, just like those used by our Saturday cinema film cowboy heroes, which he kept on a hook above the living room fireplace, well out of reach of nephews in short trousers. We were in awe that he actually had one, with bullets, and there was always the vague promise that he would demonstrate it for us one day. And our patience paid off. One day he did.
It was a Saturday, on Wytham village green near Oxford, just next door to Randall's farm. It seemed the whole village was there. There were Tombola stands, home-made cakes and jam, never-ending tea and cucumber sandwiches, but it was clear that the main event was to be a show by Uncle Randall of highlighting his horsemanship skills. Mark and I couldn't wait, but we filled in the time, and our tummies, with cake, jam tarts and lemonade, or pop, as we called it.
Randall had been a cavalry man. He, along with another brother, were horse-mounted guards alongside Queen Mary when she visited Oxford.
A great competitor, Randall rose to be the Army horse-riding champion with a lance. Since then he had adapted his skills to entertain audiences with demonstrations of his horsemanship. He would have worried Mongolian bare-back riding warriors and Ghengis Khan himself.
An accomplice in drag and a top hat (don't ask; all will be revealed) would walk to the centre of the performance area and begin to hammer a wooden tent peg into the ground. Suddenly Randall would appear behind him on horseback, galloping full tilt from the far end of the field and thunder towards him, twelve-foot lance held high. As he neared the man, who was still hammering the peg and seemingly oblivious of approaching doom, Randall would lower the lance and aim it between the man's legs. Rider and horse would hurtle by in a thunder of hooves and dust and the lance would spin over his head. On it's tip would be the tent peg. Of course this feat gave rise to ecstatic applause as Randall knocked the tent peg off his lance, but he had not finished yet. In a flurry of hooves, he and his horse would whirl around and head back towards the fleeing accomplice. Again, at full gallop, and with the lance levelled, Randall would fly at the running man and spear the top hat from his head. 

YThe hat was attached to the drag dress with string, so hat and dress would rip off, leaving the chap in pantomime dame underwear. Cue more applause and lots of laughter. Both men would take a well deserved bow, one for his wonderful skills and one for quite breathtaking courage. The horse was happy for a chance to eat grass, but not for long. Randall had another amazing feat to perform. 

At the edge of the Arena was a stack of straw bales, with a curtain of hessian sacking hanging in front of it. On a wooden shelf in front of that stood six beer bottles. At the far end of the field, Randall and his horse readied themselves to go again. And this time he was armed not with a lance, but with his Colt .45. This was it. The big one as far as Mark and I were concerned.
Urging his steed into another full gallop down the field, clods of earth flew from its flying hooves as they sped past the bottles. Suddenly the revolver was in Uncle Randall's hand and he levelled it towards the bottles. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Six shots rang out, and six bottles shattered! Hopalong Cassidy, Tex Ritter, Gene Autry, the Lone Ranger ... eat your hearts out. This was our Uncle Randall! As far as we were concerned, from then on he was right up there with the best.
Years later, our father let us in on the secret. At the sound of each shot the accomplice, concealed behind the hessian sacking, would wack a bottle with a hammer and it would shatter spectacularly. Randall, of course, was firing blanks. But wow! It looked good and, although long gone, Uncle Randall is a hero of ours to this day, him and Hopalong Cassidy.

______________________

Footnote:

I had a friend at school called Bill Prewett. Bill is still around, as are other old school friends, but I am notoriously anti-social and accept that it is my loss that we don't meet nowadays.

Bill's father was the poet Frank Prewett, and one day in the sixties, in an old second-hand bookshop in Burford, my then wife Rosemary discovered a book headed, "The Collected Poems of Frank Prewett". In it we found this poem which, apart from the mention of wife and son, rings so true of my uncle, Randall Wise.

Randall is Dead

Randall is dead, Randall, lusty and big.

Hard riding Randall, wise in the ways of the wild,

Who jibbed at books like his mare smelt a pig,

His mare that flung him, his mare more dear than child.

Love of all living blazed from him around.

He cheered the stranger, warmed the poor and cold,

All but his meagre wife who envious frowned,

And his seven year old boy, in studying grown old.

When Randall galloped his fields a mile away,

He dwarfed the trees, as the sun he shone.

Maid or man he smote hard by his death this day;

Our fields must be barren, now great Randall has gone.

He lies in dust, bronze and tawny as in life.

And his loved mare peevishly snatches the grass,

Waiting his mounting and their joyful strife,

But his strength is stretched in the dust whoever may pass.

(Frank Prewett,  1893 - 1962)

Mobile Shops: Ron The Ironmonger

Ron Taylor's travelling ironmongery shop reminded me of Spike Milligan's illustration of Bluebottle. Bluebottle was a dedicated Boy Scout who always had a tin mug, spoon, toothbrush and catapult dangling from a piece of string tied around his waist. Ron's van also had a spectacular variety of goods tied around its waist, including dustbins, fuel cans, hosepipes, brooms and pitchforks. And every week this spectacular contraption would rattle and sway its way into our farmyard, announcing its arrival with a cacophony sounding like the Eiffel Tower falling down.
Out from the driver's seat would climb Ron, or sometimes his trusty assistant Tom, and descend very carefully to avoid dislodging anything. I got the impression that one false move could bring the whole gently rocking, creaking edifice down with a crash, throwing every animal and human of a nervous disposition within miles into a blind panic. It would already have made them twitchy.
Mum usually dealt with travelling shops on her own, but Ron's mobile Aladdin's Cave was for everyone. The stock list included six inch nails, candles, string, feather dusters, paraffin, screwdrivers, tins of dog food, a wonder hand cleaner known as Swarfega which removed all oil and tractor grease, and probably a layer of skin, from hands, and left-handed number eight nurdler's wing nuts. I made that last one up, but if you think they exist then Ron would have been sure to have some on his van. It had Tardis qualities.
Mum bought things like Fairy liquid, Brillo Pads and tins of pet food (most farmers kept cats and dogs to keep down vermin). Dad bought Swarfega and paraffin. Paraffin and other dangerous substances were top shelf material, and included rat poison and methylated spirits, usually known as meths. My brother Mark and I always tried to wangle some meths, because we used it to fire up our working model of a steam engine. Besides being to us an object of great beauty, the miniature steam engine powered whatever amazing machine we had conjured up out of our motley collection of Meccano, one of the best toys ever made, followed closely by Lego.
In those days, and being raised on a farm with all its dangers and delights, we were taught how to avoid hazards. Most of the time we did. We had red headed matches and meths and were expected not to burn the house down. And somehow we never did.

Everybody got to be somewhere. (Spike Milligan as Eccles)

Yes, everybody has got to be somewhere, and I'm in Gloucestershire on a dull May day working out how to do my first blog. I am well aware that everyone else in the world is blogging away, but I am a late developer, and if you don't go for that I plead insanity, M'lud.
My children, who are of course all computer literate like most of their generation, are a tremendous help with this fast moving technology, and I thank them for guiding their old Dad right now.
So, what am I going to blog about? As I am an 'oldie', and was born into a world very different from that of today, I have decided to describe my journey from a child's rural idyll to the complex world we all know now. However, as my blog title suggests, I have a meandering mind, which means I am hopeless on dates. I can remember incidents in my life, but ask me when they happened and I haven't a clue. So what follows is somewhat like a jigsaw. I'll give you the pieces, and you try to fit them together. I hope it will be fun.

The Darkness ~

The Venerable Bede once described life as being like a sparrow, which flies through an open door from the darkness into a warm, lighted room, flutters round confused for a few minutes, and then flies out into the darkness again. I like that. I think I am a sparrow. I can see, I'm confused, and I'm getting near that door again.
I flew in in 1941. Big things were afoot in 1941. I was born, and Hitler was making plans to invade England, although I don't think the two events were directly connected. My father worked hard running our farm and my mother was kept busy looking after me, the noisiest, muckiest member of the family, plus her aged parents-in-law, several dogs, various cats, a flocks of chickens, ducks and geese, any sick farm animals that happened to be using our kitchen as a convalescent ward, and a large vegetable plot. In her spare time she dealt with the travelling shops which used to call regularly at the farm, including the butcher, the baker, the green grocer, the ironmonger, some I have forgotten, and a wonderfully exotic gentleman salesman from India. More of him later.
My earliest memory is from when I was three years old and on my way, with a lovely old collie dog called Tuscan, to fetch the cows in for milking. It suddenly occurred to me that I was little, and cows were big. And there were a lot of them. They could bring serious harm to a young lad like me, not yet in his prime. I was puzzled, yet confident that they would obey me and head for the milking sheds because that's what they did, every time. Years later I realised the truth. It was Tuscan they were wary of, not me. Tuscan knew where they had to go and how to get them there. I was just along for the ride. Dad knew that Tuscan would do the job and also look after me. He was a wonderful dog.