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Letters to
the Editor - October 2008
Reading the letter on Tommy Farr (August) reminded me of a substantial
book I received when I was a child, which I would now love to get my
hands on. It was probably published around 1940 and contained the story
of Tommy Farr plus pages with plates of flags and one of birds – including
the story of a cuckoo. I think it was also produced in connection with
a Royal event.
As a young boy this book sparked in me an interest in nature which
has been with me ever since. Living as we did in the countryside, my
enthusiasm soon gripped my older sister and younger brother. My sister
died in her early forties: on her gravestone is the symbol of a bird.
My brother became a Professor of Ecology in The University of California
and was recently invited to join the prestigious National Academy of
Sciences in the US. He was four years younger than me but does not
remember reading the book.
I know my recollections of the contents of the book are rather scant
but can any reader remember reading it and advise on how I could obtain
sight of it?
Jack Murdoch, Ayr
My thoughts went back in time when I read John Perryman’s article,
Blue Squealers (August). I was born in Worcester and raised there in
the 1930s. Like John’s sister I contracted scarlet fever and
spent a period (it seemed like years) of healing in Newtown Isolation
Hospital, seeing visitors through the window. On the other side of
the road was Ronkswood Hospital which looked after wounded servicemen.
After the war I met a girl whose grandmother lived
in Ockeridge. I remember meeting her and doing odd jobs for her. We
now live in a village near Ockeridge and pass through there quite often.
Thank you John for causing me to re-visit days of my youth.
Maurice Whitehouse, Hallow
What a wonderful article on the cuckoo and the swallow (July). We
farm in a very unspoilt area of East Sussex, starting off dairy
farming in 1965 with a bit of corn, kale, stubble turnips, bullocks,
winter-keep sheep, replacement heifers and hay. We used a little fertiliser
at the beginning but no sprays and no fertiliser for the past twenty-five
years. We have planted trees in all the odd corners and kept our Saxon
hazel hedge pattern. Our once bare farmstead is now somewhat claustrophobic
with native trees and shrubs. But the cuckoos that drove me mad
in the 1960s are down to one distant voice. The swallows have not returned
for several years, but the sparrowhawks, the kestrel and the buzzard
are back. The kite is moving ever nearer through West Sussex.
We cage our birdfeeders inside a cubic yard of chicken wire to allow
the small birds to feed without being swooped on by the sparrow hawks,
but friends and neighbours of ours report devastating loss. The farm
is now ravaged by rabbits, grey squirrels, fallow deer and muntjac.
This we can turn to some sort of advantage with the aid of a .22 and
a .243 rifle. Encouragingly, the larks and the chiff-chaffs – which
I assumed had disappeared – are still with us. My wife hears
them clearly and informs me I am just too old and deaf.
I was fortunate in the 1970s and 1980s, to know a son of the tenant
farmer who farmed here at the turn of the century. He was born in 1900,
when this farm was part of a larger estate, well keepered. On under
a hundred acres the tenant employed a man to hedge and coppice the
tenant’s timber for broom-heads, barrel hoops, thatching pins
and tool handles etc. This man’s fond memories included hearing
the corncrake in our fields and walking through the woodland glades
and having his boots stained red by wild strawberries.
Now we farm in a politically correct fashion with a little money from
the Entry Level Scheme. We are just a farm of nothing but grassland
which is growing ever more acid and is never re-seeded. We have a small
herd of single suckled shorthorn cattle and we make about a dozen acres
of late hay in round bales. The neighbouring land is all farmed in
a similar way. However, the village has become a rich man’s ghetto.
Houses are being constantly enlarged, gardens cleared and tidied up
and motor traffic increases constantly. If you want to see the latest
in Lexus, Volvo, Range Rover, BMW 4x4s come and see the only-children
being delivered to our local primary schools.
Geoffrey Sheard, High Hurstwood, East Sussex
I am writing to say that on looking in my diary of
my walks around Sutton Scotney and Wonston, 6 May 2006, 7 May 2007,
and 6 May 2008, I heard the cuckoo. I do not recall if it is later
than in past years.
Mrs B Ayling, Winchester
The ‘village idiot’ letter in the August issue recalls
another time when my farming grandmother, at the turn of the nineteenth
century, had to visit the local asylum on business, in the pony and
trap. As she pulled up, she called to a bystander to hold the horse’s
head while she got out. He promptly grabbed the horse’s tail!
She asked him what he thought he was doing, and he replied that had
he held the bridle, they would not have him living there!
Alan Moore, Warwick
Gavin Holmes’ comment in his article about Clydesdale horses
in the July issue, “they are very careful where they put their
feet”, reminds me of an incident when I was a child on the farm
in Wales. A kitten ran out from a farm building right under the feet
of a Clydesdale horse as it was pawing the ground. The horse froze
with its hoof a few inches above the kitten. They were so big and strong,
but so gentle. I never had any fear of them.
Joy Amos, North Shore City, NZ
In 1936 Watson-Watt led a team of talented scientists in the development
of the radio location of aircraft. The technique involved centrimetric
electromagnetic transmissions which would not pass down a copper wire
but travel in hollow box-like structures called wave guides.
As everyone who has studied physics knows, electromagnetic radiation
travels in straight lines. So for practical purposes, it was necessary
to get the wave guides around bends. Young scientists tried with mirrors
to reflect the rays around corners. This approach was partly successful
but transmission losses were high. Before the invention of the cavity
magnetron in January 1940, radar signals were weak and losses of power
were unacceptable.
Fortunately, in the team was a village idiot assistant. He had been
given a simple job assembling wave guides. Unfortunately, they did
not fit into the space so he bent them across his knee – Eureka!
At once he had 100 per cent transmission around the bend. The young
scientists were directed to more productive work.
As a research scientist, I always made sure I had a village idiot
in the team to ask silly questions and carry out instructions incorrectly.
John Mainhood, Tonbridge
I write in regard to the Yew Tree in Doveridge Churchyard. Way back
in 1927, when I was eight years of age, we went to live at Doveridge
which is in Derbyshire, near Uttoxeter in Staffordshire. The river
Dove is the county boundary there. Doveridge Church is above the river.
At the village school we were told that the yew tree in the churchyard
is in the Domesday Book and we were also told that if we ran round
the tree thirteen times anti- clockwise, the devil would come up and
get us. I remember finding out what anti-clockwise meant. I used to
get two big stones and put one either side of the yew tree. I was careful
only to run round the tree twelve and a half times. I did not want
to be taken down to hell. I have found out that this yew tree is the
only item under the heading of ‘Derbyshire’ in the Domesday
book.
Jane Prince, Alfreton
Having this year heard of many people losing their poultry to foxes,
we now have lost twenty-eight hens and two roosters from the local
fox last year. We know he had three litters of five and this year an
early one of five, and recently we saw three tiny ones playing in the
dark.
When we had an animal feed delivery the driver asked us why we had
not ordered any chicken feed – we said it was no use as we only
have a few hens and two ducks left, the fox had had the rest. So many
of his customers have also lost their birds. He said a lorry driver
mate of his asked him to look at his very usual load – cages
full of foxes that had been caught in London and were on their way
to be released all over Suffolk. What! I’m furious – don’t
we now have too many foxes here already and there’s now a fox
hunting ban. Where will it end – why do people have to interfere
and just leave foxes where they are. The London fox lives on scraps
and leftover takeaways.
Who ordered this? I wonder if any readers have the answer.
Marion Marriner, Suffolk
Some seventy-plus years ago, I was born and lived in a small village
in the Chilterns called Stoke Row; we were like most families in the
village not too well off. My mother was always looking for ways of
making ends meet and decided to rent the front room to the local Doctor
Pooley for his weekly surgery. The requirements were quite simple,
make sure a large jug of water was available for mixing various medicines
and in winter a good fire and the room warm and clean. Most villagers’ illnesses
when they came to the surgery, were for colds, tummy problems or aches
and pains. They were dealt with in the following manner: for colds
a red mixture, for tummy a white mixture, for aches and pains a brown
mixture, all being diluted with water.
Our only supply of water came from a well collected from water off
the roof of our house. My brother kept pigeons and most of their day
was spent on the roof doing what pigeons do. There were lots of droppings
but amazingly I do not recollect anyone who died from these wonderful
mixtures, in fact many returned for a further supply.
Two things stick in my mind, was it my mother’s water from the
well with the microbes and pigeon droppings, or the doctor’s
various coloured mixtures from which people recovered (if they did?).
I shall never know the answer.
John Pitt, Oxfordshire
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Countryman, The Water Mill, Broughton Hall, Skipton,
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