A Somerset Lad

Reg was born at the turn of the century, at the turn of the Twentieth Century. Born in 1900, he was still working at the Kelway’s nursery in Langport when I spent the summers of 1978 and 1979 there as a casual worker.

Reg worked in the glasshouses, spending his days caring for the delicate plants near which no members of the casual staff would have been allowed. As we passed the greenhouses, where the ageing nurseryman worked quietly by himself, a friend who worked with me during those summers would remark, in bad mock Latin, “Reg in greenhouse est.” It never failed to make me smile, such is the sense of humour of eighteen year old boys.

Reg rode a heavy black bicycle from his home, no more than a mile from the nursery. The same bicycle had probably travelled those roads for sixty years or more. Quietly spoken, always good humoured, Reg had seen enough of history to be unworried by anything that might have happened in the 1970s.

Two world wars had come and gone during Reg’s lifetime. He had laboured on the land through both of them, but could readily recall those from his neighbourhood who had served in armed forces and never returned. The names on the parish war memorial from both of the world wars were the names of men Reg had known. The Fallen of the Great War, who remained only in sepia photographs on cottage sideboards, were those among whom he had passed his boyhood years.

A healthy complexion and solid frame gave Reg an appearance that belied his age, not that an eighteen year old would have had much idea of what someone of Reg’s age might have looked like, he was a decade or more older than my grandparents. Reg was fit and healthy and independent, and probably worked harder than many men who were decades younger than him.

In the mind of a casual worker who worked alongside him for two summers, Reg created the impression that it was possible to live forever, or, if not forever, for so long that you could remember all of the important events in the history of the Twentieth Century. If you could be seventy-nine years old and still working, then someone sixty years your junior need have no fear of ever becoming old.

Four decades later, two decades short of Reg’s age during his greenhouse days, there is a sense of age accelerating. Perhaps the answer lies in slowing down and buying an old black bike.

A survey of fourteen  year olds shows that while few went to church, most believed in a divine power; while few believed in hell, most believed in heaven; while some thought life ended when you died, others believed in reincarnation.

The opinions were familiar, I could show you exercise books where such views were held by twelve year olds. What was surprising was that the opinions were from a group of fourteen year olds sixty years ago.

In his groundbreaking book Teenage Religion, Harold Loukes reported on surveys with fourteen and fifteen year olds around the country. Young people who were about to leave school, and enter the world of work at the age of fifteen, were vocal and consistent in their religious ideas.

The surveys were carried out using tape recorded class discussions and open-ended questionnaires. The results would not have been encouraging  to the church leaders at the time, (and were undoubtedly rejected by many who preferred not to accept uncomfortable truths), but would have been intriguing to those who sought to understand young people born in the post-war years.

One of the fascinating aspects of Loukes’ book is the cover photograph. Other than the name of the photographer, no details are provided. There are no clues as to which class in which school were on the other side of the lens, but even without details the shot tell a story of the young people of the time.

I remember teenagers in 1970. You could have told straightaway from their hairstyles and their dress that the 1960s had changed everything.

Loukes’ teenagers are less easily located in time. As most of the class look towards an unseen speaker, one girl stares fixedly at the camera. The girl is wearing a short sleeved dark dress and a pearl necklace, it is an outfit that might have been worn by her mother. There are boys wearing sports jackets with collars and ties. A handful of teddy boy haircuts suggest the 1950s have been reached. At the front sits a boy with a teddy boy haircut and a leather jacket, the only undeniably youthful fashion in the picture.

Perhaps 1960 was in a transition period between times when teenagers were younger versions of older people and times when being teenage was to be different. The traditionalism of the way in which many of them are dressed perhaps makes the non-traditional religious views they expressed more fascinating, or perhaps their beliefs are the way in which people have thought for generations, but only in 1960 had the courage to say.

The lockdown has brought a greater appreciation of simple things, like brown bread, English butter, Cheddar cheese, McVities Digestive biscuits, Yorkshire tea – and books. Overseas travel has become practically impossible, as a consequence of which, everywhere in England  has become overcrowded and overpriced, leaving few options other than sinking deep into an armchair and reading.

Books were always a means of escape. Even in childhood years, they offered an avenue into worlds different from the one one in which I lived, the world in which I was a pale, underweight asthmatic reclusive who was frequently too shy to go out to do even things that he enjoyed. Books presented a different reality. Well-written, they had the capacity to create a feeling of being completely detached from life in a small, unremarkable village deep in rural England. Sometimes, even chores were performed with a book in one hand, a few lines being read each time an opportunity presented itself.

Books have assumed a new significance, perhaps it is because they are tactile. Given the choice between reading from a desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone or a book, there is no question about the choice I would make. There is something reassuring in the feeling of a book: there is a sense of permanence, a physical weight, the smoothness of the cover, the crispness of the pages.

Reading academic books, I am noting are details of which I would never have been aware in my younger days. There are dates and places of publication and the names of publishers. There are footnotes and tables and indexes (should that be indices?). There are careful and considered structures, chapters with sub-headings, points that are bulleted. There are books that seem works of a very skilled craftsman.

It was a childhood ambition to be a journalist and a writer, to see my name above a report, or a column, and then to see it on the spine of a book. I slowly came to a realization of what an intimidating prospect that would have been, to have work that has taken many hundreds of hours dissected in minutes by reviewers who are quick to pick up on any weakness or failing. It became an ambition that I was glad passed unfulfilled.

On a grey day in a dull August, in a time that is out of joint, a pile of books sits on the floor beside me. Some date from the 1960s, but are as fresh in their wisdom as when they were published. There are few situations that cannot be remedied by more books.