A Somerset Lad

My grandfather retired at some point, at least, he claimed to have retired. It was presumably a matter of accountancy, or Ministry of Agriculture paperwork, or solicitor’s advice, for there was no discernible decline in his activity. Retirement is rarely part of farming life, what would someone whose whole life has been their daily round of work do if they suddenly stopped? It would be very difficult to be going out to the yard one day and the next day to sit in an armchair while someone else did the work you had been doing for fifty years.

It is not just farmers who continue to work long after their nominal retirement age has passed. Politicians continue for as long as possible: the veteran Labour Party member of parliament Dennis Skinner was 87 when he lost his seat at the December 2019 general election. The American presidential election this November will be fought between the Democrat candidate Joe Biden, who will be 78 that month, and the Republican Donald Trump who will be 74. In football, Premier League club Crystal Palace are managed by Roy Hodgson who will be 73 when the new season is due to begin in August. In acting, it was only in February of this year that June Brown finally announced her retirement from the part of Dot Cotton in BBC Television’s Eastenders, the announcement came just after her 93rd birthday. In art, in music, in writing, in business, in science, in industry, in many fields, people are working long after the age at which they might have chosen to retire.

Doing the sums, were it a matter of finance, I could retire from work when I reach the age of 68 and various pensions become available, but, like my grandfather, I fear I would sit wondering what to do with myself. Not being a gardener or a golfer or a fisherman, not being practical or artistic, not being a mechanic or a handyman, not being a technician or a craftsman, not being the sort of person who joins clubs or societies, not being a television viewer, not being very sociable, the prospect of retirement would be frightening.

The past four weeks of lockdown have been an experience in what it means to be unable to go to work, it has made me realise that I am what I do. There is comfort in the fact that Gloucestershire County Council allow me to continue until I am 75 in October 2035. If I should still be alive, I would need to look for part-time employment after that date.

There had been a school reunion a couple of weeks previously. A few dozen of us had travelled down to Devon to attend a lunch and to tell stories that would have been boring to anyone who had not been at school with us. In the spirit of the occasion, some of us had travelled by train and had been met by a bus from the school. It seems odd, four decades later, that anyone would have attended a reunion at a school they had only left four years before – perhaps years were much longer then.

Anyway, two weeks on from the gathering, a square envelope had come through the post. Made from card and about eight inches square, the handwriting of Paul, my roommate in the senior house, was recognisable.

The package was a mystery. He had not said anything about sending me anything. Opening it, I found a seven inch vinyl record inside, with the labels removed from both sides. There was no way of knowing what the record was without playing it. As a student, I had felt constrained only to buy albums in order to keep my credibility, so I would have had to adjust the record player to 45 rpm in order to play the single.

Within a few seconds of the stylus touching the vinyl, the truth had been revealed – Paul had sent me the Bay City Rollers’ Shang-a-lang. I laughed so much at the time that I kept the record, I still have it. It is still inside the envelope in which it had arrived. It has not been played since 1981.

Shang-a-lang had been our equivalent of a nuclear deterrent, it had been a threat. “I’ll play Shang-a-lang if you don’t stop.”

The Bay City Rollers had been immensely popular when we were fourteen years old, they enjoyed a series of Number One hits. They were a band liked by girls who would imitate their heroes by wearing tartan scarves and calf-length jeans trimmed with tartan.

The Bay City Rollers may not have been a band much liked by teenage boys, but they were a fun band. The tunes were upbeat, jolly, easily remembered. They were tunes that brought people out onto the floor at discos. There was no anger, no angst. Lyrics were light and quickly learned by the Rollers’ fans.

Shang-a-lang was a piece of nonsense, but it was a cheery piece of nonsense. A bit more cheer would be very welcome now.

In the 1970s, a railway track still ran along the railway valley from Barnstaple to Bideford. The line had been closed to passengers by Dr Beeching in 1965, but it still seemed to be in use by goods trains. Passing the line on the way to our annual camping holiday each year, it seemed that it would have been a fine way to travel on your holiday: no need to worry about delays at Taunton, or on the narrow road that wound its way to North Devon. Instead, there would have been a Penzance-bound train from Taunton to Exeter and then a change for the Barnstaple train. We could have sat and looked out of the carriage window as we rolled through the quiet pastures of mid-Devon.

Of course, the problem was that we had to reach Taunton in the first place, and how would we have carried all of our camping equipment? And how much would the fares have been for a family of five? And how would we have got from the railway station at Bideford to the campsite at Westward Ho! (the only place in England with an exclamation mark in its name)? And, having pitched our tent and set up camp for two to three weeks, how would we have visited anywhere or gone to Northam for our shopping?

Our journey had no Enid Blyton qualities, nothing that would have inspired the sort of coloured illustrations that emerged from that imagined golden age of travel. Instead, the blue and gold Bedford van was loaded with everything anyone could possibly have required and we headed off. The seventy-two mile trip was never completed in less than two hours, but we were able to take everything we wanted and we were able to go where we wanted when we wanted.

Train travel from Barnstaple to Bideford along the banks of the Rivers Taw and Torridge might have seemed an idyllic way to pass an evening after more than two hours sitting in an old Bedford in traffic jams, but a railway carriage could not have taken us on the holiday that we wanted.

Proponents of public transport seem to forget why cars became popular in the first place: people stopped using trains because they wanted freedom of travel, they didn’t want to be bound by time, or by destination.

Compelled to travel by train, we could never have afforded a holiday and we would never have spent the long hot days of 1970s summers on the beach at Westward Ho!

It was said that my grandfather only passed his driving test on the seventh attempt. Whatever the true number of times, his driving style was never reassuring; roundabouts could be particularly unnerving experience as he unhesitatingly continued along his way. His driving probably owed much to his lack of driving; it was rare for him to go anywhere.

A green 1953 Land Rover was his vehicle for years.  Three seats across the front were the only aspect of comfort. It had a basic blow heater, a windscreen wiper that could be operated manually, and a canvas roof that was protection against the rain, but did nothing to keep anyone warm. But why would there have been concern with comfort? The Land Rover was for work, not for going to places.

Perhaps my grandmother prevailed upon him to buy something more comfortable, for a dark blue Rover 2000 TC was bought. It sat inside a corrugated iron shed most of the week, coming out on a Tuesday afternoon when my grandmother would be driven the two miles into Langport to attend the women’s guild at the congregational church. Occasionally, there would be visits to family members elsewhere, if the journey there and back could be made in a single afternoon.

Lockdown would have presented few challenges to my grandfather because isolation was the norm of everyday life. Perhaps the presence of his own family around the farm was sufficient company. Perhaps the weariness caused by the demands of the daily tasks meant sitting in his armchair at the end of the day was all that was felt necessary by way of leisure.

There must have been countless people on small farms throughout rural England who lived similar lives. Milking cows twice a day, along with numerous manual tasks that are now done by machine, meant there was little time to leave the farm, not that there would have been money to spare for anything other than very occasional shopping trips or outings.

The postman would have pulled into the yard for a brief moment each morning. The Milk Marketing Board lorry would have collected the churns at the gate. There would have been occasional visits from the vet, or by salesmen from agricultural supplies companies, or by men from the Ministry of Agriculture, but social calls would have been no more than neighbours pulling up in the yard and standing for a chat.

It would not have occurred to anyone that this was an isolated life.