A Somerset Lad

Eric Burdon featured on a BBC 4 programme about blues music. After The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, the first pop singer I remember was Eric Burdon. He was lead singer with a group called The Animals. I never knew much about the group, other than that they sang a song called, “We gotta get out of this place.” My Dad used to say that the words were how he felt about the place we were living.

In teenage years, I discovered that The Animals has sung a version of The House of the Rising Sun. Sung by Eric Burdon it was a song that was instantly memorable, such was the feeling in his voice when he sang it. His gravelly tones injected the song with an intensity that other versions didn’t quite possess. It never occurred to me to think about what sort of dwelling place the house of the rising sun might be; I just liked the song, lyrics seemed to be incidental to sound.

Amongst the other songs from Eric Burdon and The Animals I remember discovering was one called Good Times. Like the song about the house in New Orleans, it was a record I could listen to without giving any thought to what might be implied in the words.  One line remains in my memory,

“When I think of all the good times that I’ve wasted having good times”.

It never ever occurred to me to think about what experiences could have been considered to be “good times” for a 1960s rock star. Five decades after the song was popular, I think I would probably prefer not to know; I suspect there wouldn’t have been much crossover between our lifestyles.

The programme about the blues, in which Eric Burdon was interviewed was followed by The Rolling Stones at the BBC. One studio recording from the 1960s picked out a young George Best dancing in a disinterested way among the audience. Perhaps it was George Best who best represented the idea of “good times” for 1960s stars. A man with extraordinary talent for the best and the worst, he once commented, “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered,” and, “in 1969, I gave up women and alcohol – it was the worst twenty minutes of my life.”

Eric Burdon recalls times as they were. Perhaps some who recall memories of the 1960s now are laddish in their telling stories of the “good times” –  they don’t really seem so good.

The late date of Easter meant going back to school yesterday. The new term brings a frame of mind very different from that in primary school days. Each term brought its own set of challenges, but this term remains in the memory as possessing the greatest potential for unhappiness.

It was the term when plants and trees began to grow and blossom. In times before antihistamines, the hay fever had the capacity to make a misery of even the best of days.

The new term was officially “summer”, which meant that the school swimming pool was filled. The pool was a matter of pride for a very small country primary school; it was a subject of dread for an asthmatic boy who would not finally learn to swim until he was 38. The pool was above ground level, a metal frame held in place blue plastic walls which bulged with the weight of the water. The concrete base upon which the pool was set must have sloped downwards because one end was deeper than the other, although not so deep that it was difficult to keep one’s feet on the floor. It was the “water” that was the problem; it seemed to be a solution of one part tap water and two parts chlorine. It induced stinging in the eyes and shortness of breath. Going into the swimming pool was not, however, an option; everyone was expected to attempt to learn so as to gain a certificate for being able to swim 25 yards. Walking through a town one day years later, the air conditioning outlet from a fitness club brought scents of treated pool water evoking dreaded moments of school swimming lessons.

Summer also brought athletic sports. No-one had equipment beyond black plimsolls; athletics was done in whatever one stood up in. A sand pit provided the venue for the high jump and the long jump; running was simply a matter of starting at one point in the field and finishing at another; there were no markings on the grass. An ability to sprint only emerged in the final term at the school, when I collected second and third place certificates at the area junior sports; up until then my name went down for the sack race at the school sports; an event for duffers, all the serious competitors being kept for entry to proper races.

The most abiding memory, however, was of the school outing. This was a day long trip and included a bus journey that might take hours. The outings included trips to the national motor museum and New Forest in Hampshire and to the Tower of London. It was the latter that was to cause pain the following year.

A trip to a safari park north of London was proposed. My parents objected because the London trip had left me exhausted and had brought on asthma; a few other children had other reasons for not wishing to go. In a class of twenty, a trip quickly became unviable if a few withdrew. The organiser of the outing announced to the school one lunchtime that the safari park outing would not now take place because of my asthma and that we would instead go to Brownsea Island in the neighbouring county of Dorset; not the exciting destination some had been expecting. Forty-seven years later, a sense of loneliness on the day of the outing, as we crossed to the island in pouring rain, still remains.

Summer term? It is very different now.

The lane adjoining the house is more a track than a lane, unsurfaced, it becomes rutted mud in winter weather. Decades of holes being filled with gravel or hard core have not seen much improvement in potential driving conditions.

The lane leads only to fields. There is no right of way over it, other than to landowners gaining access to their land, and there would be no point travelling it unless you were going to a field, because, at the end, you would need to turn around and drive the bumpy way you had come.

No-one lives on the lane, but last year a family bought a field near the lane’s end and now come and stay there, in a caravan or in a tent. It seems odd that anyone would want to stay at the far end of the lane. There are no amenities and little to attract anyone to do so.

Dwelling places in our community were always of varying quality. Before we moved to the village in 1967, we lived on the family farm at Huish Episcopi. Across the road, there was a tarmac lane that led down onto the moorland. On the lane there was a bungalow, built from corrugated iron and without mains electricity or mains drainage, it had been a family home. Nearby a more substantial dwelling still housed a family, their house was lit by gas, there was no option ofvthe electrical appliances we were beginning to take for granted.

When we moved to the village, it was still a time when fruit and potato picking still brought transitory workers. Gypsy families in wooden caravans would arrive in September and move on during October. Encamped in a farmer’s field, their lives seemed exotic and filled with colour when compared with the dullness of our own daily lives.

At the end of our road, in the midst of weeds and briars, there was a house that was uninhabited. No-one ever went near it because it belonged to an old lady who lived in a cottage behind the village church. Every day she walked to our road to check the house, everyone knew her, a gentle eccentric whose manner was probably unnerving for a small boy.

Of course, there were plenty of fine dwellings in the village, houses from the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century, but none had the fascination of the different and the way unusual. Perhaps, in fifty years time, those living in our house will recall the people who camped up the lane.