A Somerset Lad

My first memory of Auntie Diane was perhaps at the beginning of 1967; much earlier, and the moment would have been beyond memory; much later, and the occasion would not have have assumed the aura it still possesses. My aunt, her husband and my cousins were coming home on a visit – from Canada. In 1967, air travel was expensive, return visits by emigrants were rare. The occasion was such that it was deemed appropriate that we would all travel to London Airport to welcome them on their arrival. Trips to London Airport were almost as rare as flights across the Atlantic and the occasion was one approached with great excitement.

One moment remains vivid, standing at a barrier in the bright light of the terminal building, watching people appear from a corridor. My aunt and her family appeared, my aunt with styled dark hair and a brown fur coat with which she withstood the chill of Ontario snows; my cousins in check shirts and patterned sweaters, smart North American winter attire. To a six year old boy from the country, their arrival was like that of film stars.

In Somerset of the 1960s there were still people living in the pre-fabricated houses that provided homes to many people after the Second World War. The gap in wealth between North America and the England was wide, families across the Atlantic possessed wealth the likes of which we could only try to imagine.

Old photographs reveal that Canadian affluence had reached the life of a small boy four years prior to the 1967 visit. Among pictures from the severe winter at the beginning of 1963 are ones of a child pulling along a toy bear on wheels.

North Americans would immediately recognise Smokey Bear, the figure used to educate the public about the danger of forest fires, a figure who made his first appearance in the United States in 1944. In later childhood, there was a sense of disappointment that the plastic orange figure on black wheels was not the much more famous Yogi Bear. Only when visiting Canada for the first time in the late-1990s did an awareness come of how significant Smokey and his campaigns had been and how widely he was recognised on both sides of the 49th Parallel.

It isn’t just the plastic bear that points to the arrival of Canadian purchases, though. Looking at the picture, there came the realisation this evening, for the first time, that the two year old in the photograph is wearing a snowsuit. Such attire might be commonplace now, certainly among those who take children on package holidays skiing; in rural England of 1963, they would hardly have been plentiful.

Photographs from the time show a child oblivious to the winter chill. It is not that he was ever a particularly cheerful child, it is that he is dressed for the minus thirty degree chill of Ontario. Auntie Diane’s presents still hold a place dear in his memory.

The mist was rolling in as I drove home from work, it would not have been hard to have imagined magical stories. When I was young, there were always magical stories. Somerset was  place for knights in shining armour who would ride back from the dead in the moment of need and, in Devon, a navy waited the hour when it would again put to sea.

The English teacher in the little Dartmoor secondary school I attended belonged to a conservative Christian church, but loved to teach us poems rooted in legend, even if they meant heroes rising from the dead (something strictly forbidden in the conservative Christian worldview). The rhythms of Drake’s Drum still conjure memories of her reading:

DRAKE he’s in his hammock an’ a thousand mile away,
(Capten, art tha sleepin’ there below?)
Slung atween the round shot in Nombre Dios Bay,
An’ dreamin’ arl the time o’ Plymouth Hoe.
Yarnder lumes the island, yarnder lie the ships,
Wi’ sailor lads a-dancin’ heel-an’-toe,
An’ the shore-lights flashin’, an’ the night-tide dashin’
He sees et arl so plainly as he saw et long ago.

Drake he was a Devon man, an’ ruled the Devon seas,
(Capten, art tha sleepin’ there below?),
Rovin’ tho’ his death fell, he went wi’ heart at ease,
An’ dreamin’ arl the time o’ Plymouth Hoe,
“Take my drum to England, hang et by the shore,
Strike et when your powder’s runnin’ low;
If the Dons sight Devon, I’ll quit the port o’ Heaven,
An’ drum them up the Channel as we drummed them long ago.”

Drake he’s in his hammock till the great Armadas come,
(Capten, art tha sleepin’ there below?),
Slung atween the round shot, listenin’ for the drum,
An’ dreamin’ arl the time o’ Plymouth Hoe.
Call him on the deep sea, call him up the Sound,
Call him when ye sail to meet the foe;
Where the old trade’s plyin’ an’ the old flag flyin’,
They shall find him, ware an’ wakin’, as they found him long ago.

It was the same English teacher who lent pupils her copy of Frederick Forsyth’s The Shepherd, a wonderful story about a de Havilland Vampire jet in thick fog over the North Sea at Christmas Eve 1957 when all its instruments failed. An old Mosquito bomber appears out of the mists and leads the jet to safety before disappearing. The Mosquito had disappeared without trace on Christmas Eve some fourteen years previously; its ghost continued in active service.

Magical heroes felt no pain. They rode into a story for a brief time and went on their way as quickly as they had appeared. There were no “helloes” and no “goodbyes”; no tears and no regrets. Sometimes to be a ghostly figure, appearing and disappearing when the task is accomplished seemed attractive.

Driving the A39 road from the top of Pedwell Hill to the foot of Puriton Hill takes you along the narrow ridge at the top of the Polden Hills. On either side, the land falls to low-lying moorland. Near a turning for Shapwick, the route dips through woodland – Loxley Wood. Fifty acres of ancient woodland, Loxley Wood is a winding dark valley in which the mobile phone signal disappears. Should you decide to pull into the lay-by and wander into the shadows, it would not be hard to feel a sense of timelessness.

In younger years, the name of Loxley Wood had a evocative powers. In times when television programmes told tales of heroism and derring-do, when the good side might lose battles, but always won the war, Robin of Loxley was the sort of figure who inspired admiration in an eight year old boy. Loxley Wood on the Polden Hills might have been far removed from the mythical home of Robin Hood, but it would have been easy to have imagined green-clad men moving between the trees.

Of course, the Robin Hood story itself was as far removed from reality as Loxley Wood is from Sherwood Forest. Robin Hood in the stories we were told was a brave soldier who had returned from the Crusades to find his lands confiscated by the evil Sheriff of Nottingham, who served the corrupt Prince John who was ruling England while King Richard was away at the Third Crusade. King Richard, in the story we were told, was a good and just man, the Lionheart who would restore equity and justice when his battle for the Holy Land was complete.

Of course, it was all nonsense. Richard would never return to England because he had hardly spent more than a few months here since childhood. Richard’s home was in Aquitaine in south-west France, he spoke French and Occitan, dwellers in Sherwood Forest would not have understood him if he had spoken to them. The Lionheart was a cruel and violent man who was responsible for the cold-blooded murder of two and a half thousand Muslim prisoners whom he had been holding as hostages at Ayyadieh. Had Robin Hood been a Crusader, he would have been complicit in the killing of countless Muslim children, women and men – in the name of the Church. At one point, John, who was a villain in our stories, was forced to raise money to ransom his brother, who had been captured by the Holy Roman Emperor. The ransom was two or three times the income of the Crown, so John had to raise taxes, and his raising of taxes was something for which he was vilified in the tales we were told.

Loxley Wood is a beautiful spot, even more beautiful for having no association whatsoever with Crusaders, kings or men in Lincoln green.