A Somerset Lad

Upton.  It is a hamlet that once had a railway station.  Long Sutton and Pitney, the station was called.  It was convenient to neither village and there were probably travellers who were less than happy to find themselves 2-3 miles from where they wished to be.

There is talk of a reopening of a local station, one that will serve Langport and Somerton.  Upton has been mooted.  The logic of choosing Upton would be hard to fathom, what would be the point of having a station that is not near either town?

Whatever the fate of local railway plans, there is nevertheless always a fascination in railways; each line, each station is imbued with a sense of something indefinable.

There are moments when one can stand on the bridge at Upton, looking at the line toward Paddington running through deep cuttings, and ponder the industry demanded in building lines such as it, the ambitious investments, the technical skills, the hard labour, the countless  people for whom the railways brought work – and the hope.

Maybe, in rural areas, hope was the most significant factor: expectations of wealth for investors, aspirations to become successful among entrepreneurs, access to markets for factories and farmers, jobs for those who were prepared to travel. The prospect of travel itself changed communities; shopping, excursions, even holidays.

Perhaps in some future time when the means of transport have been revolutionised, the railway lines across the landscape will be regarded by future generations in the way monastic and ecclesiastical ruins are regarded today, as artefacts of a society whose ways and customs were very different. Perhaps the archaeologists in centuries to come will excavate sites where stations once stood and ponder the lives of those who travelled from these places, perhaps children will stand in museums and watch hologram trains making sedate progress along cuttings and embankments.

Perhaps the fascination is about connecting with deep childhood memories. Perhaps it is about standing with my mother on the platform of Langport West station when not yet four years of age. Perhaps it is about watching the level crossing gates of the station at Martock swing open to allow the passage of a train, and to discover decades later that the line closed in 1964. Perhaps it is about being at Weymouth while very young and seeing a train travel the line through the streets on its way to the docks.

There is something in a railway that connects with memories of security and inexhaustible hope.

It is the fifth week of the school holidays for Irish secondary schools, depending on the school in which one teaches, there now remain six or seven weeks. To be honest, a return to the routine and laughter of a classroom in the south Dublin suburbs would be attractive, there have been moments in the past year that have been among the happiest of my life.

While there is leisure to ponder the passage of the days, schools in England continue to while away the summer days in the classroom.  The voices of children from the village primary school are clearly audible through the kitchen window.

It is hard to discern when it was that the English decided that the summer did not begin until the best days of the season were past.  Even at primary school, there was an awareness that Midsummer’s Day was 24th June, which always seemed a depressing thought when summer holidays were still a month away.

Certainly, in the past, there was a sense locally that June was the month to celebrate summer.

Beare is a hamlet below Turn Hill, at the western end of the ridge on which the village of High Ham stands.  Perhaps its physical detachment from the village always allowed an independence of spirit.

In 1598, the German Protestant evangelical rector of High Ham, Adrian Schaell, wrote disapprovingly of the Midsummer celebration of the feast of Saint John the Baptist.

Neither shall it be impertinent to say somewhat of a certaine obscure chapple at Beare, destroyed within these fifty yeares, which chapple as I thinke (being moved by this conjecture) was dedicated to Jhon Baptist, because, never but uppon the eveninge of the nativitye of Jhon, the parson of Pitney was wont to mumble over eveninge prayers, that on the night after they mighte play at wrestlinge in Sedgmoore, and the holy day followinge he was wont solemly to celebrate masse before many youthe at that time there assembled in great multitudes that after dynner they might try masteries in runninge for ramme appointed for the course, which whoso excellinge others by runninge could take, compted it his owne, as the reward and recompense of his obteined victory.

Some five centuries on from such rustic sport, there seems an attractiveness in young people gathering for a church celebration and a sporting competition.  (Undoubtedly, there would have ensued drinking, drunkenness and carnal activity, but those things now happen anyway). It seems a memorable way of marking the summer.

Walking with  my sister and her dogs along Aller Drove on Sedgemoor, a hissing noise told us we were drawing too close to swans and cygnets.

‘Did I tell you the tale of the swan and the taxidermist?

My sister looked mystified.

It was on a visit to the Western Front that I sat with friends in a dining room table at a hotel in Cambrai.  A man beside me said he knew that the woman who sat opposite us was from Ringsend in Dublin. He would explain how he remembered.

Driving from his Co Laois farm one morning, he had noticed a swan lying in a field beside the river. Walking across a field to investigate, he discovered the bird had flown into the high tension cables that crossed the land.

It was a fine specimen of a bird and it would be a pity simply to leave it to rot, but he believed that the bird was the property of the State, so to take the bird to a taxidermist would require a permit.

Gathering up the dead swan, he drove to the Garda barracks and explained that he believed that only the President’s office could give permission for him to keep the bird.

The sergeant at the barracks was sceptical about the need for a permit, but made the necessary inquiries and the next day telephoned to say that the swan could be kept.

Finding a taxidermist proved to be a challenge. There was word of one in Castle Street in Dublin. He drove his truck to the city centre but a man who had lived in the area all his life had never heard of anyone there doing such work.

Returning to Laois, disappointed, he heard of there being a taxidermist in Co Clare.

The man in Clare did a wonderful job, the swan was mounted with its wings spread and its neck stretched forward. The return journey with the bird had been made with it on the passenger seat of the truck.

Oncoming motorists were confronted with the sight of a swan that seemed to be flying towards them from inside the cab of a lorry.

‘Anyway,’  said the man, ‘I found out afterwards that there was a taxidermist I could have gone to down in Ringsend. That’s how I remembered you were from Ringsend yourself’.

There was loud laughter around the table.

There was laughter along Aller Drove.  Hopefully, the swans had not heard our conversation.