A Somerset Lad

Tessa was an early lesson in the power of economics.

In 1979, in the days when the rest of the world was driving Austin Allegros and Morris Marinas, Tessa’s father drove an Alfa Romeo. Tessa’s father was a civil engineer, a profession which seemed very lucrative. Tessa’s family lived in a big old seventeenth century house, thick stone walls and rooms like something from a Sunday newspaper colour supplement, it stood in what estate agents would have described as “mature gardens,” large trees, abundant flower beds, and roses climbing the walls. It was the kind of home that you might have expected if you had known her.

Not only did Tessa’s father drive an Alfa Romeo, he allowed Tessa to borrow it to go out in the evening. The price of the car would have been unthinkable for most working people. The thought of being eighteen years old and being allowed to drive such a car was beyond our imagination. Even the cost of the insurance would have been far beyond the means of most of Tessa’s contemporaries (to be honest, even having the money required to have filled the tank with petrol would have been too much for me).

Economics excluded any prospect of romantic involvement with Tessa. When you were eighteen years old at that time, and a pushbike was your only mode of transport, attractive young women from Tessa’s background would tend to give you a miss. In 1979, driving a car was something unusual among those at our Sixth Form college, owning a car was even rarer. Tessa’s usual boyfriends would be twenty-somethings and would be driving their own cars and have cash in their pockets.

Tessa was not shallow, she was intelligent and witty and engaging, as well as being pretty. Tessa was a friend to those of us who depended upon bicycles, but when it came to choosing someone for a date, Tessa simply responded to the best offer available, as would any of us in her situation.

Human nature has not changed since biblical times when Abraham offered Lot the opportunity to choose which land he would take for his people, and Lot chose the best land.

It is human instinct to seek the best for oneself. Perhaps it is part of our Darwinian programming, our instinct for survival. Economists would offer theoretical models based on returns and benefits to explain why Tessa would have chosen a sharply dressed young man who drove a Ford Escort over a teenager dressed in sweatshirt and jeans who rode a bike.

Economics is logical, it explains much of our human behaviour, and it is always bad news for those of us on pushbikes.

His name seems to have long disappeared from local memory. It would be hard now to identify which fields he owned. The land was acquired by neighbouring farmers, the hedgerows grubbed out to create fields amenable to the use of modern machinery.

In a memory of him, his car is parked in a field of stubble. It was one of those 1960s estate cars where the tailgate split in two, the rear windscreen folded upwards, while the lower part folded flat. The tailgate was open, the reason why it was open is far beyond recall.

Perhaps the car was a Triumph Herald. Did they have a split tailgate? There was a stripe down the side of the car, the paintwork had the freshness of a new model, the chrome bumper and hubcaps were gleaming.

In my recall, he was standing near the car, he wore a checked shirt and a tie. Ties were not a frequent sight in ordinary farming life. The solicitor and bank manager would wear a tie, the vet might wear one, working farmers did not.  Wishing to verify my memory, I asked my mother about him.

“He was hopeless,” my mother replied.

“Why?” I asked.

“He had no idea about farming. He had been left the farm by his father.”

His efforts seem to have been unprofitable for the farm was sold.

He had been older than my grandfather, who was born in 1913, his birth would have been in the Edwardian or late-Victorian era. How readily might have someone who grew up in the Edwardian age have adjusted to the rapidly changing realities of England in the 1960s?

He was a man of gentle manners, softly spoken, unfailingly polite, a man from a culture very different from that of his yeoman farmer neighbours who were men who would have enjoyed neither the education nor the refinement to which he was accustomed.

Perhaps he had been a child at a time when there were farm workers to carry out the daily agricultural work, perhaps his father’s role had been one of oversight and a foreman had ensured that the farm was well managed. The First World War reduced the supply of agricultural labourers, mechanisation began to change farming, the depression years were difficult. Perhaps by the time the farm was bequeathed to him, it was already going to be a difficult task to sustain the farm.

Perhaps the car parked in a field of stubble represented the problem, whatever his background, whatever the life to which he had been accustomed, a new car was beyond budget of a working farmer.

Why did we do the stuff we did?

At Easter 1977, a sixteen year old youth caught a National Express coach from Bridgwater in Somerset to Bristol, and then caught a coach from Bristol to Birmingham. It was probably the furthest he had ever travelled by himself, teenage country boys did not get around very much.

On the previous summer holiday, a camping holiday at  Westward Ho! in Devon, there had been a teenage romance. It had been the hottest summer on record and the sun had shone every day and the hours had been filled with laughter. Oddly, the affection had continued through the autumn and winter, there had been an exchange of letters every week and plans were made for a reunion.

Neither house had a telephone, so working out the details of a visit to her home in the Birmingham suburb of Erdington had been done by post, and by arranging to make calls from the respective local telephone boxes at particular times. It was undiscovered territory; did other teenage friendships proceed on a similar basis?

The coach journey had been made on the Easter Saturday that year.  There had been an affectionate greeting and on Sunday and Easter Monday there had been outings with her parents in their Volkswagen camper van.  The Easter Monday afternoon had been spent on Cannock Chase, the local beauty spot. To someone accustomed to the West Country, it didn’t seem such an exciting place.

Easter Tuesday, 12th April came, and the holiday weekend was over. Her father and brother, who had been good company had returned to work; her mother resumed the usual daily routine; and they were left to plan their own days. It became apparent that they really didn’t like each other very much, and that there was not much in common between a sixteen year old from deep in a rural community and a fifteen year old, exactly fifty-one-weeks his junior, from Birmingham.

There was no falling out, there was an outing by train to Stratford-on-Avon and bus trips to the city centre, to the art gallery and the other places thought significant by teenagers, but by the end of the week it became clear that the friendship would not continue.

It was not a surprise when, a few days later, he received a Birmingham postmarked letter from her that told him that there was a nice boy in her class with whom she wanted to go out and that she hoped he wouldn’t mind if she didn’t write again.

The letter was received with complete equanimity. It was a recognition of the obvious. He couldn’t think what the fuss had been about.

Forty years later, that trip to Stratford remains a happy memory.

Why he went to Birmingham remains a question.