Sailor's Return and FFF XVIII.

Sailor's return.

Ger photographing his favourite creatures.

Leaving the 'Anna M' to the tender mercies of Alec, not to mention the care of Nossa Senhora de Nazaré, I'm back on Sherkin; to the bright skies and fulsome growth of Ireland at the height of summer. The big deal now is to get the new room plastered and finished, on the outside at least, while the weather is in it! Fiona and I are also looking forward to a lovely get-together shortly, as we celebrate fifty years together, so between the jigs and the reels, we're busy as bees!

Ger plastering.

FFF XVIII Somerset. So, we had moved from London to our cottage on the Mendips, just within sight of that big Abbey tower. For a while I went on with the job in London, up on Monday  morning, back on Friday evening; then I took the plunge, abandoned the idea of a career in journalism, and got a job on a dairy farm with a large herd (for those days) of pedigree short-horns.

I worked under Baz the dairyman, who knew every one of three hundred or so cows by name, and immediately spotted it if something were wrong. I helped with the morning milking and the chores and then had the afternoons to myself. It was a privilege to work with Baz; I felt his kind would hardly be around much longer. The herds would get even bigger, the computers would be tracking the animals, and the human input would be more and more robotic. It all works splendidly until it doesn't, but how such trends can be reversed, short of disaster of one kind or another, is hard to see.

Fiona and I were inspired to a considerable extent by the Bevan family, with whom Fiona had been friendly in her teenage years. Roger taught music at Downside, while with Molly had fourteen children. Molly fed them largely with her own produce, and she introduced us to goats, poultry and so on. We started our own herd of those somewhat cantankerous but excellent and endearing creatures, well, when they weren’t getting in the vegetables or munching Fiona’s plants or flowers!

Ger Cullen helped us to master them, and his wife Sylvie and brother Geff helped us clueless people to learn the ways of country living. Ger was our binman, and I suppose they were amused at the young hippies who wanted to learn the old peasant ways. Most afternoons I would take the goats browsing on the long acre, the broad verges of the lane that led to Cranmore woods, and then on into the woods. They were owned by the Forestry Commission, but had quite a lot of scrub along with some fine hardwood trees.

I had to learn how the goats, though with minds of their own, sometimes damned obstinate ones, were in fact amenable to control. One had to ‘plug in’ to their inbuilt herd sense, and lead them rather than attempt to drive them. Still one had to be firm and make them realise who was boss. Actually it’s great training for anyone with pretensions to lead human beings! I had some blissful times in those woods. One moment in particular has always stayed with me, when the sun came out brightly shining through the myriad water drops on the trees after a heavy shower. It was one of those moments when, while totally caught up in physical matter, one finds it transformed, brilliantly and intensely alive in the world of spirit.

Fiona and I started to make delicious goats’ milk yoghourt, and wondered if we could do so commercially. We used to sell small quantities in Bath, 18 miles away, along with milk, cottage cheese and vegetables, but could not see our way to producing enough to make a living. The idea of it was frankly enough to give one a nervous breakdown, especially with the small bit of land we had. It was the subsistence living that made sense, if only one could find a way of bringing in the necessary cash!

We made an attempt at community living with the Hosies from Liverpool and also Jeremy Cross, who taught economics at Downside, but we did not have whatever mysterious thing it is to make a success of it. I came to the conclusion that community living is a gift that has to happen, when it is going to, in its own way and time. I particularly did not like the idea of trying to set myself up as one of those charismatic ‘leaders’ of a community. I started to get that ‘shut in’ feeling, what with the land around us being bought up by quarries for hard-core, and also being now too ‘under the shadow’ of Downside, and missing the sea.

We bought a boggy bit of land across the lane in front of the house, and by digging out the bog and damming the little stream that went through it, made a large pond, which we kept ducks beside. It improved the prospect from the house considerably, and I began to think of a little property development. Next thing we learned from the local paper that the Council were threatening to make us destroy the pond - we hadn’t got planning permission and maybe if the dam broke it would flood the village! This was ridiculous, and I was able to make this clear to the television crew who turned up. However the hippies with the long hair and Fiona’s long skirts and the three babies and goats and so on made a great story altogether!

So anyway the Council backed down, not without a wee man turning up and saying ‘he was very concerned about the new development over the road’. I looked at him blankly, not having a clue what he was on about, and repressing the temptation to say something facetious like ‘what, the block of flats’? It turned out he was referring to the gate I had made for access. Well, it all got sorted out in the end, and to this day you may find ‘Joe’s Pond’ on the Ordnance Survey May. I am glad I made some positive contribution to old England! Meanwhile huge chunks were being taken out of the surrounding country for hard core, while most of the land had been bought up by the quarry companies. It all added to my sense of being in a land which was occupied by the Enemy.

With Jerry’s help and also that of Rory Dunbar, we built a new kitchen and generally improved the cottage, and eventually sold it at a good price that enabled us to move on with a few quid again. Fiona went on missing that cottage for a long time though, while I was yearning for more open country and the Atlantic coast. We bought a caravan and hired a van and moved, goats and all, down to Penberry near St David’s in Pembrokeshire one month of May, working there for a season picking new potatoes. Still, Ireland beckoned me on across the water, where the culture held more interest for me. I wanted to know what my rather vague and intellectual English Catholicism really had in common with that of Irish peasants, if any such people still survived! And could their culture find a way of meeting the challenges of modernity?

*For more about our Somerset neighbours, see:
http://gannetswaysailing.blogspot.ie/2016/01/last-post-in-hardy-country.html