I was born, during an air raid, in a small maternity home in Monkton Street Ryde in the summer of 1942. At that time I believe my parents lived in the Ashey Station House, tho’ my father had no connection with the railway at all. He was a farm worker, thereby being in a reserved occupation. His military service was in “Dad’s Army”, The I of W Home Guard, I think he was the youngest member of his Division (Platoon, Chapter, Regiment???) Shortly after my birth the family moved to Rowlands Lane, which is the place that my earliest memories start.

Of course, I was only about three years old, so memories of that place were sketchy, but when I drove a rental car past the house in 1987, I recognised it immediately. So, what do I remember? The biggest memory is of snow, the winter of 1944/5 I suspect. Mum was in bed ill at the time and the ceiling in one of the upstairs rooms was found to be sagging. On inspection Dad found the snow had been blown in under the tiles –no, not slates- filling the crawl space with soft powdery drifts. If that thawed, we were in big trouble. So, all doors and windows of the house were quickly opened to keep the temperature in the house to below freezing then Dad and the next door neighbour went into the roof with small hand coal shovels to shovel the snow down the manhole into a zinc bath under it. When that was full my elder brother, about five at the time, and my big sister, just in double figures, dragged the bath down the stairs, out the back door and emptied it in the garden.

How long this took is lost in some dusty corner of my memory, but it was, I believe a pretty formidable task. I also recall we used to go into Ryde at least once a week to shop. These trips involved a long walk to an intersection –don’t ask which one for I have not the slightest idea- to catch a bus. We had to pass a grove of trees on the way and I can recall quite vividly lying back in my pushchair watching red squirrels playing in the branches. I don’t know if this was before the snow or after it, but it was a sunny day.

In 1947 we left Rowlands Lane and moved to Rookley. My father was one of those people who was always ‘…chasin’ the extra shillin’…’ so there is no one place I could call “Home”, but Harts Farm Rookley is the one I think of as coming closest.

At the bottom of a rough lane lay the farm yard surrounded on three sides by a huge barn on the right, cowsheds in front and on the left, what would now be called “Quaint”, a thatched roof farm house. This was built, so I believe, in the seventeenth century. It had walls almost a meter thick and windows the size of postage stamps. The thatch came down like heavy eyebr ows over the up-stairs windows and the whole place seemed to emit a friendly, homely appeal. It had three bedrooms, a master bedroom reached by a main staircase, with another room close to that where my sister slept. Off the kitchen/living room was another steep wooden, dark, little more than a ladder with a door at the bottom, staircase that led to a small bedroom –probably servant’s quarters- that my brother and I shared.

Life at Harts Farm was ideal. Being the closest farm to the village, meant that many of our school friends, well, my brother’s school friends, would come to play in the barns and paddocks –sorry fields. When I eventually started school, some of my friends came also, but by and large my friends were the animals. Three large carthorses, a heard of Guernsey cows, calves and pigs. Not to mention ducks, chickens and geese. I think the best friend I had there was Jess, a large black Labrador who spent 90% of her life in a large kennel in the corner of the farmyard. To say I was a model child was a bit of an exaggeration; I always seemed to be in strife of one sort or another. Many’s the time I would be in trouble which meant I would sprint from the house out the back door to a small gate in a stone wall that led onto the yard. Just inside the gate was one of those mushroom shaped mounting blocks that were commonplace in days gone by. By leaping onto this block I could reach the top of the wall, be over it in a trice and drop down into the yard. Less than a couple of meters away sat Jess, usually in front of the sacking covered door of her kennel. I would dash up to her, pat her on the head and duck inside the kennel. Mum, after fiddling with the lock on the gate, would dash into the yard and find I had disappeared into thin air. Jess, to her credit, never once gave the game away by looking at her kennel and I doubt if Mum would have ever believed I would go into a smelly place like that!

In those days, bathing was once a week, so how she never smelled the dog on me I cannot imagine, tho’ probably because I was always playing with some animal or other, I could have been quite a smelly little individual at the best of times.

Rookley School was quite a large place, diagonally opposite the Methodist Chapel. It had two classes. A Mrs Booth took the five to eight year olds and an austere lady by the name of Mrs (or Miss, I never knew which) Isaacs taught the eight to eleven year olds. She was a beanpole of a woman; a complete contrast to the homely and generous proportioned Mrs Booth. Mrs Isaacs was tall, shapeless and bespectacled. She was always known as Ghandi. I had no idea why at the time, but in retrospect I think she bore more than a passing resemblance to the Mahatma himself.

Her ideal pupil was an inert sponge who sat, said nothing and absorbed completely all she dished out. Feedback in the classroom was not actively encouraged; she spoke you listened; or had sore knuckles from a ruler or a sore rear end from a short stiff cane. I don’t think she would last long in this day and age with the no corporal punishment climate, but it did not seem to do us any harm.

Being the youngest in a family that talked a lot meant the only way to be heard was to shout above the noise of every one else. This did not go down very well with Mrs Isaacs. She and I found, in the first few days of our relationship, that we were not soul mates. Her cane and my rear end were more than casual acquaintances. One time I recall being in the playground with a group of other boys kneading clay into malleable lumps for modelling later in the day. One of us discovered that a soft lump of clay, about tennis ball size, when thrown against the wall of the school, flattened out to a nice round pancake that peeled off slowly. A new game was born! Guess who missed the wall and fired it through a glass window, showering Mrs Booth and her small charges with shards of glass and pieces of clay? Hardly had the tinkling of broken glass faded, when I found myself totally alone in the playground, all my colleagues had melted into the ether. I can still feel that cane today. Ghandi really wielded it with panache that time! This had a spin off effect. From then on I was relegated to the back of the class and virtually sent to Coventry. Education for me was now almost totally non-existent.

What did I care, I had a farm to play in and animals to play with. Twice a day Dad would load the ten gallon milk churns onto the cart and with one of the horses it would be driven to the top of the lane where the half dozen or so churns would be placed on a milk stand waiting for collection. Whenever possible I would accompany him and became quite adept at driving the rig. Just behind this milk stand was an air raid shelter, a small Nissan hut buried in the ground. This was a popular place for the kids in the village… In deference to the more sensitive reader I think I will not say anymore about this seat of learning!!

All good things come to an end I guess and at the age of ten, Dad’s “Shillin’ Hunt” took us to Whitwell. This was a real out of the way little cottage that was a total contrast to the homely place we had left. None of us liked it but Dad said it was a roof over our heads and he was earning more money. Unfortunately for him and fortunately for us, the extra shillings came at a price. Hidden shortfalls were discovered and six weeks later we were on the move again. In that six weeks I attended Godshill school and suddenly found that I was way behind other people in my peer group. Given time, Godshill could have straightened me out I guess, but it did not have that time.

Our next stop was Chale and once more we were on the fringes of the farm itself. More animals to play with and the farmer had a son a year younger than I and a daughter a year older. The three of us were inseparable.

However, by far the most important event in my young life was to attend Chale School, right opposite the Parish church. It was here I fell under the influence of the School Teacher, Mrs Woods. If ever a woman was dedicated to her task this was she. Within a few days she assessed I was not ESN –Educationally Sub Normal; as had been my reputation at Rookley, but potentially intelligent. Single handed this woman took control of my education and with home work, cramming and diligence moulded me in just eight months to the stage where I was able to sit my Eleven Plus failing it by the narrowest of margins. She was prepared to apply to the Education Board to have me held in Primary school for another year and sit it again. Had that happened who knows what I could have been?

But it was not to be. The “Shillin’ Hunt” was on again and in 1953 we emigrated to Hampshire and moved many times around the Winchester area. But that is another story!