The nephews returned to school today, (somewhat reluctantly, but how many eleven year old boys want the school holidays to end?)
In 1972, the first day of a new term would have merited the commencement of a new right-hand page in the school exercise books. Today, the day would have begun with the writing of “Summer Term” at the top of the page. The words were always written with a sense of thrill. The three terms of the school year were always named in a positive way; there was an …
Thursday evening has become a time to sit in the settle at one side of the stove in the village pub and to ponder. It is not hard to close the eyes and to imagine the voices of those who have gone before.
Laurence would have been there; thick black-framed glasses, black hair, black jacket and trousers, black bicycle, a farm worker from teenage years until his premature end. Laurence, standing with a cigarette in his hand and laughing at the stories told, was the embodiment of a community that …
The unseasonably cold weather contrasts with that on Good Friday fifty years ago. Good Friday 1968 was a fine day. Joy, a cousin of my mother who was a student nurse with a day off, came the three miles from Langport, on foot or by bicycle, and took my sister and I for a walk. Perhaps my mother would have been pleased to have had an afternoon free from noisy children; there were only two of us at the time, our younger sister would be born at the end of …
Walking up Bow Street in Langport, the sign for The Dolphin pub is still mounted on a wall. The pub itself closed some years ago, but its distinctive and disturbing sign remains a feature of the street. The pub first appears in records in 1778, so perhaps an Eighteenth Century craftsman imagined that the fearsome beast he carved resembled a dolphin. A fearsome beast it was, a child passing in a motor car thought it more resembled a monster from the deep than a friendly creature like a dolphin; its …
One can stand on a hilltop at the Somme and see cemeteries stretching in a dotted line as far as one can see. One can drive through the flatlands of Flanders and encounter cemeteries in unexpected places. One can visit the memorials at Thiepval and the Menin Gate and Tyne Cot and countless other places and count tens and tens of thousands of names. One can visit Notre Dame de Lorette and scan the names of the 579,606 men of all sides who died in the region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais between …
Orion was visible in the clear night sky, the hunter’s nocturnal presence will end as the spring progresses. The hint of warmth brought by earlier sunshine had quickly dissipated as darkness had fallen and there was a sharpness in the air. The bar had a welcoming warmth, a familiar face sat in front of the fire. Ordering a pint and sitting nearby, there was an exchange of greetings and a companionable silence as we stared into the flames.
“I see the old vicar is dead.”
“Which one?”
“The man who …
