It was said that it was the pitchfork that had caused him to be struck. He had been carrying hay out to cattle and it was said that the iron prongs of the fork had served as a conductor for the bolt of lightning that had killed him. To an impressionable young mind it was a story that suggested the world was a dangerous place; if sudden death could come to the gentle fields of our village, then was there anywhere that was safe?
The boy thought that the world …
His daughter was in infant class with me, Long Sutton Church of England VA Primary School, it was in the times before we moved from the farm and came to High Ham. Katie was six years old when she had a birthday party. Perhaps the whole class were invited, it was a memorable occasion in a stone-walled, timber-beamed hall. The excitement of the games lingers in the mind, and the sadness as parents appeared at the door and the realisation came that the party was ending and it was time …
It never occurred to ask, “why?” Christmas and Easter holidays in primary school days would be two weeks and two days. Any holiday was, of course, welcome, boys have much more interesting things to do than sit in the classroom learning about ancient civilisations and learning cursive handwriting. Yet the consistency with which the time off was two weeks and two days never prompted curiosity, that was the way it was and why would we wish to question it?
Years later, the answer is obvious, the two extra days arose …
“My uncle emigrated to Australia in 1910. My grandfather took him to Taunton station and said to him as he left, ‘Whatever you do, don’t go into farming. My uncle got a job managing a canning factory for a couple of years, but it went broke and my uncle only knew one thing – farming. It was being lonesome that was the worse thing, he went to a farm where it was twelve miles just to go to post a letter.'”
Trying to imagine the journey and the life that …
An odd place to build, on sloping ground below a hill. Well, it would have been odd in those times when people built houses in places that were easily defended, when a home might need to be a castle. The time around 350 AD must have been fairly peaceful around Low Ham for a large Roman villa to have been built, and not just a villa, but a villa with a bath house that had a mosaic floor that was fourteen feet by fourteen feet.
The mosaic floor, discovered in …
In the darkness of the street, there was light at a window, a movement of a curtain as a child pulled back one corner. Just tall enough to set its chin on the window sill, the child stared out into the December gloom. What thoughts passed through the child’s mind? What was being sought as the child stood intently gazing out into the night?
Perhaps one of those numerous Christmas films had been screened on the television, and the child hoped for a glimpse of Santa, fifteen days early, though …
