High Ham and Somerset – Page 20 – For the fainthearted . . .

A fair green

Tor Fair never compared with Bridgwater Fair a week later, a much smaller, more modest affair, something forgotten until walking from the High Street in Glastonbury to one of the town’s car parks. In former times, before the advent of out of town shopping centres and new housing developments, the fair was held on land between Street and Glastonbury, now it is tucked in within walking distance of the town centre. Arriving at it before lunchtime, meant arriving when everything was closed, when the entire Fair was dormant, when the …

Owl fears

The darkness of the rural night is broken by the screech of an owl and memories of long ago are evoked. Childhood memories can be frightening. Growing up amid tales of superstitions is disturbing when those tales seem literally true and where there was neither discussion that might rationalize, nor faith that might expel, such fears.

Stories that white owls were the call of the dead induced a terror of catching sight of a barn owl on autumn evenings; claims that there were ghosts, even in our council house built …

Looking for foot passengers

Walking through the picturesque Somerset town of Langport, one can cut from the church at the top of The Hill, past the old Saint Gilda’s Convent, and down Priest Lane to North Street. At some pint in history, there must have been some reason for the lane, though it is unlikely that any priest would walk along it now. The parish church is closed, the parish being absorbed into the parish of Huish Episcopi, which encircles it, and the church of which stands only hundreds of yards from Langport church. …

Shotgun sentiments

Far from the Madding Crowd, the BBC adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s 1874 novel: Gabriel Oak is disturbed from his sleep by the barking of a dog and the frightened. bleating of a flock of sheep. There is one thing for which Oak instinctively reaches, the double barrelled shotgun that lay close at hand. For what else would he have reached? Shotguns were to be found in every farm. To have gone to an agricultural dwelling in Hardy’s Wessex and not to have encountered a gun would have been an odd …

Thunderbox days

“Stream Farm,” a signpost announces the presence of the former home of Aunt Ella and Uncle Clem. Uncle Clem was truly avuncular, an uncle who understood that small boys enjoyed mischief. With laughter, he would open the door of the privy at the bottom of the garden that revealed the thunderbox within. It must have been some years since the earth closet had been used for there is no sense of smell associated with its recall, and smell is the sense most connected with memory.

Uncle Clem always seemed old, …

A service for health

POVJ 46 was my National Health Service number. It is easily remembered because the encounters with the health service were very frequent. An NHS card printed with instructions on how to avail of the services recalled memories of times when the NHS was in its youth.

The autumn of 1974 seemed the worst of times; the asthma had become chronic, chest infection followed chest infection and the prescriptions seemed to come in quick order. Reduced to a pale shadow by bronchitis, days would be passed reading whatever books might lie …