High Ham and Somerset – Page 23 – For the fainthearted . . .

August nights

Moths in the car headlights and warmth in the night air evoke memories of summer evenings in his childhood. In Somerset, in the English West Country, darkness fell earlier than in the Irish Midlands and the moths mobilized when many people still had homeward journeys to make. Riding in his father’s car on switchback roads across the Levels, the moths marked the conclusion of the day for a small boy; they came with summer and heat and the promise carried by August days. Yet, going on for fifty years later, …

Tastes of summer

The dairy was where the milking equipment was washed and stored. A concrete floor and whitewashed walls, it had a surgical atmosphere, an impression heightened by the smell of the liquid used to sterilize the milking clusters and buckets. Before the advent of the bulk tank, the milk was poured into ten gallon aluminium churns that were collected by the lorry from the Milk Marketing Board each morning. In warm weather, they would be placed in tin baths filled with water in an attempt to keep the milk cool. The …

A scent of the harvest

A smell not of May, but of August: heavy, thundery air and a scent of the contact of hot machinery with dust. Perhaps it was not so unusual, weren’t thunderstorms in May frequent enough, certainly this year that have been common, and wasn’t May the month when farm and garden machinery came into full use?

Pausing to ponder, the smell was identifiable by the noise of the machine, someone working with a petrol-driven strimmer which must have disturbed dry debris and raised dust that had fallen on the exhaust.

The …

Motorway romance

A Facebook comment from a family member complained of the traffic congestion on the M5 motorway. Having lived in Ireland for more than thirty years, English bank holiday weekends are easily forgotten. Even in January, driving through England was a shock to someone used to the tranquility of the Irish Midlands, what those roads must be like on a Saturday in early summer is hard to imagine.

Strangely, the M5, which runs from Birmingham in the Midlands to Exeter in Devon always had an element of excitement about it; no …

Precarious trade

In a generation’s time, who will remember such businessmen? In a radio play this evening, there was a character who was a travelling salesman, going from door to door selling clothes. A delay in the traffic allowed a moment to wonder how such a business functioned? Did he carry stock of all sizes with him, or did he carry samples and take orders? And how did the payments work, was it cash on delivery, or might he spend months calling at houses to collect a few shillings each week?

Fifty …

A tall train tale?

A story in this week’s Western Gazette recalled a conversation with my mother. Public and political support is being canvassed for the re-opening of the railway station at the small town of Langport, a town that has been home to our family for generations. The station would be on the main line between the West Country and London and would probably have a good passenger base, it being located in the middle of an area that has grown rapidly in recent decades.

Fifty years ago, the station would not have …