A life in the day of...... ( A writing exercise)

A life in the day of ….

Crash! Bang! Crack! I wake up with a start. I’m in the POW camp; no, no… I’ve been dreaming again. I’m awake now, thank goodness, that nightmare is probably best left behind.

What was the dreadful noise that woke me, scared me? What time is it? Why is the house in total darkness? Usually the corridor night-light is visible.

No use seeing if the old dog is awake, total deafness has some advantages.

The silence is palpable. No heavy breathing. No snoring. Now that’s unusual.  I swear my husband snores with an Australian accent; he swears I snore in Yorkshire dialect even though I moved Down Under nearly forty years ago.

I feel the other side of the bed. Empty. Where is he?

I can see the blinking red light of the torch next to the bed. Smart move that, to buy a torch that lets you know where it is… very useful when we go camping in the lonely outback.

I slide out of bed, switch on the torch and paddle silently down the corridor. At least the torchlight means I don’t tread on the old dog’s pigs-ear.

Spouse  is in the living room peering onto the deck.

“That was a whopper”. As he spoke the house is illuminated in brilliant white light and the boom of thunder rolls overhead again. No time to count the number of seconds between flash and crash, the storm is directly overhead. The heavens open to sheets of rain pouring onto the roof and ground. What wonderful life sustaining water onto this parched, drought-stricken land.

“We were very close to that one”.

“There’s no light on the oven clock but the microwave is flashing again, so it’s been off. Lucky I took out the aerial and power plugs for the TV before I went to bed.”

“What about the computer. I took out the plugs but left the modem line attached. Please don’t tell me I’m going to lose all that work?”

Check the phone.

Silence.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

“Let’s have a cuppa; I can’t go back to bed whilst this storm is still raging.”

“What’s the time?” The faithful old grandfather clock points to four in the morning. It has seen a lot of fours in the morning since Robert Skelton put a final polish to its brass face in the year Captain Cook arrived in Australia.

What was that song? “It’s four in the morning, and once more the dawning, just woke up the wanting in me”. Now I’ll have that bloody tune floating round in my head all day.

“Here’s your cuppa.” We sit and watch the receding storm for a while. I’m still worried about all the files on the computer.

“But you have back-up don’t you?”

“Yes on a stick and on the external hard drive. But it’s the whole rigmarole of a new computer, new programs to install, settings to work out. It’s a pain in the proverbial.”

The sun makes a tepid appearance behind the easterly hills.

I go back to bed.

A couple of hours later the old dog appears. I hear her first, a scratch then a roll, a wriggle and a yawn, a stretch and a whine. She vocalises more frequently and more loudly now she is deaf. Then she appears near the bed and scratches at the blanket. I eventually admit I’m awake and let her outside. “It’s four in the morning, and once more the dawning, just woke up the wanting in me”

It’s still raining as I open the door and check to see if we have any reptilian visitors on the verandah. I don’t mind the Blue Tongue, Jacky Dragon and Penny Lizards, it’s the slippery, slithering, venomous, legless reptiles that I hate.  Far too wet for such callers, so out goes the dog.  It’s a very quick widdle; she doesn’t care if the ‘roos have been in the garden, doesn’t care if the fox has visited the compost heap, doesn’t care if the Jacky Dragon is waiting to scoot off into the woodpile, today is a day to get outside and back inside in the shortest possible time. I haven’t even had time to put the kettle on when she’s at the door demanding to come indoors.

I dig out my Impressionist beaker. For some daft reason, now there’s a good Yorkshire word from my childhood, for some daft reason my morning cappuccino tastes better when I share my drink with  Renoir.

“It’s four in the morning, and once more the dawning …..”

The coffee hits the spot and I head to the shower. The rain would have just about filled the water tanks and I don’t really need to stand in the bucket to collect the shower water. But old habits die hard. If I’m a water-miser now my new trees will be able to have an extra drink in the scorching heat of the harsh summer sun.

Breakfast, the usual menu:  boiled eggs, thank you Zoë and Chloe; home made bread, thank you Mr. Panasonic; home made marmalade thanks to the overburdened lemon tree that valiantly produces a mountain of fruit each year. And the inevitable cuppa, tea this time, in the poppy or sweet pea beaker. When I first started the book it had to be the poppy beaker. I’d left poppies at each battleground, each massacre site and each POW location that we’d visited earlier in the year; poppies were an ever constant reminder. But as the chapters have been written, the nightmares endured, the poppy has had to make way for the more calming sweet-peas.

What am I going to do today?

Better get on with the book; just have the last chapter to write but I need to proof read the early chapters. The training is okay, the fighting harder to read. Can I manage that bit about Muar and Parit Sulong again? I went to the tiny shed where those desperately wounded men were tortured before being massacred, I visualise it daily. No I can’t read it again. Yes I must. I must do it. But I know it’ll be hard to proof read through tears.

I hear the whistle. 

My friends have arrived for breakfast. “You’re late today” I chide them. The male king parrot glides gently from the railing onto my arm. His yellow and black eyes are beadlike on each side of his vermillion head, his collar a prussic blue, his back a rich patchwork of green. He expertly cracks open the sunflower seeds in his strong beak, drops the husk and swallows the kernel. The female arrives, no flashes of red on her head, just a camouflage of many-hued green. The two happily share the space and seeds. But then a second male arrives and the territorial one-up-man-ship begins. The female keeps feeding, letting the flamboyant males screech and flap at each other. After a short time I throw the remaining seeds onto the ground. That’s the signal the magpies are waiting for. They swoop across the paddock from their look-out tree, singing their delightful song of thanks as they arrive. The galahs, crested pigeons, crimson rosellas, grass parrots and Eastern rosellas then all come for their turn to enjoy the wheat and sunflower seeds.

I head back inside. “It’s four in the morning, and once more the dawning…”

The massacres await my attention.

The letters from Malaya are fun to read; the author, my father-in-law had a fine eye for detail and I’ve enjoyed transcribing them. But there’s been so much extra research to do. Who were the people he mentioned? Could I find out more about them? Did they survive? Did they die in the fighting? Did they suffer brutalities as a POW?

My research has taken me over the State, inter-state and over the sea to Malaya, Singapore and Thailand. It has been a journey of discovery, incredible sorrow and mateship. Now I have to put it all together into words.

Chapter Three, the trip on the troop ship Queen Mary. I start to proofread. My reference describes the manoeuvre the Queen Mary took to farewell the other ships in the convoy and says she could travel at 40 knots. Could her escort to Singapore, HMS Durban, keep up? I ring ex-RAN relative to ask. No she couldn’t he advises. She was an old ship, scrapped in 1944, she would have managed 35 knots in her heyday. He thinks the speeding away from the rest of the convoy [which was heading for Europe] was just for show. I read him my reference. I have tears before I reach the end, I know the fate of so many of these brave young men and women.

The greatest ships in almost telepathic communication, laden with the world’s finest fighting men, each heart going out to the other in a gesture of well wishing – a rare glimpse of mass emotion in a moment of admiration and bewilderment. It may never happen again. The blood surged through my veins and within myself I said “I am proud to be a part of this.”

The convoy divided, the Queen Mary speeding at an increased rate behind the destroyer H.M.S. Durban. The others faded until they were mere silhouettes on a tropical horizon, following an ocean greyhound. And we were alone; pounding along to Singapore.

Such pride; such optimism; such faith; such comradeship; how poignant that the outcome was to be so horrendous.

I finish proof reading the chapter. It’s so hard, harder than I expected because I know worse is to come in my journey through this war in Asia.

I need lunch. I can’t keep up this pace of concentration. Chai tea, slice of homemade bread, an avocado and a banana give me some respite. The rain is still threatening from up in the dark grey clouds, battleship grey, like the old Commonwealth Bank interior in The Mall. At least the real battleships have a myriad of colourful cables snaking along the corridors, far more interesting than the boring, bland, grey sameness of the bank interior. “It’s four in the morning, and once more…”

It’s time for a walk. The old dog doesn’t want to come these days, she hides if the lead appears.

I find my hat, put on walking shoes and grab the iPod. What a great little machine. I’ve finally worked out how to copy my CD’s onto it. Now I can march for an hour or so to the exhilarating colliery brass bands of my youth in Yorkshire.

Which way shall I go today? Hmmm, weather could be dodgy so I’ll do a cloverleaf and be reasonably close to home should the clouds shed their load. First to the dead-end of our road, all gravel, no tar here, too few people to warrant the cost. There’s the odd wattle tree, blown down in the strong wind of the storm. Next it’s back to the junction, past the house with the Rottweiler. Glad their gate is shut. Weather looks okay so I’ll head up to the next intersection, past the gate of our security conscious neighbour. He has two padlocks on his gate plus a thick steel square lock which has additional locks on. What? Today Mr. Security’s gate is open. He must be down at his caravan. His sheep look as if they are heading out, ‘grass is greener’ and all that. I shoo them back in.

As I puff  back up our steep driveway I check out the cattle in the house paddock, all okay. In the house I haven’t even got my breath when the phone rings. “Caroline, do you have a gun up there?” Neighbour Rosalie sounds very agitated. I wonder what Stuart has done to warrant such wrath. “Er no, why do you need a gun?”

“There’s a brown snake that’s caught up in the wire round one of my roses near the backdoor. I called WIRES three hours ago and they still haven’t come to remove it. I want to shoot the damned thing so I can go to work.”

I commiserate but then hang up, chuckling. Only Rosalie would demand a gun to shoot a snake. “It’s four in the morning, and…”

The oven lights are still not working so the electrician has been called. Even as I think of him I see Wayne driving up to the house. He soon has the offending appliance out of its hole in the wall. He deftly undoes screws and pulls out bits and pieces, uses a little black box to look for power and then pronounces “I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m going to have to phone Miele and see if we can get a new computer for it.”

Great! No oven. I have a party of over forty coming for dinner on Saturday night and I have no oven. Perhaps the rain will stay away long enough for us to light a bonfire and use the camp ovens. We are celebrating Guy Fawkes Night after all.

Dinner tonight… haven’t even thought of it so far! I know the microwave is okay but what about the hotplates? I turn one on. It seems to be taking for ever to heat up and turn red. Or is it that I’m just anxious and don’t really know how long it normally takes to glow.

Yes, it’s okay. Relief.

I’d forgotten the washing machine. I switch it on. No blinking lights. Damn. It looks as if that’s also going to be added to the insurance claim…. What else is there?

“It’s four in the morning….”

The deep-freezes. I haven’t checked them! Are they still working or am I going to have a melting disaster on my hands… again. It’s happened before, when we lived near Goulburn. We’d just filled the freezer with a side of beef and lightening burnt the motor. I ended up putting an SOS call out over Radio 2GN and had offers of freezer space from  many sympathetic folk. It was so very heartening but I wonder if such offers would be forthcoming these days?

Okay raid the freezer. Phew! It’s fine, no sign of ‘global warming’ inside. Pull out some steak for dinner, along with frozen roast pumpkin and broccoli from our vegetable patch. Soon have some fresh vegs added and we’ll have a stir fry. I’ll open a bottle of wine, a red from a local winemaker. It’s good quaffable stuff with no chemicals thrown in, so no asthma attacks, no hospital visits.

There’s nothing worth watching on TV tonight. Where’s my book? Australian Adrian d’Hage is the author. Last week I heard him interviewed on the Conversation Hour and knew I just had to read his book “The Beijing Conspiracy”, a terrorism story set at the next Olympics. I’m enjoying it, but it’s very scary. No doubt I’ll have more nightmares tonight, but this time set in 2008 rather than 1943.

“It’s four in the morning……”.

A writing exercise put together in late October 2007 ©

Popcorn, the strawberry roan pony who would not be passed

One day the Saltersgate hounds were in full cry running up Newton Dale. Popcorn and I were galloping along the valley floor and one or other of us, I forget which, decided to take a short cut as we veered to the right. Not a good move; we were galloping over a rabbit warren at top speed when we fell. I hit the ground hard and rolled and rolled, over and over, the pony also rolling behind me, flying hooves coming dangerously close to my head. Luckily I rolled faster than him and we didn’t entangle a hoof with my face. We were both a bit pale and shaky when we eventually stopped. The adults quickly checked us over, there were no bones broken, so I was tossed back on board and away we went again, hurrying after hounds. Despite the scare, the fall didn’t dampen my enthusiasm for cross country riding. Many years later and many kilometres away on the other side of the world the enjoyment of galloping across country remained. But this was the start. 

My earliest memory is of fox hunting. We were following hounds in the car, Mum and Aunty Jessie were there, it was down Westgate Carr Lane and a fox had gone to ground in a drain. It must have been the Sinnington pack as the terrier man was Caffeline. He had put a terrier down the drain but the men also had to dig out some of the dirt. I was standing so close that my Wellington boots were filling up with soil. I would have been about three years old. 

It was inevitable that I would want to learn to ride. So when I was four I went along to The Hall Hotel Riding stables in Thornton-le-Dale. Joe Thompson owned the horses. My first ride was on Popcorn, a 12 hand high strawberry-roan pony. Joe led me on foot but lesson number two saw him ride Patience and lead me from her. I can’t remember how many lessons I had before I was allowed to ‘go solo’.

By this time Mum and Pop both decided that they would join me, so for a number of years each Sunday morning saw us all go along to Joe’s stables for a couple of hours ride and it wasn’t long before Uncle Bob was coming too. After the ride we’d adjourn to the adjacent hotel for some food and refreshments before going back home to Pickering. 

Of course several friends were subject to the tales of sore legs, unbalanced seats and the inevitable falls. We reckoned Mum has seen a horse, particularly the grey Smokey, from every possible angle.

One day Pop received a poem anonymously in the mail.

The tale of Ronald Ford

This is the tale of Ronald Ford, of driving haulage trucks got bored;

Likewise the spreading of the lime binds the best of folks in time.

This daily driving through the snow gets you down in time you know.

So he thought he’d try a change and be a ‘Rider of the Range’.

So to the Country Club he hied, determined now to learn to ride.

Heaven help his tutor Joe to have to teach this ‘So and So’.

Each Sunday morn he goes to ride with his daughter by his side.

He, adorned in splendid dress, the like of which you’d never guess.

In Wellington boots and trousers long this daring horseman canters on.

The folks all stare and slyly snigger “There’s that Rogers guy and Trigger.”

When on this splendid scene they gazed the Pickering people were amazed.

“Who is this cavalier?” they asked, with thoughts of their historic past.

Old men said “Ah tell thee Ben, t’awd Castle’s occupied again.”

When at last he got to Joe, Joe said let’s see you ‘have a go’

But his antics had Joe tickled, in fact they had him ‘Wilfred Pickled.’

He mounted on his fiery horse, complete with Wellingtons of course.

T’was then he realised that slacks are not the thing to wear on hacks.

For when he mounted on the horse and trotted gaily down the course

He found the going rather tough, when the Gee-Gee cried “Enough!”

And stopping with a sudden jerk nearly drove our friend berserk.

To counteract this sudden check he put his arms around its neck,

And searching vainly for the gears, realised a horse has ears.

These he held with all his might to help to put himself aright,

For you see the poor sap was caught up in his saddle flap.

So now this guy who used to fly and do his antics in the sky

Will find he needs a tighter girth to do his antics on the earth.

And now I trust this piece of prose will prove a warning folks, to those

Who would be on a horse admired, to see they’re suitably attired.

Then you’ll improve in leaps and bounds and one day you may ride to hounds.

But should you fail dear sir, well then get back to spreading lime again

At this at least you’ll prove your worth and be the whitest man on earth.

Eventually Bob and Pop decided that their riding had improved in enough leaps and bounds to think of going hunting, so we had to find appropriate bowlers, boots and breeches for them to wear. Pop’s boots were so tight round the calf that he couldn’t wear socks but he found ladies nylon stocking provided him some bit of warmth for his feet. 

Uncle Bob on Lulu, me on Popcorn and Mum on Smokey

First day of hunting at Newton on Rawcliffe, with Mr Hesling and hounds

By this time I had also been hunting a while on Popcorn; my first day was with the Saltersgate hounds when they met on Rawcliffe Bank Top near Newton. Mr Hesling was the Master of Fox Hounds and Angela the whipper-in who rode a black horse called Paddy. If she had to go up a steep bank or hillside, very common in Saltersgate country, Angela would dismount and hang onto Paddy’s tail so he could haul her up the hills.                                                                                                                                          

Popcorn was a cheeky pony who hated to be overtaken and I had to be very careful not to allow him to duck immediately in front of the bigger horses, especially if we were cantering or galloping. I had to be vigilant to keep him well mannered!

The day Popcorn and I decided to take the short cut through a rabbit warren, and had the nasty fall, it was several minutes after remounting that I realised I’d left my riding crop behind and Pop had to go back to retrieve it. Beth was most upset about leaving the other horses and, after Pop eventually found the offending article, he then had to remount the excited mare. Beth set off as soon as his belly landed across the saddle; if only we’d had a camera to see the scramble it must have been to regain the seat and stirrups in one piece and some semblance of dignity! 

Uncle Bob on Beth and Pop riding Duchess


Pop enjoyed his hunting, usually on either Beth or Duchess from Joe’s. However he decided he’d like to get a horse of his own. Mr Hesling had one for sale; Zampa, a big brown hunter over 16 hands high, had been replaced by a younger horse. 

Mum with me and Zampa


 At this time we had no land or stables. We leased a field up Whitby Road behind the cemetery.  This was Zampa’s home in summer. It was here that we cut our first lot of hay, and haymaking became a special time for me in ensuing years, I loved the scent of new mown hay. We also leased stables from the Forest and Vale Hotel which had been Pickering Low Hall, home of the Kitching family. 

Zampa was a horse used to being up at the front of the field; I’m not sure how Pop coped with this enthusiasm. Mum only rode him once and decided never again. I also think Zampa may have been fed considerably more oats than with Mr Hesling. Whatever the reason he didn’t last too long, the convenient excuse being that we could only afford one horse and I had grown longer legs now I was ten, so needed to move from Popcorn onto something bigger. By this time it was also obvious that a pony of my own was going to be better than a once a week ride at Joe’s, so we started to look for a suitable pony to buy.

Our Pony Club diary had a verse from one of WH Ogilvie's poem for every week. Here is the full poem about The Huntsman's Horse

The Huntsman's Horse by Will H Ogilvie

The galloping seasons have slackened his pace,
And stone wall and timber have battered his knees
It is many a year since he gave up his place
To live out his life in comparative ease.
No more does he stand with his scarlet and white
Like a statue of marble girth deep in the gorse;
No more does he carry the Horn of Delight
That called us to follow the huntsman's old horse.
How many will pass him and not understand,
As he trots down the road going cramped in his stride,
That he once set the pace to the best in the land
Ere they tightened his curb for a lady to ride!
When the music begins and a right one's away,
When hoof-strokes are thudding like drums on the ground,
The old spirit wakes in the worn-looking grey
And the pride of his youth comes to life at a bound.
He leans on the bit and he lays to his speed,
To the winds of the open his stiffness he throws,
And if spirit were all he'd be up with the lead
Where the horse that supplants him so easily goes.
No double can daunt him, no ditch can deceive,
No bank can beguile him to set a foot wrong,
But the years that have passed him no power can retrieve—
To the swift is their swiftness, their strength to the strong!
To the best of us all comes a day and a day
When the pace of the leaders shall leave us forlorn,
So we'll give him a cheer - the old galloping grey -
As he labours along to the lure of the Horn.

All Ogilvie's poems can be found at the excellent AllPoetry website

<http://allpoetry.com/William_Henry_Ogilvie>

Gay Girl, the piebald pony that pulled a cart

The swarthy looking gypsy man grabbed the pony’s bridle and started to drag her along. Sitting in the saddle, I was mute with terror. Mum had always told me that gypsies put a curse on you if you didn’t buy their wooden dolly pegs and here I was being dragged into the gypsy encampment.

A few miles down in Haygate Lane near Pickering the gypsies often camped next to Ings Bridge, the
mediaeval stone packhorse bridge, parking their caravans close to the beck with its abundant water supply and plenty of grass for their many ponies. A large campfire was always burning and bossy, barking dogs were everywhere. Hens and geese wandered around clucking and squawking and cats eyed me from a distance. The women were usually sitting round the campfire cooking the meals and carving small branches into wooden clothes pegs, dolly pegs, which they used to sell in town. 

My new pony Gay had “turned her hog out” and refused to go past the busy, bustling camp. When the man took hold of the bridle I had visions of him tossing me in the beck and stealing Gay who would have merged well into their herd of piebald and skewbald coloured ponies.

Of course the man was kindness itself and made sure we were safe and sound. He gave me a couple of tips to make sure I was boss, not the recalcitrant pony.

Gay Girl was the first pony that I actually owned. It was 1957 and I was ten. The pony was 13.2 hands high and an unfashionable piebald in colour, with plenty of feathers on her heels betraying her workmanlike origins. She was used by Dick Wood to pull his flat cart. Dick was what my Dad called a ‘long-whipped-un” and I remember he always held his head on one side and had a continual smile on his face.

Dick lived in a small gypsy caravan in his yard located where the back of Eastgate joined Malton Road, but every itinerant who passed through Pickering stayed in Dick Wood’s yard which they shared with a myriad of mongrel dogs, hens, bantams, cockerels and spitting cats who ruled the street as well as the yard

He made a living by delivering goods on his horse-drawn flat cart. When Mum bought the grand-father clock, made by Malton clockmaker Robert Skelton, at a sale on Roxby Terrace in Thornton-le-Dale she put the brass clock-face and works in her small Fiat car but it was Dick who transported the long-case wooden body of the clock back home to Pickering. We think it may have been Gay he used then.

My Dad knew Gay was good in traffic but no one knew if she’d been broken to saddle. Dick refused to sell her to us unless it was checked.  A quick trip to Joe Thompson, owner of the The Hall Riding School in Thornton-le-Dale, proved that she had, so Gay became my very first pony.

At this time we leased stables from the Forest and Vale Hotel, former home of the Kitching family. It was here my Dad had stabled his hunter Zampa, now retired. There was a high stone wall round the vegetable gardens down Malton Road and for some reason Gay didn’t like to go past the end and then down into Mill Lane. She “turned her hog out” and refused to go. Horace Milner decided to fix the problem. Horace was groom for the Ellerby family so he was used to horses in general and fractious ponies in particular. “Hang on really tight” he instructed “and trot down Malton Road as if you’re going down Mill Lane.”

As we approached the end of the high wall I felt Gay start to slow down, her ears came back and the stride lessened. Just as we reached the corner Horace jumped out bellowing loudly and brandishing a large broom and he chased us down Mill Lane. I’m not sure who was the most scared, Gay or me, but I managed to stay on board and never again did she baulk at the end of that wall.

Horace was a good source of knowledge and a great encourager of young riders. One day he was clipping one of the big hunters which was getting quite twitchy… it suddenly dropped down dead and Horace realised the clippers were ‘live’; luckily he’d not touched any of the metal parts or he also would have been electrocuted.

The Pickering to Malton railway line crossed Mill Lane at the gatehouse. The last passenger train to leave Pickering station was 31 January 1953 but the line remained open for some goods traffic and special excursions for another few years, the final closure being 8 March 1965. One day the gates were closed as a train was due and I wasn’t sure how the pony would respond to the steam locomotive as it chuffed out of town. Gay rested her nose on the top of the white gates and was totally unconcerned by the snuffling snorting monster steaming past.

Mill Lane was one of my favourite rides as it followed Pickering Beck past two 17th Century mills and their weirs.  After the rail crossing you went over the bridge at the Vivers Mill millpond then on through the water splash at the mill itself. If the mill was working the water splash was too deep and fast so you stuck to the road and continued over the disused Pickering-to-Helmsley railway line to join the Goslipgate Road.

From here you rode down Lendales Lane to Low Mill (also known as Lendales Mill) where the mill race was concreted higher than the adjacent lane. I was always worried that the wall would break and I’d be swept away in the resulting flood. I never ventured down here after really heavy rain and the whole area flooded during wet times.

On past Low Mill was Leas Farm, home of George Leydecker a Polish pilot who had stayed in Britain after the war. Here the beck was easy to enter, a place where you could enjoy a paddle in the clear, shallow water. Nearby it opened into the sheep wash where, in earlier times, sheep had the dirt washed from their fleece prior to shearing. From there we re-crossed Pickering Beck at Ings Bridge, a mediaeval pack horse bridge, into Haygate Lane, where the folk we knew as gypsies in those days made their camp.

Another of my favourite rides started off down Mill Lane but ended going up the old Pickering to Helmsley railway line, past the former Goslip Bridge junction which was closed in 1924. The track had been closed in the early 1950s and the rails and sleepers removed so it was a lovely cinder track, excellent underfoot for an exhilarating gallop. It was not quite eight furlongs long down to the gate house at Westgate Carr where there were some slip rails into a field, great for some jumping practice. There was often a white nanny goat tethered down here and she loved Polo mints… Polo, the mint with the hole as the TV ads would remind us. I always made sure I had a packet of Polo’s in my pocket as both Gay and the goat loved them, the goat gently butting me when she was ready for another one. We often shared a packet between the three of us.

The old railway line was also very pretty, the best catkins grew down here. These pussy willows had bright yellow male catkins and were used as the ‘palms’ to decorate churches on Palm Sunday. Later in spring and summer there were pink dog roses, yellow flag irises, white hemlock, hedge parsley and the poisonous berried cuckoo pint. Gay and I often spent time dreaming away and watching the birds and tortoise shell and peacock butterflies and collecting the beautiful wildflowers to take home and blackberries to make into delicious bramble pie.

We sometimes went to Thornton-le-Dale, back to The Hall stables and went out with Jane Thompson, daughter of Joe, and Mary Owen, daughter of Dr Llewellyn Owen. Jane was never as keen on horses as me and I used to envy her having so many to ride.

My beloved old pony nearly died one day when the vet drenched her but, according to my Dad,  put the medicine down into her lungs not into her stomach. I stayed with her for hours with a heavy heart, but luckily she recovered.  The vet would not have been very popular with me if she’d died.

We did have our moments of hatred though. One day I had a very painful ‘boil’ in my ear, very red and inflamed and just about ready to burst. Gay was startled by something outside the stable and swung her head round, catching the side of my head. In excruciating pain I was felled to the straw but at least the boil then burst and relieved that swelling and former agony.

During the time at the Forest and Vale I used to ride with Josie Bradbury. She was from the West Riding of Yorkshire and was the niece of Peter and Annette Room who owned the hotel. Peter got on well with my father as he was also a former pilot but he had the distinction of landing on an aircraft carrier and popping off over the front. They were a fun couple and I liked them.

Josie had a chestnut pony called Honey and we used to go off for a day’s trek with a packed lunch. Occasionally we braved the local Show circuit. We both enjoyed the Norman Thelwell cartoons of “Penelope” and her round, plump, bushy-maned pony and both Josie and I looked the part so it was good we were able to support each other among the elegant and immaculate show ponies and riders at the local Thornton, Rosedale and Ryedale Shows. I missed her school holiday visits when the Rooms left Pickering.

Initially we had leased stables at the Forest and Vale Hotel but those stables were knocked down to make way for the hotel car park and we moved down to the back stables in the walled garden before eventually moving to The Ranch when my parents bought Mickle Hills and built the stables there.

A friend from school, Liz Austin, liked riding too. She was a bit older than me, her mum Kath worked in Miss Blench’s shop selling haberdashery and they lived in a terraced cottage looking down Smiddy Hill. Liz used to love doing hair, I often thought she should become a hairdresser, and she would style mine into all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes and she would plait Gay’s mane whenever she could. One barmy summer day Liz came down to The Ranch for a chat. It was sunny and warm and we were wearing shorts and tee shirts but we decided on a quick bareback ride, both on board together. It was great fun cantering round and we even ventured over some logs in the orchard. It wasn’t too long before Gay decided she’d had enough of these annoying girls and, as we cantered round again, with exquisite placement and timing, she executed a buck small enough to be almost imperceptible but large enough to unbalance the pair. We were not given the choice of t'muck or t'nettles,  we were deposited in what must have been the largest patch of stinging nettles in Yorkshire.

My grandfather was a saddler and he decided I needed a new bridle. Mum took him to the Malton saddlery shop where he’d done his own apprenticeship all those years ago. Grandpa snorted with disgust at the scores of ready-made bridles, leather of London yellow, hanging on display. “Bring me some bridle leather to look at please” The apprentice brought out some shoulder leather. Grandpa scowled. “No bring me some real leather, a butt, not this rubbish.”  With renewed respect for the old man, a few hides of quality leather appeared, dark Warwick in colour.  Grandpa selected the best butt and gave his instructions. A flat, loose ring snaffle bit was his choice, with stitches, no buckles. A few days later he returned to collect his order and was obviously satisfied. I have no doubt he would have refused to collect anything other than top quality workmanship.

Hunting had always been a huge part of my life. Before I’d started school and before I started riding, we had usually been followers of hounds in the car. Aunty Jess was often with us. I have memories of climbing a hillside behind the Hartoft pub and seeing the fox break away below me. Another time Kim Barker was visiting from the West Riding and went out in the car with Mum. Hounds were close to the fox which climbed a tree onto the roof of a small cottage and then he popped down the chimney and no doubt made a huge mess inside the living room.

Once I had my own pony I could ride to hounds and Mum and Jess often followed in the car. Hounds met on Saturdays and I went most weekends during the season… it was a rare day when the Saltersgate or Derwent hounds were too far away for me to hack to the Meet. Sometimes I rode to Snainton on the Friday and stayed at The Coachman Inn, opposite the Derwent kennels. Charlie and Renee Nevatt ran the pub and their daughter Kay was about my age and also rode to hounds. We used to hack to the Meet with the Huntsmen Frank Turner and sometimes George Deighton. They were always long days but great fun.

I joined the Sinnington Hunt Pony Club and the first camp was at Major Dymock’s Beckhouse Farm at the bottom of Cropton Bank. They didn’t have enough horse accommodation so Gay stayed in the village in Mr Ford’s field… he was Horace Rushworth Ford and, from his familiar appearance, had to be a relative!

When Pony Club camps moved to Duncombe Park in Helmsley there were plenty of stables but Gay always developed a dry cough there, more so than home, so we had to dampen her hay, oats and bran.

One year I remember visiting the King's Troop camp and watching a rehearsal of their performance. Their musical ride was very spectacular especially when they charged towards each other at full gallop whilst pulling the heavy gun carriages. They must have been in camp whilst performing at the Great Yorkshire Show. At that time most of our Pony Club instructors were British Army, Brigadiers and Colonels, so arrangements would have been quite easy.

One instructor was Polish. Dr Bronowski always used to tell us "Make much of your horse" and we were allowed a regulation two pats on the neck.

Brigadier Wilson was one of the instructors who lived in Middleton, next door to my godmother Jessie Harrison at Stonegarth. In summer Isobel Heap and I spent many Saturday mornings being given expert riding instruction. Stella Wilson was a little younger than me and was frightened of the ponies. She would burst into tears every so often and ask “Lift me off Daddy, please lift me off.” Stella’s love was ballet and she was much happier in her ballet shoes rather than her riding boots.

All the work meant Gay had to be shod frequently. My blacksmith Wilf Mc Neil was one of the ‘old school’, making the shoes to fit the hoof rather than file the hoof to fit the shoe, which meant he ‘hot’ shod the horses and ponies. His shop was up the Whitby Road, just past the old Police Station. The road was very narrow and there was no way of getting out of the way of passing lorries and cars. I didn’t like having to ride up here.

Wilf’s shop was very dark. There was a window near where you tied the horses, but it was so sooty that the only light to enter the place was through the open door and a red glow from the forge, I often wondered how he saw to shoe the front feet. The place was full of metal in all shapes and sizes, ploughs waiting to be repaired, new handles to add to this, new chains to be added to a harrow, a gate to be made for that, all sorts of archaeological masterpieces waiting to be re-discovered if they ever finally saw the light of day again, even through a sooty haze.

My ponies were shod every 6 weeks or so; sometimes they could have 'removes' if the shoe is not worn, otherwise a full set of new shoes was fitted. The old shoes were removed then the hooves were pared to trim off the growth. The hoof clippings had a characteristic smell beloved by dogs and sometimes I’d meet a dog owner waiting to collect the bits to hold in their hands to encourage their show dogs to race along with head high.

The shoe was made from a straight piece of metal; I often wondered how Mr McNeil knew exactly how much metal to cut as I don’t recall him ever using a ruler or tape to measure either the hoof or the steel. The metal was held by tongs in the forge which would suddenly surge into glowing orange life as the bellows added blasts of air. Soon the embryonic shoe was red hot and with a few hammer blows on the anvil they matured into shape. Holes had to be punched in for the nails and clips placed correctly for the specific hoof and the stud hole had to have the screw thread put in. The shoe was heated up and held onto the hoof.... I remember disappearing into a cloud of fairly pungent smoke! It didn't hurt the horse but it did burn the shoe outline onto the hoof so Mr McNeil could fine-tune his shaping. The shoe was not to be hit by the hammer too many times, so he had to know just what he was doing. The nails used to fasten on the shoe had a special shape to make the point come out as a ‘clench’, and not penetrate the inner, sensitive part of the hoof, and Mr McNeil used to hold them all in his mouth as he worked round each hoof… I was always worried he would swallow one if a horse pulled away from him and was mightily impressed by his ability to swear at an uncooperative pony even with a mouth full of nails.

The Police station and Mr McNeil’s house and shop were  demolished in the early 1960s to widen the road and improve access the RAF Fylingdales early warning station. A new Police Station  was built where Eastgate Backside joined the Malton Road.

When his old shop was demolished Mr McNeil moved to a new concrete block place on Eastgate Back… it was new, light, shiny, tidy, boring and characterless after the mysteries of the dark hole on the Whitby Road.

I loved this epitaph to a blacksmith spotted on a local tombstone

Anvil and hammer lie declined, my bellows too have lost their wind,
My fires extinguished, my furse decayed, and in the dust my vice is laid,
My coals are spent, my irons gone, last nail I've drove, my work is done.

By the time Wilf had moved from his Whitby Road dungeon to the bright new concrete block modernity, I’d outgrown Gay and had moved onto a larger pony. In September 1959 Gay went to the West Riding to give another young girl a taste of fun with her very own pony.

Our Pony Club diary for every year had a verse from an Ogilvie poem at the end of each week. I used to love them. Here is the full poem relating to gypsies, very appropriate when I think of Gay.


Gipsies' Horses by William Henry Ogilvie

 Many a time I've wondered where the gipsies horses go
When the caravans have faded from the lanes;
When all the world of Romany lies buried in the snow,
And not a rose of any fire remains.

Are there fairy-builded stables in the brown New Forest fern?
Are there elfin stalls in Epping where they stand?
Are they haltered in the heather by some haunted Highland burn,
Where the blue hares change to witches out of hand?

Are they feeding down the sunset in some opal land of dreams,
Where the meadows stretch by rivers running gold?
Is it there that we shall find them, all the piebalds and the creams.
All the collar-galled, the weary and the old?

Whatever roof may shelter them, whatever fields they tread,
God grant them rest forgetful of the chains,
Till once again through England all the roses blossom red
Of the Gipsy fires alight along the lanes!

http://allpoetry.com/poem/8488037-Gipsies_Horses_-by-William_Henry_Ogilvie