Childhood and Schooldays
When we are children, we just take it all for granted, don’t we? I didn’t see my family life as different from anybody else’s. I can’t remember being particularly unhappy. I hadn’t reach the stage of unhappiness. My father was a fighter pilot during ‘The War’ and had suffered severe brain injury as a result of a crash in the Orkney Islands. He was ‘nervous’ and unpredictable, I suppose. Mother always seemed to be stressed. I couldn’t ‘talk’ to either of them. My brother, Simon, was strongly independant. He was determined to follow his own light and has become an artist with a strong interest in the environment. ‘Art became my family’, he says. I, being the elder, felt impelled to carry my parents ambitions and achieve success in a more conventional sense. I did what was expected of me and worked hard, but part of me always wanted to escape.
When I was nine we moved to Taunton. I had to leave my gang and work hard to get into a good school. Taunton School was a public school, founded in 1847. I was not impressed at the time. I was determined not to become a toff. I felt isolated and found consolation in work and an acceptance by being good at sport. I remember the kindness of ‘father figures’, Sergeant Major Scutt, who ran the cadet force (Britain’s last hope) and Jack Hampson, who introduced me to mountaineering, sailing, music and good food and wine. My last term as Head of School was purgatory. I couldn’t wait to leave. I gained an RAF Scholarship at learned to fly. I was amused when the Headmaster referred to me as an air-minded youth.
To my mother’s horror, my father moved us out of town to a beautiful house on the Blackdown escarpment. Their marriage was failing. I spent much of my time exploring the woods, reservoirs and uplands of The Blackdowns. I knew the Tawny Owl’s nest in the rotten oak, dissected pellets from the Barn Owl’s roost, watched Badgers by their setts in the woods and kept meticulous notes and graphs of the birds I saw, contributing the occasional cringeworthy piece to The Somerset County Gazette’s ‘Nature Notes’. Although we only lived there for two years, Blagdon Hill became the place I would think of as home. It was a source of solace and self sufficiency. My father lived there until his death in 2007. I kept the house on for six months and lived there when I could so I could take my leave properly. Alas, despite a rearguard action by English Nature and the roost of the long eared bats in the attic, the house is to be demolished and replaced.
My parents both remarried and were happy, but their partners died in the early nineties. I felt again the same obligation to care for them as I did as a teenager, but as a result my relationship with each deepened and I came to understand their respective vulnerabilities .
