We moved around a great deal when I was a child...have no idea why it should have been so... but once Father had the farm, we settled for several years.
The farmhouse was a long low building...all the walls and floors terribly crooked...beds had to be levelled with the help of house bricks under the legs and wardrobes the same, otherwise they tilted alarmingly.
As it was, the interior doors never would stay closed...they'd open slowly as someone walked across a bedroom floor or came in from outside, letting in a draught. The stairs wound round and round getting very narrow on one side...no banisters, so you had to steady yourself by holding onto the wall as best as you could.
All the windows were small and covered in criss-crosses of lead...mullioned in other words...I think that's the right description. It was lit with gas mantles that flickered constantly and would suddenly go out in a spurt of orange flame...the lights frightened me to death and there was always a faint hint of gas in the air.
The entire front of the house was smothered in a deep purple Wisteria...home to dozens of birds who made their nests there out of the way of the farm cats...
Fathers garden was, as always, immaculate...straight rows of Runner beans and Broad beans...he grew Sweet peas for shows...never to be picked for the house... bright scarlet Dahlias, their heads swathed in brown paper bags to stop the rain from spoiling them...there were Lettuces and Scallions and a plot given over to potatoes, Swedes and Carrots...never a weed to be seen.
I had pet Guinea pigs and a savage Rabbit who bit...Mother had the first in a long succession of Pekinese who required daily grooming and ate from tiny dishes with its name on the side. My brother and I loathed those little dogs with their googly eyes, who snapped and yapped and were given a slice of roast beef on Sundays.
It was on the farm I learned how to milk the two dairy cows and watched a tiny Japanese man sexing the newly hatched chicks from the incubators...the males were rapidly dispatched of course, then fed to the pigs.
We were supposed to never go near the pigs...but we did of course...we'd lean over the wall to their sties and give them windfall apples to eat.
There was an apple orchard with a few pear trees...the apples were crisp and sweet...Mother wrapped them in newspaper and put them in the loft to keep for the winter months...
It was at the farm that Father fell out with the local hunt when they cornered a Fox in the yard one day...it was the only time I ever heard my Father swear.
Apart from the day when the Duke of Edinburgh...or as Father described him later...'that blank Greek'...ran straight into our Landrover while the Duke was coming round a bend...he was staying near the farm on a shooting weekend.
It wasn't long after the accident that the chickens had Fowl Pest...the Government paid out compensation...but then the chickens were infected again.
And we had to move as a consquence.
it's like reading a book, a chapter a night and a good read it is too. Jan x
We celebrate Christmas because Jesus was born.
Died at the Tower of London
My father
Remembering Family Holidays... 
