Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage: February 2008

If you are easily offended by colourful language you may want to stop reading now....

It was as beautiful a sunny February morning as you could wish to see. Clear blue skies and the snowdrops have been in full flower for a couple of weeks now. I decided to drive out to see George, an old friend of mine, who lives in a village outside Winchester. Hilary dropped me at the end of the track which leads up to George's place and headed into town to the Sunday farmers' market.

I love the idea of a farmers' market. A place where the down trodden farmer gets a fair deal by cutting out the middlemen, those big multinational conglomerates who literally squeeze the living out of the man at the bottom of the food chain. The farmers provide good quality home produce at a fair price direct to the customer. Great.

I have found that the reality is somewhat different. The prices are significantly higher than supermarkets and I am always left with the impression that the farmers are just as greedy as the multinationals. Anyway I try and keep away just in case I can't keep my tongue and cause an incident and major embarrasment to my wife and daughter.

I made my way up the rutted track towards George's place. I was just greatful that the weather was sufficiently sunny to have dried out the potholes that I usually have to wade through. Half way up the track I met Bob, a neighbour of George's.

I have known Bob nearly as long as I have known George and so I stopped to chew the fat for a while. How is the wife family? How is his wife's Meniere's disease? That kind if stuff.

Bob is another amazing character. He is planning his 90th birthday party later this month and has invited another friend who celebrates is 90th birthday a few days before Bob. They signed up for the Royal Marines together in the 2nd World War.

Bob always likes to chat because he knows that I have been out to Crete and Cyprus. Bob has a special affection for the Greek people. During the war he was captured and taken prisoner during the Battle of Crete in 1941. He was sent on a forced march through the Cretan mountains and wore out his army boots. It later proved to be a hard blow because, as a POW, he was sent as a forced labourer to a village high in the Austrian mountains. During the winter he had no shoes and only rags to wrap around his feet when he was sent to work in the snow. He recalls how he broke down and cried because his feet were so cold.

He holds no grudge or ill will towards his captors and visited Austria and the farmer for many years after the war ven attending their family weddings. These days only the grandchildren survive but Bob still practices his German by writing to the family.

After a while our conversation drifted back to George. It usually does. I took a short cut across Bob's place down to where George stays while Bob returned to his chores of fetching logs for the fire. Not too shabby for 90 years old.

George now lives alone except for his cat Daisy in a small mobile home on the edge of what was his farm. Living room with a log burner, small kitchen and bathroom and one bedroom. George has lived here for the last few years and it is only in the last couple of months that he has started to light the log burner despite the fact that in the winter it is bitterly cold in here. Even though I fitted smoke and carbon monoxide alarms he was gripped by a morbid fear of burning alive that only several cold winters managed to loosen.

Daisy is a fat cat with spindly legs. George describes her as 'fat as a mole'. I am not sure where that expression comes from but it is just one of many that appear to unique to him.

I found him sitting in front of the TV watching some Sunday morning chat show and smoking the latest in endless stream of roll-your-own cigarettes. 'Rollies' are one of George's few remaining vices. Prostate operations, colon cancer and two colostomy operations have put paid to most of the others.

About 100 meters up the hill from here there are two warm and spacious bungalows. George built both of them and did all of the bricklaying and plumbing himself. For the first one he had no scaffolding so he used hay bales instead as he was also doing mowing hay at the same time. He lost both houses as part of his two divorce settlements. The farmland itself he has signed over to his youngest son except for one small area which he signed over to his other children and they allow him to live here in the mobile home among the chickens and geese. George has his home spun philospohical approach to these things. "Always remember Zeyemen 'The pride of your prick will bring rags to your arse' ". I am not 100% sure what he means by this but I am sure it is good advice.

I met George over 10 years ago when he was still in his 70s. At that time he was still living with his second wife in one of the bungalows. I was staying there as a bed and breakfast lodger and was only vaguely aware of a strange old man who also lived there and came and went at strange hours of the day. He had already departed when I left for work at 07:00 am. He was rarely around in the evening but instead worked out on the farm or in the winter evenings under floodlights in the barns.

One evening I was standing in the kitchen talking with his wife when the door opened behind me. I did not turn around but slowly became aware that there was something poking between my legs from behind. I put my hand down and discovered what I initially took to two pieces of cold copper plumbing pipe. A closer examination showed that it was actually the business end of a 12 bore shotgun. This was George's way of a friendly introduction.

Over the next few years we became good friends and George undertook my further education.

No small feat for someone who left school at the age of 9 and cannot read or write. And what an education it became. My lack of knowledge of even the most basic facts about running a farm, animal welfare, building, carpentry and a host of other subjects was all too obvious. He never makes me feel as ignorant about these as I should do.

We exchanged greetings and George almost immediately suggests that we 'do a bit'. George never fails to make the most of any opportunity to exploit an extra pair of hands around the place and 'doing a bit' is how he describes it. 'Doing a bit' may involve putting up new fences poles, moving hens and chicks to fresh grazing or building his latest henhouses. On this occasion 'doing a bit' was sawing and splitting logs.

The chain saw took quite some persuasion to pull into life and kept spluttering out. Inside the barn we nearly choked on the clouds of blue exhaust fumes. Half a mile away on the other side of the village is the Sparsholt Agricultural College where they teach modern farming techniques and specialize in sheep shearing and chainsaw courses. It may only be half a mile but it might as well be on the moon. George never had a chain saw lesson in his life and uses one without protective clothing and only soft deck shoes on his feet.

It is my job to push the logs along the cutting stump while he saws off the ends into 6 inch blocks until, with the last piece, my fingers are within inches of the moving chain. Even this is preferable to cutting fences posts when I hold the post and he cuts a point on it while I am direct firing line of any broken chain.

Eventually the chain saw stopped completely because it was over heating. The oil feed which would normally cool it no longer works because a tree fell on the saw. I don't ask why or how it happened it is best just to accept it. Then I started splitting blocks until there was sufficient to last a week. I placed them in a wheel barrow and we took them back to his home.

While we were working I noticed a few adults and children at the top of the hill. They are town people who keep horses in livery on the farm. They arrive most weekends in their SUVs and ride out or clean the stables. Renting out fields for livery is a profitable line of business. You provide a field and perhaps a stable with water supply then sit back while people give you money to keep their horses on your land. You can make it even more profitable by selling them the hay that they need to keep their horses through the winter.

George hobbled with me up the hill when I left. The weekend horse riders and their children looked at us like we were martians. George never even noticed them and merely grumbled about his wornout knee joints. I suggested he get a replacement knee joint knowing that he would never consider such a thing. He merely replied that he would like a new back bone first.

Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage

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Sunday, 10 February 2008

Visiting a few olds friends.

Monday, 4 February 2008

Advice wanted... any more suggestions.