Snapshot: Me as a bus conductor with my farmer dad

I only have three photographs of me with my father. In the 1950s, photography was expensive and the film was mostly saved for snaps of weddings and the annual chapel coach trip to the seaside: it often remained in the camera for several months. My favourite photo, taken on Christmas Day 1951, is of me, aged four, proudly showing off my present of a bus conductor’s cap, uniform and ticket machine, standing with my dad in his leggings, boots and a three-piece suit that had been his Sunday best and then became his everyday working clothes.

Shunning innovation and machines, my father chose the horsepower of a gentle shire, preferring the stench of sweat to that of tractor oil. Twice daily he milked his seven horned cows by hand, head bowed, as if in prayer, his forehead pressed against the flank; each animal named and treated with respect. Having no stomach for sticking pigs, he seldom saw the gush of blood spew steaming hot from an open throat. Neither could he bring himself to thrust a knife into the beak of a hanging fowl, instead allowing my mother to perform the task for our Christmas dinner.

Each spring, he found the first white violets, presenting a small bouquet to my mother, a shy smile playing on his lips. He knew every one of his 11 fields and the surrounding hedges intimately and he knew where to find the nesting sites of robin, thrush and wren; the secret banks where wild strawberries grew and where common lizards basked beneath the sun. How he enjoyed at dawn the spiders’ webs sparkling silver in the dew, the glinting kingcups golden in the rushes.

He seldom reminisced about ploughing with his team of shires, of how he had tramped 10 miles a day to plough a single acre, enjoying bird songs as he toiled. He told me how the newly cut sward and soil sang, of how the jangle of the harness and the heavy beat of hobnail boot and iron-shod hoof were musical rhythms to his ears. Scraping a living from 23 acres in East Knowstone, Devon, my father was, according to the big farmers in the know, a poor farmer.

To quote Mark Twain – “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

My father died, aged 62, when I was 16. Only when I was much older than 21 did I realise he had found his riches in hedgerow, field and pond. It was only then that I heard his music of the earth and glimpsed his store of grain harvested by a truly parochial man. David Hill

Playlist: My mum’s party piece for Saturday nights

Mush, Mush, Mush – Irish folk song sung by Barry Fitzgerald in the film The Quiet Man

“Mush, mush, mush, tural-i-addy / Sing mush, mush, mush, tural-i-ay”

I was born into a singing family. None of them had any training, nor did anyone play a musical instrument, but if my parents had friends in for an evening meal on a Saturday, it always finished with a sing-song. As a small boy in the 40s I was introduced to, and can still sing, old music hall songs such as Hold Your Hand Out, You Naughty Boy and Johnny O’Connor Bought an Automobile.

They also sang songs of the day, including tunes from what we now call The Great American Song Book, and popular songs such as Mairzy Doats and Dozy Doats. Most of the adults had a party piece. My mother had two. The first was an Irish song, the chorus of which ran “Mush, mush, mush, tural-i-addy / Sing mush, mush, mush, tural-i-ay … If you’re in for a row or a ruction / Just tread on the tail o’ me coat.” The other was a narrative song called Granny’s Old Armchair. Does anyone sing them nowadays? About 30 years ago, I sang and recorded both songs on tape. Later, they were transcribed to a CD. Might some future musical historian stumble on this CD and resurrect the songs? I like to think so.

David Steele

We love to eat: Sunday teatime winkles

Ingredients
Tub of winkles
Brown bread and butter

I was born in 1941 and lived with my parents and older brother in a small village in Essex, 14 miles from the East End of London.

Sunday routines were the same except for special outings or summer holidays. Dad would organise a charabanc day trip during the summer for neighbours and friends, collecting the money each week to pay for it. He kept the cash in a tin under his bed.

The day would be spent on the beach, at the amusement arcades and on the numerous penny machines. We would visit the ice-cream shop for a knickerbocker glory and generally have lots of fun. Fish and chips were bought to eat in the coach on the way home, and the adults would finish up singing favourite songs such as Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag.

We would arrive home tired but happy. On Sundays, Dad would meet his mates down at the local working men’s club. Sometimes he let me go with him to listen to the brass band practise and afterwards I would hurry off to get home by dinner time so I would not be late for Sunday school in the afternoon.

Sunday dinner was always a roasted shoulder of lamb with vegetables from Grandad’s allotment. Dad wouldn’t eat any other meat. The only fruit he would eat was apple, and that stewed to a puree, with custard, was his favourite for afters. Sometimes the custard had an almond flavour when Mum had burned it a bit. On special occasions, Mum made an apple pie.

Dad would return from the club, merry on too much mild and bitter, and my brother and I would run down the garden path to meet him. “Did you get some?” we would ask.

With face beaming, Dad would pull from his pocket what was to be a real treat. At teatime, my brother and I would sit cross-legged beside the warmth of a coal fire on wintry evenings, full of anticipation. We were never disappointed. Mum would bring us a plate of brown bread spread with best butter, which was a Sunday treat in itself, together with two hat-pins, each with a shiny pearl at one end.

And then came what we had been waiting for, a dish filled with what looked like small black snails. With our hat-pins we would ease off the winkles’ thin, waxy, top covering, then dig the pin into the dark brown flesh beneath, wriggling it round and round, while gently pulling, and watching the winkle come out all twisted like a corkscrew. Each time, we tried to get the winkle out whole without breaking off the very thin end.

I don’t know if my dad realised just how much joy his tub of winkles from Tubby Isaacs every Sunday brought my brother and me, but I hope he could tell from our happy faces.

Now in my old age, I can still remember those Sunday teas and the taste and chewy saltiness of those winkles mingling with the smoothness of brown bread and butter.

Doreen Grey

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