Figures in the fire

Posted on 11th August 2021 by 192.168.1.1

In childhood years, did everyone stare into the flames in the fireplace and see shapes and figures and imagine tales of long ago or is it a personal eccentricity?

My grandmother on the farm lived frugally, but once the latter part of August came and the evenings darkened and the first autumnal chill began to be sensed in the night air, she would light the fire. The farmhouse was a place filled with memories and no evening would pass without the recalling of someone whose demise was long past. Perhaps it was the conversation that provided the aural stimulus for the imaginings shaped by the flickerings in the hearth.

The logs would have been cut mostly from fallen trees, their size and shape would vary, and so would the rate at which they burned. Some were seasoned and would quickly ignite, others still retained sap and would hiss and spark and necessitate the fireguard if they were not to damage the hearth rug.  Staring at the fire, there seemed moments of timelessness, as if one could stop the passing of the days and seize a moment; as if the onset of autumn could be halted and the magic of summer could be forever held.

A fire now still has the capacity to connect thoughts with the rambling ideas of those closing days of summer holidays. Perhaps it is the nature of the experience that has the evocative power.

Did the people who lived in the caves in southern France find inspiration for their wall paintings from sitting watching the movement of light and shadows against the rock that surrounded them? Did the people who lived in the medieval farms that shaped the progress of England stare into the fire and wonder what country future flames would see? Did the forebears who lived within the thick blue lias stone walls of the farmhouse at Pibsbury ever wonder who might in the future sit at the fireside?

Look for fires now, and they are becoming scarce. Even those people who burn logs or coal prefer stoves and ranges to the inefficiency of the open fire. Yet, in the progress, an ancient element of human experience is being lost. No longer will future generations of young people sit at firesides and feel a bond of  community with the people of past millennia, no longer will they see faces and figures and unfolding tales as the logs burn to ashes.

Of course, it might all be personal eccentricity, maybe everyone else looked at the flames and saw just – flames.

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A place with no privacy

Posted on 10th August 2021 by 192.168.1.1

When did our ideas of privacy develop? Was it with the emergence of an urban society where the sheer size of the population made anonymity possible? Was it with the growth of affluence, affording people the opportunity to close the front door of their own home and in so doing enter a private and personal world? Was it with the decline of traditional heavy industry where generations of people from the same streets had gone to the same workplaces, to be replaced by disparate individuals going to disparate employers? Was it with the breakdown of traditional communities, the bonds that once held them together having loosened?

Privacy has a long history, but in times past it was neither universal nor something that was assumed to be normative.

Growing up in this very small village where there were forty-four children at the  two teacher primary school meant growing up in a community where everyone knew everyone else.

The school teacher would have told us that the population of our village was three hundred. When a community only numbers three hundred, it means that not only do you know everyone, to a greater or a lesser extent, you know everyone else’s business as well. You heard how much they had sold livestock for at the market; you heard how many gallons of milk they got from their cattle; you heard how much they had paid for the land they had bought.

There were undoubtedly people sufficiently affluent or sufficiently solitary to live their lives apart from those around, away from the gaze of others, but most people seemed untroubled at living under watching eyes. Matters that might need discretion or concealment were not frequent and, if the wagging tongues of the community talked about you, there was consolation in the fact that someone else was being left alone.  Had we known it, we might have smiled at Oscar Wilde’s comment that “there is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”, but few of us would have known much of the works of Oscar Wilde.

To have been overly concerned with privacy in such a community would have been eccentric, it was not a possibility for most people. Living now in what has been called a “global village”, why are we surprised that the privacy we had assumed has again begun to disappear?

The ties that created a sense of belonging to a village community were the links that left us vulnerable to scrutiny. If that was the case in a rural village of the Sixties it is as much the case in the virtual village of the Twenties.

Maybe the simplest answer to concerns about privacy is to constantly live as if people are watching.

 

Posted in The stuff of daily life | 2 Comments

Flights of fancy

Posted on 9th August 2021 by 192.168.1.1

Being hard-nosed was a necessary prerequisite of rural life. In a farming community, there was no space for sentimentality.  Livestock were reared to earn money, fields were for grazing or growing crops. Idealism did not pay bills and people with fanciful notions of a “good life” did not survive long on the land.

The suburbanisation of our corner of rural England has brought a wave of newcomers, some of whom seem to regard villages as places for their projects and see the opinions of local people as antediluvian and unenlightened. There is little understanding that the countryside is neither a museum nor a platform for the pursuit of individual ideas.

Many of those who arrive depart as quickly, their arrival in the first place an indication of their impermanence. However, while present, some seek to impose their own liberal middle class, suburban view of the world, no matter how unrealistic their ideas may be.

Sometimes there are hints of Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, in the denial of reality by those pursuing their vision:

JUDITH: I do feel, Reg, that any Anti-Imperialist group like ours must reflect such a divergence of interests within its power-base.

REG: Agreed. Francis?

FRANCIS: Yeah. I think Judith’s point of view is very valid, Reg, provided the Movement never forgets that it is the inalienable right of every man–

STAN: Or woman.

FRANCIS: Or woman… to rid himself–

STAN: Or herself.

FRANCIS: Or herself.

REG: Agreed.

FRANCIS: Thank you, brother.

STAN: Or sister.

FRANCIS: Or sister. Where was I?

REG: I think you’d finished.

FRANCIS: Oh. Right.

REG: Furthermore, it is the birthright of every man–

STAN: Or woman.

REG: Why don’t you shut up about women, Stan. You’re putting us off.

STAN: Women have a perfect right to play a part in our movement, Reg.

FRANCIS: Why are you always on about women, Stan?

STAN: I want to be one.

REG: What?

STAN: I want to be a woman. From now on, I want you all to call me ‘Loretta’.

REG: What?!

LORETTA: It’s my right as a man.

JUDITH: Well, why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?

LORETTA: I want to have babies.

REG: You want to have babies?!

LORETTA: It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them.

REG: But… you can’t have babies.

LORETTA: Don’t you oppress me.

REG: I’m not oppressing you, Stan. You haven’t got a womb! Where’s the foetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!

LORETTA: crying

JUDITH: Here! I– I’ve got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can’t actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody’s fault, not even the Romans’, but that he can have the right to have babies.

FRANCIS: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.

REG: What’s the point?

FRANCIS: What?

REG: What’s the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can’t have babies?!

FRANCIS: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.

REG: Symbolic of his struggle against reality.

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Fighting for yourself

Posted on 8th August 2021 by 192.168.1.1

Fought in July 1645, the Battle of Langport was a significant victory for Cromwell’s New Model Army in its campaign against Royalist forces. The army of the Royalist general Goring was routed and driven back to Bridgwater.   Sir Richard Bulstrode, one of
Goring’s officers, wrote:

After the beating up of Lieutenant General Porter’s Quarters, Fairfax, with his Army, marched directly to us from Evil [Yeovil], where, being in a plain and rising Ground, the Enemy’s Army was drawn up upon it, with a great Marsh and Bogg between both Armies, which hindred the Enemy from attacking up, except by one Passage in the Bottom of the Hill, between both Armies, which Passage was narrow, and our General had placed there two Regiments of Foot to guard that Passage; which were Collonel Slaughter’s and Collonel Wise’s Regiments, lately raised in South Wales.

General Goring himself, with all his Horse, was drawn up upon the Hill, at the mouth of the Passage, with the Infantry upon his right Hand, near Langport, to succour those two Regiments, in case of Attack upon the Pass, which the General hoped to make good, at least till night, that then we might retire with less Loss, being unseen.

In the mean time, General Goring commanded me to send away all the Baggage and Cannon, except two Field Pieces, which he commanded should be drawn to the top of the Hill, at the Head of the Pass, and bid me to order Sir Joseph Wagstaffe from him, who commanded the Foot near to Langport, that in case the Enemy should force the Pass upon him, that then Sir Joseph Wagstaffe should retire with all his Foot to Langport, and there pass the River towards Bridgwater and burn down the Bridge behind him, which was a Draw-bridge over the River; and, in the Morning, when I had Orders to send away the baggage and Cannon, I sent them that Way, for their greater Security, otherwise they had been all lost; for we were in Hopes to keep that Pass till Night: Yet so soon as the Enemy had put their Army in Order of Battle, upon the Top of the Hill, on the other Side the Bogg, which we thought was their whole Army, they opened and drew to their Right and Left, advancing towards the Pass, whilst another great Body came up in their Place, by which their Army was more than double our Number.

However, our General neither lost his Courage nor Conduct, but still remained at the Head of the Pass, with his own Guards of Horse, commanded by Collonel Charles Goring, his Excellency’s Brother, who was also seconded by Sir Arthur Slingsby, with his Regiment of Horse, and the rest of the Horse Army behind him; but the Enemy advancing very fast down the Hill, with Horse, Foot, Dragoons and Cannon, much overpowered us in Number; and our Foot that were drawn to guard the Pass not doing their Duty, many of them deserting, and shooting against us, the Enemy thereupon gained the Pass.

The General charged the Enemy twice, but being much overpowered in Number, we were at last beaten off, and obliged to a very disorderly Retreat. The Foot, commanded by Major General Wagstaffe, retired to Langport; as did likewise the Lord Wentworth, and retreated over the Bridge that way to Bridgwater, having broken and burnt down the Draw-bridge behind them: But our Horse were obliged to retreat the ordinary Way, which being a moorish Ground, full of several narrow Passes, where several Officers were obliged to stay, to make good the Retreat for others; so that divers of Distinction were taken, too many to be reckoned up.

“Our Foot that were drawn to guard the Pass not doing their Duty, many of them deserting, and shooting against us:” these were presumably the so called “club men,” local men who were armed and pressed into service with the Royalist forces.  Bulstrode’s account does not suggest why these men left the ranks and started “shooting against us,” (although it seems unlikely they would have been equipped with firearms, they were more likely pikemen). Could it have been because the Royalist troops had started setting fire to Langport? What would Richard Bulstrode have done if defeated soldiers running from an enemy had started burning his home?

 

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Unreliable records

Posted on 7th August 2021 by 192.168.1.1

Uncle Dick died in 1971. A raconteur and humorist, he is remembered for many moments of laughter.

Born in 1894, he married Auntie Annie in 1915. Sexton at the local church, he was caretaker at the local school on weekdays. Their Bournemouth home became a place of happiness for visitors from among Annie’s family in Somerset.

Recalling her stays with he and Annie, my mother remembered how Uncle Dick would not speak of his experiences in the First World War, “he had a horrible time.”

Looking up his military record online, a record card that included his Bournemouth address, I said, “he certainly had a horrible time – he was dead.”

“What?” exclaimed my mother.

I turned the computer screen toward her and enlarged the image. On the left-hand side of the record card, in bold purple print, was stamped the word “DEAD.”

My mother laughed loudly, “Uncle Dick would have enjoyed reading that. He would have told everyone that he was dead! He would have laughed so much.”

Uncle Dick was in the Labour Corps at the end of the war, an assignment that was common for soldiers who had been wounded at the front, but had recovered and were considered still fit to serve in some way. Most service records from the Great War were destroyed in an air raid during the Second World War. The single index card is the only record that remains for Richard Whiteley – a man who was definitely not dead.

A search for the father of another forebear who had fought in the First World War would probably have also caused amusement to the man concerned, for no-one seems to have been quite sure of his name.

Remembered as “Uncle Jabe,” his official forename seems to have been the Biblical name “Jabez,” not that he seems to have been averse to using various other names. On occasions he seems to have been James, Jervis, Japhis, and Jarvis. On the marriage register, he signed himself as “Janes.” On his gravestone, he is recorded as “Jerves.”

With a variable name, Jabez seemed also to have a fluid date of birth.  Born in 1872 on some records, he is four years younger and born in 1876 on other documents. The 1876 date comes from his baptismal record, so perhaps he represented himself as older for some reason. Difficulty in researching him is compounded by his family members having similarly variable names.

While being dead or not dead is definitive, genealogy seems a very inexact science.

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