I went to school at the village school in Scarisbrick , it was a small three class school opposite Pinfold lane. It had a big screen that could be drawn across to divide up the big hall into two smaller rooms. Mr Weald was the headmaster and my teacher. He was a really good teacher and I learnt a lot from him. The dinners at the Pinfold school were the same as at St Johns Burscough and I found out they were all cooked at one central kitchen then delivered to all the little schools in the area. I got prizes at the end of the year both years I was at Pinfold. The first year I got a copy of Gullivers Travels and I found out where the names my Mum and Dad had given to my first two Guinea pigs had come from. They were called Gulliver and Liliput. The second year I got a book that explained about space and the universe. I still have the two books with the certificates inside the front covers. In my wandering around the country side I found a stone that was shaped like a flat pear with a groove cut around the middle. I took it in to Mr Weald and he was very interested and sent it off to a museum for them to look at. After a few weeks he got a letter back that said it was a stone age axe or hammer and could they keep it and put it on show. I said yes but I never found out which museum it was so I could go and see it.
In my second year everyone had to do the eleven plus examination, this would decide whether we went to grammar school or the secondary modern school. I was expected to do really well, Mum had gone to the grammar school. I don’t remember much about doing the examination, it was just a test and held no special significance to me. I tried my best as I always did. When the results came through I was going to Wigan road. I wasn’t really bothered because all my mates were going to Wigan Road too. Mum and Dad put it down to all the changing schools that had gone on.
That summer was the second one back in the country and I really enjoyed myself. I found out about how to catch pheasants by digging a hole in the ground. Pheasants are not the cleverest of birds and they would follow a trail of grain or dried fruit if you laid it down on the ground. I dug a hole that was quite narrow about six inches and was about two feet long. It led down a ramp from one end to being about a foot deep at the other. Then the deeper end was covered with a sack so that it looked solid, the grain was laid down the hole in a single line right to the deepest part. The pheasant followed the grain into the hole and when it got to the end it stopped and would not be able to turn round. They did not think to walk backwards and went to sleep under the sack. In the morning I would come along and grab the pheasants before they woke up. I never killed them it was just a bit of fun to see how beautiful the birds were, especially the cocks with their long flowing tails and golden collars. They had been bred for the shooting season which went on every autumn. The game keepers would have gone mad if they knew what I did. I once did some beating for a shoot ,it was fun with twenty or thirty of us walking across the fields though all the cabbage and sprout plants waving flags and shouting to get the pheasant to fly. The farmers would be lined up at the other end of the field with their shot guns. They would shoot the birds above our heads and they would fall to the ground with a dull thud. The dogs then ran and collected them for the shooters. I did not like to see the birds lined up at the end of the day. They had just been blasted out of the sky with twelve bore shotguns, it did not seem fair at all but that was the way of the country. We could either take a brace of birds or a pound for the mornings beating, I always took the money. We could also collect the empty cartridge cases as the brass could be weighed in at the scrap merchants.
One day a friend of my Dad’s brought a fox cub in to the pub, it had been found after the foxes den had been dug up by the local hunt. It would have died if it had been left so I took it on. It was very small and was just about lapping milk, I managed to get it big enough to be released after a month or so. I came down one morning and found it in the hutch with my pet Dutch rabbit. It had escaped from its cage and opened the hutch. The rabbit was dead and half eaten, I could not blame the fox cub as it was doing what was natural. It was taken away to somewhere where the hunt did not go and released back into the wild.
Dad decided we needed something to keep the grass short in the paddock at the side of the pub. He said we were going out for a run in the car one evening and we all got into the Austin Cambridge Estate and went off towards Cheshire. After about an hour we stopped at this farm and he went and knocked at the farmhouse door. When the farmer came out he walked us over to a paddock and there was a big white billy goat. He said his name was George and he had come from London zoo.
The farmers children had three other pets and they were John, Paul and Ringo. George was loaded into the back of the estate and we drove back to the pub. We did get some strange looks as people saw this big white goat in the back of the car. When we got home George was unloaded in to the paddock where a steel spike had been put with a ten foot length of chain and a very large collar. George left circles of mowed grass all over the paddock from then on, just like crop circles that started to appear a few years later. He was quite a celebrity, he got his picture in the paper a few times when the reporter wanted to get a story for the nationals. It was all good publicity for the pub too. When the pub had a new sign Dad was photographed as if he was fitting it and that got into the Ormskirk Advertiser and the Southport Visiter. He was asked by a union man if had a any qualifications so he could fit the sign, he said he was a time served engineer, the unions at the time seemed to rule who could do what job. When George was pictured eating crisps and drinking beer in the pub it got into the Daily Mirror. George loved to play with Brutus our german shepherd so was never afraid of dogs. George died a few years later after being attacked by two big chow dogs. A customer let the dogs out of their car on the car park and they got into his field. He was bitten on the rump and the neck by the dogs. Mum saw it happen and rushed down screaming at the owner to get the dogs off him. She got a clothes prop, it was ten foot length of two by two timber, she beat the dogs with it until they let go. The owner was not happy at this woman hitting his dogs, he shouted at Mum to stop, she gave him a mouth full saying "I will bloody kill the dogs". He then grabbed the dogs and put them in his car and drove away without leaving any details. The vet was called, when he arrived he cleaned and stitched the wounds. He sprayed the stitches with gentian violet, George looked strange with great big purple patches on his white fur. He started to go downhill after that, he lasted about another month before he passed away. We buried him in the paddock.
No comments:
Post a Comment