Watching our children grow up may well be, for many, the most important reason for living a long time. But as we witness and read about more and more horror around the world, it is sometimes hard to understand our obsession with extending human life. According to a recent article in Chemistry & Industry magazine, a team of scientists have shown for the first time that food enriched with natural isotopes could extend human life substantially. In initial experiments with worms, their life spans were extended by 10%, which, with humans expected to routinely coast close to one hundred years of age, could add a further 10 years to human life. Food enhanced with isotopes is thought to produce bodily constituents and DNA more resistant to detrimental processes. The isotopes could be used in animal feed so that humans could get the ‘age-defying’ isotopes indirectly in steaks or chicken fillets, for example, rather than eating chemically enhanced products themselves. Isotopes could, apparently, also be used in pet food or as a means to protect workers or soldiers from radiation. As so often happens when research such as this is announced the resultant outcry can throw up unlikely alliances. In this case an Anti-age Research Group plans to gather on the first of April with the Global Undertaking Society to stage a protest rally at Hyde Park. Sounds like baby boomer heaven.
John Page
‘I grew up in Surrey. My father was a postmaster and then went into the Civil Service. During the war he worked in the Cabinet Office for Winston Churchill. I wasn’t evacuated; I saw a doodle bug come down on the corner of our street.
I went to a convent school, and then a Catholic grammar school where I got a good education. Although I had the necessary A-levels I decided not to go to university. I suggested to my father that I would like to be a photographer. I had a small darkroom and had sold my first professional photograph in 1948 to a local newspaper; it was of Bernard Braden opening a local cycle track. Father said I should get a proper job, like accountancy. I followed that advice and had an exciting and interesting life in the publishing business.
My first five years were spent with a small firm in London doing my articles. We had lots of family firms as clients. I would go in and do all their accounts, sometimes with their children playing under the table. We also had clients like Billy Butlin, the holiday camps and Bertram Mills, the circus people.
When I finished my training, I had to do my National Service. I was a corporal, and then a sergeant, in the Pay Corps in Paderborn in Germany. During the Suez Crisis our unit doubled overnight when reservists joined us. Mind you, I couldn’t march and I was a hopeless shot, I was once credited with three bull’s eyes because the chap next to me was a worse shot than I and hit my target by mistake! But I did learn to play snooker. I was the youngest in the Sergeant’s Mess and there were really only three things to do, drink, go out with local girls or play snooker. I had a girl friend at home. I’d known her since I was two. At one time she was my boss. As a schoolboy I worked for a fish monger: I was the delivery boy, complete with bicycle and basket, and Dawn gave me my orders. We got married before I finished in Germany.
After National Service, in 1957, I joined Price Waterhouse. Four years later I became assistant to the Company Secretary with the Odhams Group and I stayed most of my working life in the publishing and advertising world. My boss there Henry ‘Hoot’ Gibson gave me some very good advice after I had written a long and careful report for him. “Summarize this onto one side of paper by tomorrow” he said as he dropped it into the waste-bin. While I was at Odhams I had my thirtieth birthday; I was the youngest member of the board. Two years later I became Managing Director and had my own chauffeur.
While I was working for Arnold Quick at I.P.C. I had a very tough eighteen months. Both my parents and then my wife died of cancer, leaving me with my young daughter.
I.P.C. was taken over by Reed International in 1970. I had remarried and decided to move on to J Walter Thompson, as Director of Finance.
Father and I were founder members of Chertsey Camera Club in 1950. In 1972 I joined Woking Camera Club and started taking photography seriously. I enjoy taking photographs, and, as I have travelled a lot, I currently have over 60,000 slides.
When I was 49 I was headhunted to join Charles Barker and was successful in floating the company on the Stock Exchange. I set up my own consultancy business when I was 55. I like to build; I’ve never been a destroyer or an asset stripper and I’m happy to use my skills and knowledge to help various charities.
At the same time as running my business I studied for a part-time photography degree at Westminster University but it was not for me. Like so many photography courses it was too essay based and there was not enough practical photography.
I had become involved with the Royal Photographic Society. I went to meetings and it was apparent that they had serious problems. At that time it was being run by well-intentioned people but they had no real business skills. The Society was almost bankrupt, and its headquarters had an onerous lease; and the priceless collection of more than 280,000 photographs – the largest and most significant in the world – was in danger of being split up and was certainly not being properly cared for. In 1996 I became Honorary Treasurer.
In 2002 I was made President of the Royal Photographic Society and was heavily involved in restructuring the Society. With the aid of Lottery Funding, the collection was moved to Bradford, the Society purchased Fenton House, Bath, now our new headquarters, and the Society became financially sound. I am particularly proud of having been president in the Society’s 150th year and during that year I represented the Society abroad, most notably in China and Hongkong. I still remain involved with the RPS Finance Advisory Committee.
By now I was spending a considerable amount of time in Bath and was thinking of moving to the South West. Originally I thought of Cornwall, but fate had other ideas. I saw an advertisement for an artist’s cottage, with studio in Crewkerne, Somerset. I moved in a few months later.
I really enjoy living in the West Country. The people are so friendly and the countryside, with its beautiful seascapes is still largely unspoilt. I especially like Burton Bradstock: there is such a variety of landscape, all within an hour’s drive.
I always have my camera in the car and have joined the Bridport Camera Club. I enjoy looking at well-taken and well-printed monochrome photographs. Good food and wine are also important to me. In 1963 I was invited to join the Union Society of the City of Westminster, the oldest dining club in London, founded in 1784. There are only ever thirty members and we meet three times a year, currently at the Dorchester Hotel. I’m not a bad cook. I like French country cooking and I enjoy fresh, nicely grilled fish very much. I met my partner Marjorie at a dinning club in 2005. We share an interest in the countryside and are members of the RSPB.
I have three daughters: Nicola lives in the Caymen Islands; Samantha is a forensic accountant in London and Susan lives in Zanzibar. I’ve had a wonderful life. There have been some hard knocks but I regret nothing. I’ve met lots of interesting people and been to many fascinating places. But I’m not done yet. Because of my links with Zanzibar, I am getting involved in education and poverty relief in Africa as well as some local activities back here in Somerset.’
Roger Mayne – Notting Dale
It’s not everyday that one gets the opportunity to leaf through a body of unpublished work from a great artist. But as I sat chatting to Lyme Regis photographer Roger Mayne, looking through a mock up of a new book of his photographs he has compiled, I found myself contemplating selling my home to raise the money to publish it. Much as I enjoy my copy of his book Photographs, Roger Mayne, which was published by Jonathan Cape in 2001, I have no doubt that this thoughtfully put together collection of his work spanning many years and subjects would find an eager and appreciative audience.
Roger Mayne, now a veteran of more than thirty years in Lyme Regis and a trustee of the Town Mill, is busy working on selections and prints for an exhibition of his lesser known work to be shown there at the end of March. Entitled Grandpa’s Eye, the exhibition concentrates on some of the more personal photographs he has taken of his grandchildren over the years. Capturing very personal moments, with a photographer’s vision and a parent’s love, he has produced a range of images that will intrigue and delight those who visit the exhibition.
Roger is perhaps best known for a series of photographs taken in Southam Street in London’s Notting Dale (now Notting Hill) from 1956 to 1961, which captured the spirit of the late fifties. The Southam Street collection, which is seen as a definitive archive from the period, is of national importance and is now held by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Although the street was demolished in 1969 the work was brought to a new audience in the 90s when it was used extensively for concert backdrops, record sleeves and press-adverts by the singer Morrissey. One of the images was used on the cover of novelist Colin MacInnes book Absolute Beginners (1959), which is set in the area around Southam Street.
Although now more than fifty years old the Southam Street photographs have become an indelible part of how people perceive Roger Mayne as a photographer. They are in many ways a noose around his neck. “In a sense I put it round my own neck” says Roger. “What happened was – I’ve always been an inveterate maker of albums – so I made an album of Southam Street, because it was the most prolific. I tended to have favourite streets. Southam Street had the most photographs, so I made an album of it. Then I had 56 pages given to me in a magazine so I condensed the photographs to fit the 56 pages. It went to about 1500 copies. When the V&A exhibition came up, a similar situation happened. I re-edited the Southam Street and of course by doing that I drew all this attention, and I just saddled myself since with Southam Street. Some of the people photographed came to the V&A opening. The Evening Standard did a feature on the street of ‘Roger Mayne’s exhibition’ and they were interested to hear comments from some of the people who lived on the street. They got some – in fact quite a lot. Then The Sunday Times did a feature before the exhibition and some of the families photographed called me and came to the opening.”
Roger’s unique vision and ability to see the composition of what is before him, is to many, the mystery of photography. To capture the essence of something that actually happened may seem a god-given talent but it also takes a certain amount of training. Speaking about how one develops the ability to see the composition he says. “When I came to London I endlessly went to galleries – I soaked myself in visual art, cinema as well – I got it into my system. You almost feel that the moment is significant without knowing necessarily why. Terry Frost says ‘If you know before you look then you cannot see for knowing’. It’s not an intellectual process. It is not simply capturing a moment. It is what is in front of me – it is a formal shape. If the formal shape is interesting, it makes the photograph possible to look at again and again and again. A lot of news photography for instance – what is in front of the camera – it can be tough, it can be sensational, interesting, all sorts of things, but it lacks a compositional element.”
His attitude to press photographs today elicits another Terry Frost quote. “Terry Frost made a comment about press photographers” says Roger (who himself purchased a Terry Frost when he was an up and coming painter in 1953). “‘Press photographers take photographs as if Cezanne had never lived!’ according to Frost. So many of the journalistic pictures today have a feeling that they have been put in front of an interesting background, but you can see that they are having their photograph taken.”
Sometime ago Roger Mayne had an exhibition at the Arnolfini Gallery. It was in sections, based on themes. One gallery owner asked to show the section on family. His reason? He said that this is the way children should be photographed but never are.
Judy Lindsay
‘I’ve always been into antiquity. The origins of the world around us, whether in geology, history and archaeology, to place names, all hold a fascination for me. My family has a holiday place at Strangford Loch, in County Down, Northern Ireland: strang-fiord, Norse for strange fiord, because the Vikings who occupied many parts of Ireland around the ninth century A.D. noticed how the weather could completely change the character of the loch in minutes. I find that just so interesting.
I was born and brought up in Belfast. Mum and Dad still live there, and I do miss it dreadfully sometimes. My big brother and I went to school there, and we had a fantastic childhood. We were aware, of course, of the Troubles, but what outsiders don’t often realise is how those events were ghettoised. The rest of the world only ever heard the worst of it.
Actually life was always fun: we played in the streets, and our doors were seldom locked. If you got into trouble, you were also in trouble with the paramilitaries, which made life pretty safe for most of us as normal crime rates were very low. In those days property in Northern Ireland was, by today’s astronomical prices, really cheap. Most people had a holiday place, either a cottage or a caravan somewhere, so we spent halcyon days in Sligo, Newcastle and Portrush.
When I was eighteen, I left Belfast and went to the University of Glasgow. I did a four-year Masters Degree in English and History, and was lucky enough to get a job at the British Museum in London immediately afterwards. Working there was an inspiring experience, and I loved it. It is an amazing place, with globally important collections and artefacts, such as the Rosetta Stone, the translation of which finally enabled the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
I was helping to put together special events, from sleepovers and evening lectures, to the Booker Prize Dinner, eventually writing some children’s books for British Museum Press. Because the British Museum is such a hugely important national institution, many people who worked there developed very specialised roles, and this tended to make opportunities to develop a different direction in my work hard to find. I was looking forward to being able to put on my own exhibitions and create my own projects, and after six years at the B.M., there was a chance of this job in Dorchester, at the Dorset County Museum.
That was four years ago. As Museum Director, I’ve got a staff of eighteen, some part-time, who make up a brilliant team: committed, interested, willing, and with the sense of humour essential for most jobs. There are also about 180 voluntary staff, without whom the Museum would collapse tomorrow. They do everything from curating collections to running the library, to staffing the reception.
In my own job, I need to be very finance-savvy: I spend a lot of time chasing money. Dorset County Museum is an independent museum, owned and run by The Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society. We are funded by Dorset County Council, various trusts and foundations, including the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, donations, subscriptions, and entry fees. I also have to be as good at managing people as historical objects. I’ve just finished a qualification in Cultural Heritage Management, and I’m six months into a two-year professional development course leading to an Associateship of the Museums Association.
The Museum contains a huge range of resources. It is extensively used by schools, whose pupils can learn about the geology of Dorset, the Romans, and the literary history of the county. The wonderfully rich archaeology to be found in Dorset is reflected in the Museums displays, as is Dorchester’s Roman past. Around the town can be found the aqueduct, the amphitheatre (Maumbury Rings), and on the floor of the Victorian Gallery lies a magnificent Roman mosaic.
Perhaps what brings us the most visitors is of course the Thomas Hardy Gallery, which contains the largest Hardy archive in the country. We have some of his manuscripts, notebooks, diaries, and paintings. In the Writer’s Dorset Gallery, you can find out about William Barnes, the Dorset Poet, and the remarkable Powys family. For me personally, as an MA (English), the wealth of literary collections here at the Museum is one of the main inspirations of my job.
My biggest project since I started this job has been the new Jurassic Coast Gallery, which opened in summer 2006, with a grant of £336,500 from the Heritage Lottery Fund. It was opened by Sir David Attenborough. I’ve had a great deal of input into this venture, and it really has been a major achievement for the Museum and Dorset as a whole, proving very successful so far. It’s a focal point for all visitors to the 95-mile long Jurassic Coast, designated a World Heritage Site. Here they can learn how the coast was formed, see the story of ammonites, and displays showing some of the fantastic creatures of the period. It’s both great fun, and a learning experience, for people of all ages, with a wealth of interactive and audio-visual features.
I’m now working on new directions for the Museum, which include closer partnerships with Dorset Wildlife Trust, to reflect sustainability and environmental concerns. Together we’ve just started on a wildlife garden at All Saints Church in Dorchester, to demonstrate how people can encourage wildlife to thrive in their own gardens. A lot of valuable habitat is being sacrificed to the fashion for gravel areas, paving and decking. We’d like people to think about the effect this is having on our wildlife. I’d also like to encourage more visitors from the community to the Museum, so we have introduced an affordable annual pass and are organising lots of free events for families.
For the first time, I’m going to run the London Marathon on 22 April this year. I’m raising money for the Stroke Association, because my mum suffered a stroke while visiting Poland recently, and because it’s an incredibly good but not very well supported cause.
I’ve only ever been an occasional runner before, so I’m building up my training regularly, up to 30 miles a week at the moment. I recently ran my first half-marathon in 2hrs 6mins, on a beautiful day in the Blackmore Vale. I felt that was a pretty fair time for a first-timer with a slightly gammy leg. I also have to eat properly, lots of complex carbohydrates, and things like energy gels are helpful. Jelly Babies are great if you need a sugar-rush: Gordon Ramsey swears by them, but then he swears by most things.
Taking part in the London Marathon is going to be really exciting, maybe a landmark in my life, as well as for all the other thousands who are running. I hope to raise lots of money, and I’m looking forward to one day thinking I did that.’
Up Front 03/07
It often amazes me just how much money we spend on research. I don’t mean the popular bugbear of money spent on finding out the obvious – sometimes the obvious has to be proven. However, an essay published in 2005 entitled ‘Why most published research findings are false’, written by Dr John Ioannidis from the University of Ioannina School of Medicine, in Greece, has become a cult classic in research terms. He argued that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims, and went on to try and prove that most claimed research findings are false. A follow up article, published recently in PLoS Medicine, an international medical journal, investigated the even more alarming question of our acceptance of incorrect research findings, and levels of what the authors call ‘acceptable regret’. “Obtaining absolute ‘truth’ in research,” say the authors, “is impossible, and so society has to decide when less-than-perfect results may become acceptable.” “Acceptable regret” is what is worrying. It seems increasingly clear that, as a society, we are easily manipulated to accept errors and injustice, including those that cause the deaths of thousands of people, because somebody solemnly uses the term ‘regrettable’ while intimating that the end result will in some way be ‘acceptable’.
Ed Brooks
‘Mum and dad were living in their first house, in Crewkerne, when I was born in 1975. Soon after, they moved to Wootton Fitzpaine in the Marshwood Vale, where they rented Dairy Farm House. When I was two, they bought what had been the engine house to Wootton Fitzpaine Manor. As they also bought the original walled garden to the estate, they named the house ‘Manor Gardens’.
Mum’s family had moved down to the West Country from Buckleberry, near Reading, to a farm in Catherston Leweston. She went to watch a play in Charmouth where dad happened to be playing the part of a vicar in a comedy sketch. The punch line was ‘he wasn’t wearing any trousers’, and that’s how they met. Dad was born in Abbots Wootton, his dad was born at Befferlands. Nan was originally from the Crystal Palace area: she moved here with the Land Army and met grandad at a dance. They now live in Bridport: she still likes to dance, grandad is less keen.
Before settling down together, mum and dad lived and worked in different parts of the country, such as Birmingham, London and Stroud. At one stage they almost emigrated, one to Australia, the other to New Zealand. They were married in 1973. I’ve pilfered dad’s retro wedding suit for London meetings.
When I was very young my parents embarked on growing organic vegetables in our walled garden. At that time organic produce was not so common. They started to rear pigs just as the market plummeted. When I was ten and my brother Alex, seven, my family were forced to sell up the house. They rented a small flat in Hawkchurch before buying a tiny Woolaway bungalow in Whitchurch Canonicorum, where we lived for three years.
Dad started landscape gardening while mum continued bookkeeping, which she had trained in. We then moved back to Wootton Fitzpaine while we demolished the Woolaway bungalow and built three beautiful cottages. As we had managed to keep the old walled garden, we renamed our new property in Wootton ‘Manor Gardens’.
My interests were a mixture of science, particularly biology, and art and design. I had planned to work with dad as a landscape gardener after my GCSEs, but decided to stay on to do A-levels. I was encouraged by school to visit several universities. My interests were perfect for landscape architecture, and I went to Sheffield University to study for four years.
I spent my year out working with Pam and Peter Lewis, well known garden designers, near Dorchester. Here I was taught a huge amount about planting design, particularly British natives, and the conservation and re-creation of Dorset meadows.
When I was 22, fresh out of university, a friend of dad’s from Yawl asked me to design a garden for him. Dad did the building – it was a success and now, several years on, it’s open to the public.
Some new people moved into Wootton and bought an old farmhouse with buildings that had previously been converted into holiday cottages. I re-designed the outside areas, then dad and I spent a year building them. We were making a huge circular seating area using local timber. Several pieces of the timber delivered were chestnut, and dad, who has always been into carpentry, suggested splitting it to make a gate. I said, go on then. He did. The gate was beautiful. Its organic curves complemented the sagging thatched roof and bulging walls of the buildings; it was very special.
More gates and benches were asked for – the furniture business was born and we called it Ed Brooks. We sent images to national magazines and papers, did some shows in London and set up a website – the intention was to make a national company. We have recently made it international, with our first project in France. We make tree houses, bridges, gates and benches, and are about to do our first house. We aim to be as sustainable as possible, using local wind-fallen hardwoods. We also want to support local people, such as blacksmiths and woodland-related craftsmen, by getting them involved in our projects.
At 24 I moved to London with a school friend; I got a job immediately, freelancing with a landscape architect. I worked there for about eighteen months. When the job finished I came back to Dorset, working on more projects with Pam Lewis, and overseeing the furniture business for a few months. I got some work in London for two or three days a week, so was split between the two. At 26, I joined the company I’m with now – still juggling London with Dorset.
Last year we had lots of business following a feature about us. My brother Alex was living in Cheltenham, working in finance, but he’d been thinking about leaving. He came back to Dorset to organise the business; Alex and dad work really well together.
As well as brothers and business partners, Alex and I are also best mates and we’re always talking. I still do the designs for the business and mum does the accounts. Mum gets involved in everything, she’s extremely strong, good at holding it all together, and she’ll help with anything, painting, sanding and organisation. Mum’s also heavily involved in the village: auditing the church accounts, helping win the Best Kept Village Competition and she also worked with Guy Bryan, on his Wootton Fitzpaine book.
Wootton has no proper pub, only a working man’s club, but there’s a really good spirit and everyone helps each other. Alfred Capper Pass owned the Wootton Estate; his initials are on our walled garden gates. His great-grandson is a friend of mine in London. My grandad has good memories of those times and regrets the loss of the estate.
London is where I work for my landscape architecture career, which I could only really follow in a city. I work for an architectural company on a variety of interesting projects; I started off freelancing for them when they were quite small. A lot of my work is in urban regeneration, especially now that traffic is being removed.
At the moment I’m working in the Fleet Street area, which has many historic routes, courts and lanes that are not really used. I’m involved in upgrading them with way-marking, lighting and new signage. We’re introducing lanterns above each court entrance all along Fleet Street. I love the historical research of such projects, looking at the origins of print and typography as Fleet Street progressed, in order to choose a relevant font for our signage.
Dorset is so different from London. Here it’s so beautiful, peaceful and real – London is so busy, stressful and often a bit false, but each is amazing in its own way and I love both my lives. Here I have a log fire, the sea and trees, and I’m part of a network of family and friends. In London I’m often a nameless face in a sea of people, although over the last few years a lot of my friends have moved there, so it feels like a part of Dorset is in London. We’re all there for the work opportunities, but I think they will eventually drift back and maybe I will too.’
Up Front 02/07
Selling newspapers on the back of celebrity misery is nothing new. Whether the tabloid need to drag someone though the mud for falling over outside a pub is a reflection of what society is really interested in, or whether it is something that tabloids have created will continue to be debated. But all too often it eclipses the good that many people do. This month we have an interview with singer/songwriter Billy Bragg whose involvement with the Rosetta Life project and breast cancer victim Maxine Edgington is just one of the heart warming stories that did get some coverage. On February 24th, Award winning actor Aidan Dooley is to stage his outstanding one-man show free of charge in support of St Margaret’s Somerset Hospice, at a fundraising evening at Sherbourne School. We are fortunate that many of our local celebrities, though they may not like to be referred to as such, continue to help and support so many local causes. This month we are launching our Community Awards 2007 (page 15), where we hope to help highlight the work being done in the local community by some of those that don’t have the luxury of press coverage. We look forward over the coming months to hearing from readers throughout South Somerset, East Devon and West Dorset about individuals and organisations that are helping to build a better community for us all to share.
Sir John Colfox
I was born in London, but that was not my fault, in 1924. My parents moved into Symondsbury Manor when I was a few months old. My two younger sisters followed, also born in London. I remember my Mother returning with the babies and wondering why babies should always come from London.
The first world war was six years past and life in Manor Houses in those days was different. The House was fully staffed. Butler, head housemaid, two under housemaids. Two in the kitchen. That sort of thing. My father was the MP. I remember election times. A proper bustle. Always meals on hand. The kitchen full of good things to eat. No television elections in those days. All done with public meetings. I remember my father being asked by Strange who was head gardener, (everyone was called by their surname in those days), what question he should ask the Liberal Candidate when he came to Symondsbury. My father told him to ask if he could find his way to Halstock in the dark. Being local was a plus point. Mr Chapel, the Liberal candidate, was a nonconformist minister and came from Wales. As it happened, Mr Chapel had booked a meeting in Halstock the night before and had got lost and never turned up. Hoots of delight and a political point scored. I remember the consternation at one election when Mr Chapel said to my father that he would lose the election, to which he replied that if Mr Chapel thought that, he was a bigger BF than he, my father, realised. “Conservative Candidate swears at the Cloth” was the headline. A reduced majority was the result!
He nearly got into trouble on another occasion as well. It was during the depression when things were not good. “What about the unemployed” shouted a heckler at one of the election meetings. “What can they afford to eat?” “Let them eat herrings” came the reply. At the time herrings were 2d a lb and all hell broke loose because of the insult!
Another early memory was looking from my nursery window into the Manor Farmyard. A splendid sight every morning. Fifteen heavy horses being prepared for work. Teams of three going off to plough or work the ground. Whatever was in season. Harry Pitcher was one of the Carters. Ken Westcott’s father was another.
I went away to a prep school called Heatherdown near Ascot in 1932. It was a four hour drive in a Singer Six. It went at sixty down hill and had a luggage rack on the back for the trunk. After Heatherdown came Eton in 1937. Pre-war Eton was a bit like Tom Brown’s School Days. I was not academic. Eton had wet bobs and dry bobs, those who rowed on the river and those who played cricket. The river was grand. I enjoyed it hugely. I finished by getting into the eight which rowed at Henley in a schools regatta in 1942 which we won. Being war time there was no official Henley regatta. Eton provided several of the boats. As no one had any petrol to take them by lorry, scratch crews rowed the boats up and came home by steam train. After the race we were all hyped up after having won. We set off on the 25 mile journey downstream to Eton. If you have ever rowed a boat you must be able to remember the feeling when it is going well. The whole thing depends on absolute timing. Clonk-swish-pause-clonk-swish-pause. After 25 miles the boat sped. It was a beautiful moonlit evening. We had our coach with us. He rode the whole way on a bumpy towpath on his bicycle. There were seven or eight locks for him to get his breath back We stopped for dinner at Skindles Hotel in Maidenhead. The final lap was two more locks and so home at about ten o’clock in the gloaming. I have never forgotten that evening and never will. The way to coach an eight is to take them on a twenty five mile row, but few people have the time today.
I joined the Navy on 10th Oct 1942, arriving at HMS Collingwood with my gas mask in its cardboard box. There were 5000 of us there and because of my background I was made what was called a Class Leader, in charge of a class or hut, about 30 of us. I had learnt a bit of jujitsu at Eton. That came in handy. There were four of us who were aspiring to become officers, who joined at the same time and took charge of adjoining huts and all went off to the same ship together. One of whom was Derek Mond. More of him later.
While at Collingwood the Bishop of Portsmouth was very kind. He and Mrs Anderson used to invite young sailors to their house for tea and baths. This happened several times. He later became Bishop of Salisbury and in 1962 he married us. It was a case where I thought he was my friend, but my new father-in-law had known him for a lifetime.
My father was still MP and a friend of the Captain. On one occasion he paid a visit to Collingwood and stayed with Captain O’Leary. At Divisions next morning he was there with the top brass on the dais for Church Parade. As Class Leader I had to stand in front of my Class. I could hear the mutterings behind me. “Who is that old …” and so on. In a way my father looked a bit like Molotov as he had been in London and was wearing a black Homburg hat. Later that morning we returned to our huts to write our Sunday letters home. I was called “Leader” by the rest of the hut. There would be a shout. “Leader. How do you spell Molotov?” One question was “How do you spell Popovsky?” At 11.30am we had Sunday dinner. Roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, plum duff and seconds. After that at 12.30pm Julian Mond and I were off to lunch at the Golden Lion in Fareham with my father, We had all there was to offer once again. They kept us on the run all day and we were hungry!
Julian Mond had also been at Eton with me. He was the son of the first Lord Melchet, the then owner of ICI and two years older. He was a brilliant brain and was researching into explosives for his father’s firm. He gave that up as he wanted to be in uniform and not in a reserved occupation. Sadly he was killed in a flying accident when going home on leave.
Then to my first ship. A hunt class destroyer, HMS Atherston. Immediately after joining we went to sea. A short trip but long enough to be seasick! It was from Harwich to Chatham for a boiler clean. That gave us three days in dock and a chance to nip up to London. The four of us set out by steam train. We had a night on the town and then required a bed. We were in uniform of course. Bell bottomed trousers and the little round hat. We required somewhere to stay the night. Derek said we were to stay at Claridges, close to where his parents lived in a big house in Grosvenor Square. By this time it was two in the morning. We swept through the main door of Claridges, Derek produced from his bell bottoms a crinkly white five pound note which he slipped into the hand of the night porter. We were given a suite on the top floor, but had to catch the 5.30am train to be back on board by 0700!
Then off to Gibraltar which took five days of seasickness! On to Oran, then finally to Bone where I had a respite from seasickness! We had been escorting a convoy to Alexander’s Eigth Army.
After a few months convoying supplies along the North African coast it was time for the four of us, who had all joined together, to go for officer training. Then to a ship in Scapa Flow. A Colony Class Cruiser called Jamaica. Fourteen months followed on Russian Convoys. I had the experience of being part of the last naval battle with Battleships when the Scharnhorst was sunk. A very interesting day.
Eventually the war ended and Jamaica took me to the Far East. There is no doubt that the most enjoyable year of my life thus far was 1945/46. I was having a very interesting time travelling the world and being paid (all be it not very much) to do it.
There are two incidents that come to mind. The good ship Jamaica arrived in the harbour at Trincomalee after a visit to Singapore. Trinco was a beautiful place, about the size of Poole Harbour but all if it deep water. My job when entering and leaving harbour was to be officer of the watch. This meant I relayed the orders from the captain down the voice pipe to the quartermaster. No telephone communication then.
I noticed a commotion at the far end of the harbour. Lots of small boats milling around. It appeared that a whale had got into the harbour and died. Tugs were trying to get a line around its tail to tow it out to sea. This was eventually done. When the tug was clear of shipping the crew slipped the tow. The whale gave a flick of its great tail and swam happily away.
News of the resurrection reached the fleet later. However the next day what should be seen in the harbour again but a very large whale. Panicky signals were flying round the fleet warning all small boats to keep clear. The whale was very much alive. A large area was made out of bounds.
After a time the problem resolved itself. The whale was seen to swim out to sea, but this time she was not alone, as she was able to take her calf with her.
Another incident that I enjoyed was my first command. It was an extraordinary vessel, about 150ft long, a large hold and heavy lifting derricks. A bridge that stretched the whole width of the ship with an enormous wheel in the middle. It had a very tall funnel and two steam engines that drove the thing at a maximum of three knots. My captain told me he had secured an interesting job for me. It was to take this barge back to the Andaman Islands where it had previously been used in the forestry department. The ship had been completely stripped. It had no stores. Everything was empty. Coal bunker empty, water tanks empty, not a rope to be seen. I have never seen so many and such large cockroaches.
My fellow officer was also an Old Etonian. Between us we tried to obtain the basics of life to make the vessel habitable. Long before we were ready, headquarters sent down 22 sailors and two petty officers. No food, no accommodation, only a difficult situation to sort out. Eventually we did and were given orders to go to the Andaman Islands 1,500 miles away. No way was the ship capable of doing that. Eventually after a series of tugs, one of which was a Royal Indian Navy Frigate, commanded by a four striped captain who was not amused by his ship being used for this purpose, we arrived at Port Blair. I obtained a signature for the ship and returned to India for two weeks leave. So I experienced two weeks of the British Raj.
After demobilisation I qualified as a land agent with a view to taking over at Symondsbury. Then went working on a farm in Denmark in 1950 and home to take over in 1951.
Another story about my father. He was badly wounded in the first war, and though he drove his car with gusto, he took longer than most to transfer his foot from the accelerator to the brake, his right leg having been badly damaged. Not so much traffic in those days thank goodness. Anyhow, when my sister Bridget married and moved to Kent, at a party and, talking to someone she had never seen before, she remarked that her maiden name was Colfox. The person she was talking to said “Oh. Are you any relation of that dangerous driver in Dorset?”
From 1951 to the present day is another story.
Up Front 01/07
The distances covered by new technology never cease to amaze. A new book to be published in January, with a storyline based on mobile phone texting, kept me awake long into the night recently. After the Death of Alice Bennett, a first novel by Rowland Molony from Devon, though recommended for children from 9 upwards should appeal to many adults also. It tells the story of a young boy named Sam whose mother had explained before she died that she would still be alive but in the Next World. On the day of his Mum’s cremation, his sister Becky receives a text from a friend: ‘Lots of love, darling. Thinking of you.’ Sam decides the message is from his Mum and when he finds her mobile phone and a ‘contact number’ in her handwriting, he sends a message. ‘Mum, please can u fone me or txt, its urgent I want 2 spk 2 u. say where can we meet. I love u xxx sam.’ It is received by a kind but lonely lorry driver, Tony, who innocently responds. Before he knows it, the boy is texting daily and has decided to come and find his Mum. To me this story struck a chord as my late brother’s wife still uses his mobile and I regularly receive texts from what appears to be him. Originally it was disconcerting but now it is somehow comforting. I like the thought that somewhere in a parallel world ghost like fingers could be trying to press telephone numbers.
Keith Floyd – One for the pot
For a man who single-handedly turned cooking into entertainment Keith Floyd is remarkably modest about his influence on modern TV food programmes. He has published over 22 books in his career and presented 19 TV series, which are still being televised throughout 40 countries around the world. When I mention his incredible inspiration he modestly shrugs it off with the charisma that made his television programmes such captivating watching since he first took cooking out of the studio with Floyd on Fish in 1985.
His life-changing decision to become a cook came more or less by chance. “I had this remarkable experience when I was 16 or 17” he tells me. “I was working as a young cub reporter on a newspaper in Bristol and the editor decided to hire me as his kind of dog’s body – secretary would be too grand a word. And sometimes we had to go to meetings with politicians. I can’t remember who they were I was too young then. He took me one day to a then very famous restaurant in Bath called The Hole in the Wall. For the first time in my life, despite the wonderful food we had had at home which was ordinary food, there, suddenly, was French Country Terrines, Partridge Braised in White Wine, Coq au Van and all that kind of stuff. And I thought wow this is amazing!” This revelation at a time when a quiet revolution was taking place in English kitchens made a deep impression on the 17-year-old.
“I eventually decided to become a cook,” he says “and I got myself a job washing up in a hotel kitchen and started watching what people were doing and stuff like that. Then they promoted me to the veg and while I was preparing the veg I was watching what the grill chef was doing. And I cheated a lot because I would leave that job and go to the next one saying I was a grill chef because I was watching because I was interested. And I did every kind of job washing up, waiting, cooking, even in omelette bars, sandwich bars, in pubs, in restaurants. I put myself through an enforced apprenticeship for about four years. And all the time any spare money I had I was spending on cookery books and food.”
Keith Floyd grew up in Somerset and in his new book A Splash and a Dash he fondly remembers the joys of his mother’s cooking especially on a cold Wednesday in winter after a game of rugby. “…Wednesday was particularly special because when I, probably black-eyed, bloodied and bruised, cycled back to Wiveliscombe, I knew that supper would be faggots and peas dished up in a rich, rich gravy. My mother, Wynn was an amazing cook and except when she was baking her bread (which she continued to do until she was 85) or preparing her Christmas puddings and Christmas cakes in early autumn, she never weighed, measured, calculated, timed or bothered much about oven temperatures at all. She was an inspirational cook but moulded by financial circumstances that were not plentiful, and therefore the cottage garden and a degree of hunter-gathering were essential to her culinary plans.”
A Splash and a Dash is an effort to get away from slavishly following recipes designed to ensure that every item is scientifically calculated to produce a perfect dish each time. Keith wants us to enjoy our cooking and get involved in the whole process again. He has little time for the technical approach laughingly saying, “That’s the curse you see, those rules are invented by people called food editors – very powerful people who should be put down at birth. You see it on television programmes, these studio-based programmes. There’s some earnest young cook there cooking away saying ‘I’m doing Venison today’ and the blasted presenter of the programme says ‘well what if you haven’t got any venison what can you use instead’. And then these food editors say ‘yes but how long does it take in the oven’. Well, how long is a piece of string? I’ve got two ovens, one in my wife’s house in England which is electric and my other cooker is in my house in France which is gas, and I bet you if we set them at what we thought were identical temperatures and then put a thermometer into each of them there’d be a big difference. What I’m saying to people is ‘I think’ it goes into the oven for ‘about’ an hour and a half at ‘probably’ 200 degrees. People must get involved.”
Though his television career began after a chance meeting with a television producer in a Bristol Bistro he has little time for the slavery to marketing that drives much of today’s output. “You see, as bad as food editors for books, you’ve also got things called producers on television, and they decide what goes on. They think ‘help it’s Halloween let’s make the whole cooking programmes around pumpkins’. Bullshit! Let’s just carry on cooking as normal!”
He rarely watches cookery on television these days though when pushed he admits to liking Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. “My wife watches every cooking programme there is” he says, “and she did persuade me to watch Hugh, and I think he’s great. Of course, I don’t believe him at all, it’s television land but that doesn’t matter! He is, if you like, doing exactly what my parents did and my grandparents did and he’s full-on and very very proper.”
As well as writing A Splash and Dash, a godsend to those wanting to experiment in the kitchen, Keith has also recently published Keith Floyd’s Thai Food which neatly coincides with the opening his new restaurant in Phuket, Thailand on December 1st. He is also opening a new cookery theatre next year which is already getting booked up. He will be demonstrating varieties of his culinary world; including French Provincial Cooking; Fish and Shellfish; Back to British; and Mediterranean Cooking. He is taking this cookery theatre very seriously and has done a lot of research on other celebrity cookery schools. He says, “With a lot of these cookery schools, very seldom are the named chefs actually there. They set them up and put in good cooks who act as teachers. But in my cookery school, I will be there for every single lesson. There won’t be that many, but I will be there fully hands-on. I’ll be there from the time they arrive to the time they stagger out the door. I’m not going into this lightly, it’s going to be the best I can assure you.”
At 62 and predictably ignoring doctors orders to slow down Keith is keeping very busy. Apart from his other adventures he has a one-man show ‘Floyd Uncorked!’ – the life of a bon-viveur.
A Splash and a Dash is published by Cassell Illustrated, ISBN: 1844034461 and Keith Floyd’s Thai Food is published by HarperCollins ISBN: 0007213492.
