‘Once upon a time I moved from Bolton in Manchester, with Mum and Dad and my two sisters Mand and Joo Joo, to Weymouth, when I was six. Dad had got a job as a customs officer at the then working ports of Portland and Weymouth. My first memory of that move was waiting on the beach while Dad went to get the keys of our new home on Roman Road, with its green gloss-painted bathroom.

I was sent to St Augustine’s Catholic Primary School along with my two sisters, and it’s fair to say that from the moment I stepped over the threshold of the school the nuns made it their mission to humiliate and intimidate me. Thankfully life at home in so many ways was an idyllic one. Under the care-free spirited eye of Mum we were allowed to spread our wings and find our own adventures. But there was always a fear lurking in the background for me in those early school days—monster nuns waiting to bite me. Mother finally recognised that something was terribly wrong, and being my champion, walked into the school one day, fought the beasts and slayed them dead (metaphorically speaking). A couple of years later I managed to pass my eleven plus and got a place at the Dorchester Grammar School for Girls. I never really enjoyed it but at least there weren’t any scary nuns hanging around in the corridors. I made loads of friends, was class clown, “ink monitor”, and form captain. Most of our free time was spent mucking about on the beach, playing in the park, riding bikes, sitting on walls chatting up the boys and caring about nothing in particular. An idyllic dream.

Around the third year of grammar school a careers officer came to tell us all what career they had in mind for us, given our subject choices and results. In my private delusional reality I had myself down to be a journalist, but I was advised that the only expectation they had of me was a dental nurse or a Wren. I can only liken this news as to being sharply and unexpectedly slapped across the face. Luckily for me however a peripatetic English teacher called Miss Hawkins came to my rescue. She recognised that I had a skill for English but declared I showed no aptitude for discipline or concentration. However she promised me that if I agreed to act in a play things might turn out in my favour. The play was Toad of Toad Hall and she wanted me to play TOAD! Oh honestly! I managed two detentions before I finally cracked and agreed to do it.

I don’t really remember anything about the show as I was catatonic with fear, but at the end of the prize-giving ceremony that year the headmistress announced that there was to be a special one-time award for an outstanding achievement. She held up a little silver cup in front of four hundred girls and announced to the whole school that it was for me. The little cup had my name on it. And the cheer was a loud one.

I left grammar school in the sixth form to do my A levels at the technical college. No school uniform and boys in the classes—brilliant fun. I studied for A levels in History, English and Sociology, as well as taking drama and public speaking exams. I also joined the merchant navy and got myself a job on the Sealink ferries sailing from Weymouth to the Channel Islands and Cherbourg. The hours were gruelling. 24 hours on board ship, 24 off, with little or no sleep. But the pay was brilliant. I had never had so much money. I started out pouring teas in the cafe and worked my way up to deck stewardess—not as glamorous as it sounds as most of the time I was unplugging sinks full of sick with a wire coat hanger. From there I went on to be the officers’ stewardess and became very adept at silver service in gale force seas. I wanted to go on to work on the QE2, and very nearly did, but was dissuaded by Pancho, the purser, who thought I should to go to drama school to carry on with my education. He told me to go for an audition, and if it didn’t work out I could always go back to sea. I was successful, and studied for three years at the Horniman Theatre School in Manchester. I never went back to sea.

Immediately college was over I went to London where the streets I was told were paved with gold and opportunity. And for the next fifteen years I didn’t stop working as an actress. I performed with companies that took award-winning theatre onto stages, in parks, schools, community centres and theatres nationally and internationally. I didn’t sleep much through those years. I lived on adrenaline, alcohol, and applause. There was so much to do. If I wasn’t performing, I was rehearsing a new play and learning the lines, or reading through a new script, or auditioning for a new role, or sometimes all of the above at the same time. On one occasion I was given the lead part (having spent three weeks learning the lines for another role) 48 hours before the show went live. I was told by the director to go home, come back twenty four hours later, and be off the book. I managed to learn the lines, but had no idea which scene followed which. My father died at the beginning of rehearsals for one show, and after the first night curtain came down, I drove from London to Weymouth, stayed up all night with my brother, read at the funeral, then drove back to London and was on stage for 7.30pm the following day playing to a full house. The show must go on as they say. After fifteen years I was knackered. I didn’t know who I was. I was just a mishmash of all the characters I had ever played on stage.

My sister in the meantime had had her daughter Taylor Rose and had moved from London to the seaside here in Lyme Regis. She was pregnant with her second child Saul Augustin and that’s when I had my epiphany. I wanted to go and live by the sea too, and be a day to day Aunty. I wanted to be near the children, watch them grow up and be a part of their lives. So seemingly overnight I decided to leave the life I had created for myself. I detonated it under the cover of darkness, having packed everything I could possibly fit alongside my two cats in my Mini, and as I watched my old life burn in the rear view mirror I vowed to myself I would never work for anyone else ever again. It was time to write a new script, play a new role.

Arriving in Lyme Regis I worked part time in a wonderful shop called Lovegrove, which sold work made by local artists. Realistically I wasn’t making ends meet, so I decided to give an old idea a try, to make and then sell a collection of jackets and jumpers using recycled knitwear. Having never sewn or made anything before, the idea was a preposterous one, but it just seemed to make creative sense to me. So screwing up my courage I went to a jumble sale with £20 to spend, bought a few jumpers, cardigans, and sweatshirts, and put a collection together. I took them down to Hannah Lovegrove’s shop and asked her if she would sell them for me. Within a couple of weeks she had sold the whole lot and I had a hundred pounds in my back pocket. That was twenty years ago, and I am so proud to be an independent maker and I love what I do to earn myself a living. The business journey has been a little bumpy at times, but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger as the old adage goes. Having nearly lost everything, I had to decide whether to give up or go back to my knitwear business, and I decided it would be churlish of me not to give the knitwear another try. Thanks to Hannah Lovegrove, for the last 9 years I have had a gorgeous studio shop in Mr Pattimores old butchers shop on Coombe Street. Thank you Hannah Lovegrove, you were twice my champion. And I am still making, still designing, and still selling. I even performed as Prospera in the Andrew Rattenbury written community production The Tempest of Lyme at the Marine Theatre in 2016. Based on Shakespeare’s Tempest it was a sell-out success and won a National outstanding achievement award—a little silver cup.’

I was born in April 1957 here on the farm, at Fairmile, beside the Old Sherborne Road. My father was drilling grass seed that day in a nearby field, in those days of course his presence only being required at the conception of his children. Dad, like me, was always a working farmer; he drove with the men, and there was a team of men working here then – Roy Dunford, Ralph Brown, Bert Yarde, Albert Fuller; and Arthur, who was so driven by economy that if he knew he was working with someone else the next day, he wouldn’t wind his pocket watch so it didn’t wear out so quick. Then as well as my mum and dad there was Uncle Jack, Uncle Farmer, and Auntie Girlie. There were cattle here then, about 70-80 beef animals, and before that there was a dairy which was sold in about 1955. During and after the war, like everybody else, they were encouraged to clear land to grow more crops, so a lot of that went on, which is why we now have big fields. My family’s been here since 1910, so my Dad was also born here at Forston. When he married, my mother was living in a cottage at Fairmile, the other side of the farm, almost the girl next door. None of the rest of Dad’s family, Uncles Jack and Farmer, or Auntie Girlie, married, so my brother and I were fortunate to have the farm passed to us when we were of age. So today we own 1111 acres, of which we crop 1066, both conveniently memorable numbers.

I grew up on the farm, and went to Charminster School at age 5. I hated school pretty much all the way through. Typically it was off with the uniform, overalls on, and “where’s Dad working?”, when I got home after school. Miss Diment taught me to read and write, which I thought was strange because she had also taught my mum to read and write, and how on earth could anyone be that old. Then I went to Dorchester Modern School, and later transferred to Hardye’s to do A levels, because by then the penny had dropped that I needed A levels to get into farming college. Armed with one A level I was able to get a place at Harper Adams college in Shropshire, as were my brother Alan and sister Lizzie in due course. I did an HND Agriculture there, and looking back they were 3 of the best years of my life, making friendships there that continue today. 6 of us still meet once a year, and have done every year since 1978. College gives you a good understanding of all aspects of farming, which helps you ask the right questions as things change over the years.

The farm had been kept going while we were at college, and when Alan, Lizzie and I took over, the introduction of new blood was quite a game-changer. Lizzie then married another farmer, Bernard Cox, and in later years Alan retired from farming, so for the last few years it’s been just Mum and I running it. Mum’s now in a care home, so I’m fortunate to have a very astute right-hand man, Rob Greatorex, but when I talk about the farm it’s always “we” because it’s very much a team effort, with my wife Sarah supporting me in every possible way, as well as the various technical and professional advisors we all rely on. Sarah’s had her own career as an educational psychologist.

I wasn’t allowed to go steaming until I was an old git of 40. I’d had a Mamod steam engine as many boys did, so I was hooked from an early age. Then from the age of about 11 we had motorbikes on the farm; BSA Bantams, Greeves, a BSA C15, a Mako, all an absolute riot, but we were never allowed one on the road. That seemed such a shame, and if you enjoy a motorbike it never leaves you, but it never happened. So I bought Gladstone, a 1910 Clayton and Shuttleworth traction engine, when I was 39 and 11 months. The first year was a learning process, but I wanted to experience refurbishing a steam engine, so on advice from the boiler inspector we installed a new set of tubes, which gave us another 10 years of steaming. By then it was time for more refurbishing, which turned out to be a new firebox, boiler barrel, back head, smoke box, chimney base, and hind axle, all of which took 2 years pull apart, have components manufactured, and reassemble. That was some of the hardest work I’ve ever done, but like a lot of things, if you knew what it was going to be like in advance, you wouldn’t do it. And in the process, I’ve met some of the most interesting people on the planet, taken Gladstone to many shows and fairs, including the Great Dorset Steam Fair several times, and to Ireland twice. The Irish boys sometimes come over here; their names all end in “ie”, so there’s Jimmie, Billie, Willie, etc, and in the pub with them it’s impossible to buy them a beer because just as you go to buy a round, another one’s thrust in your hand. These days I try not to leave the county, so lately we’ve been to Shillingstone, and steamed to West Bay via the Hardy Monument. We’ve also got a 1901 Marshall portable, a sawbench, a stone crusher, and a thrashing machine, and it’s all great fun, even, or especially, when things go wrong.

Sarah and I met in ’83; she was doing a shift at the Royal Oak, Cerne Abbas when I popped in for a beer, and it went from there. She was studying for her second degree at Swansea.  I visited her many times there on the Gower, which I thought was absolutely lovely, even more so because she was there, and we married in ’86. One of the few regrets in my life is not having built a big enough shed in which to store all the cars and motorbikes I’ve had and finished with. In it there would be the BSA C15, a 250cc Mako, a 3-litre Capri, a 2-litre Opel Manta in drug-dealer gold, and many others. But now I’ve got other cars, and all the steam stuff, and Sarah has her horses; she doesn’t know how much a ton of coal costs, and I’ve no idea what it costs to put 4 shoes on a horse, and we keep it that way.

We used to go windsurfing when we were fitter, which fitted quite well with farming. We could be on Overcome Corner rigging up on the beach 25 minutes after leaving the farm. It’s all much harder work now with traffic, parking, permits, etc. I tried kite surfing once, but thought I was going to die. It’s really hairy when it goes wrong, and I’ve been pulled under the water, then out again only just long enough cough up all the water I’d just swallowed before being pulled under again. I’ve seen people quite badly hurt, having been hoisted into the harbour wall or dumped in amongst the expensive properties on the seafront at Sandbanks. But the windsurfing was really fun. It had to be fast; you felt so alive, because of having successfully pitted your skills against wind, wave, and water, and it’s a good feeling to come home safe after a slightly risky pastime.

The joy in farming for me is seeing new crops emerge, with the sun behind them, no slugs eating the new rows, and all the tramlines in the right place, while you’re sat at the top of the hill in the tractor halfway through a Cadbury’s Creme Egg and a cup of coffee. But there are less people on farm today, so I talk too much because a lot of the time there’s no one to talk to. We’ve just bought a couple more fields and a wood, and nobody knows the name of one of the fields. I think it’s a niceness that all fields have names, many from hundreds of years ago. But the key to staying upbeat and fresh is to try to keep the hobbies up, and in that respect I’ve been fortunate. And to live and farm here in South Dorset is a privilege too. Sarah and I were lucky enough to go to Antigua for a holiday; many people said to me it must have been a version of paradise, and I thought it was all right, but it wasn’t Dorset.