Teenage years onwards

Here I am , on the right, with two of my schoolfriends in 1970 or 1971. Living in a rural area made it more difficult to spend time with mates at the weekend but we'd travel on the bus (where there was one) on our bikes, on foot or preferably by persuading people to give us lifts! Unlike those who lived in urban areas, you tended to know lots of people for quite a distance around and if, for example, I was walking to meet up with either of these two, it was quite likely that someone would stop and give me a lift.

Here are my Mum and Dad at a wedding, I think about 1970 (certainly between 1969 and 1971). Mum died in 1994 but even aged 90 my Dad still has a better head of hair than I do!

It was more difficult for me to get to evening events as these tended to take place in Whitehaven, five or six miles from home, and my Dad was never keen on driving me around after his day at work. (Buses were an option but not really frequent enough) My Mum in particular, perhaps because she was older than most teenagers' parents, was awfully worried about me getting into trouble and was, I think, a bit overprotective. Consequently my social life in my early and mid teens was a bit limited. Also, because of my attachment to the farm and my involvement with hound trailing, I was often faced with a choice of friends or farm and dogs and certainly chose the latter more often than I should have! Perhaps because of this I was never that involved in the music scene, school discos and the like and now feel that I missed out on things as a result. I've always felt that there was a downside to having older parents and to spending too much time with adults rather than my contemporaries, and to this day find myself occassionally with some old fashioned attitudes and ideas.

Life did change quite a bit in 1975 when I passed my driving test and acquired a little gold Morris Mini Clubman and suddenly I could go where I wanted, when I wanted. By that time I was being paid for my toil on the farm - £10 per week for a mere ten hours a day, 6 days a week, during the summer holidays - and I had money for petrol and beer! The car also made me quite popular with friends at school and during my last year in the sixth form, and for a couple of years afterwards, a group of us would get together and drive out to different places both in the coastal towns and in the lake district. Occasionally we'd go to some music event - perhaps in a pub or club in Whitehaven or Workington - but usually we'd just go to pubs and hang out together before going back to someone's house where we'd linger until the early hours. I remember one of my friends once going to see Elton John somewhere which makes me think that it was a rarity to go to concerts - certainly I don't ever remember being aware of, or wanting to see, nationally known singers or groups performing anywhere within reach.

Fortunately, others also soon got cars and turns would be taken at driving and staying sober! On that subject, I'm very impressed at how young people today automatically seem to avoid alcohol altogether when driving - that wasn't the case when we were young, and various theories were propounded about how much it was "safe" to drink.

Some of the friends I had during that period, including the two pictured above, have become lifelong friends and others still seem to crop up from time to time. In 1977, just after I'd started work, three of us travelled down to Oxford to spend a weekend with one of our group who was studying at Queens College. We drank a lot of beer, went to some dark and smoke filled places, slept on our friend's floor and pretended to be students the next morning to get a college breakfast. We must have a had a good time because for some reason I remember that trip particularly well. Looking back though, I think it was probably the first time I'd been any further south than Lancashire and a trip to London on the Saturday was certainly the first time I'd been to the capital.

For some reason there are very few pictures taken during the middle 1970's and early 1980's and this one dates from my first trip to the USA in 1984. I had finally finished with studying and exams about 18 months earlier and decided, along with a friend from work, to treat myself to a really good holiday. We certainly managed that and visited Los Angeles, The Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Death Valley and San Francisco over a three week period. Above I am standing by a very large tree in Yosemite National Park.
That holiday started a real love of America and I've been back, alone and with others, ten or eleven times over the years. I really enjoy getting out into the more remote areas not regularly visited by european tourists.

I include this picture for no other reason that I think it's a good one. Taken half way down into the Grand Canyon it marks the point where we decided we'd better start walking back out again! A mixture of altitude, dehydration and sore feet made it the most exhausting walk I've ever done. Take a tip from me - hire a mule if you want to descend into the canyon otherwise its like mountaineering in reverse, you do the downhill bit first!

After enjoying a gentle horse ride through the sonora desert in Arizona I got the idea of trying a ranch holiday and learning to ride properly and, in 1996 spent a week doing just that in Wyoming. I've now had five such holidays, made some good friends and seen areas of Wyoming and New Mexico in the US, and Alberta in Canada, that I'd not have seen otherwise. I've always found Americans to be exceptionally nice, friendly people and spending a week in some of the country's finest scenery with them is a great way to get to know them better.

Relaxing afer a day on a horse in the Rocky Mountains of western Wyoming.

Throughout the 1990's I was a member of a pub quiz team and as a result I have a head full of useless information. The capital of Chad, Jimmy Carter's middle name, the length of the M6, the toxic ingredient of a polar bear's liver and Sergeant Bilko's serial number are all things that I, and other members of the team, were familiar with. However, the most bizarre thing to come out of my quiz career is that I once had an argument with Melvyn Bragg's aunt. One wet Thursday night I arrived at the Pub to meet the others before driving to an away fixture only to find that only four of our team of eight or nine had turned up. The Landlady of the pub then announced that she would come along and bring her friend. Her friend would be brilliant - she read lots of books and was Melvyn Bragg's aunt!

Off we went and things went well enough until we were asked which river flowed through Alnwick in Northumberland. None of us knew but the elderly Mrs Bragg was certain it was the Tweed. I knew it wasn't the Tweed because it forms the border with Scotland and Alnwick is miles from the border but could I convince her? No chance. She argued until the correct answer was revealed (The River Aln). We never saw her again after that night, apparently because I wouldn't listen to her answers (I stood in for the absent captain and had to decide which answer we gave) which was true at least when I knew them to be wrong!

Looking a whole lot smarter here I am almost right up to date with my new family in 2005. Pamela and I were blessed with exceptionally warm weather for our big day and pose here with her children, Charlotte and James on the way to the wedding reception.

After a honeymoon which included a few days in Rome we've developed a taste for visiting foreign cities - something which hasn't previously been high on my list of holiday activities. Rome is certainly our favourite so far, but here we are on a short break to Barcelona in February 2006.

And so that brings us to 2007 and the big birthday. The big 50. The half century.

Celebrations took us to New York for four days and then to a party thrown by the BBC! The great and the good were there in some number - John Humphreys, James Naughtie, Ian Hyslop and many others from TV and Radio. Various politicians past and present - Alan Johnston, Geoffrey Howe, Menzies Campbell, Norman Fowler and many others. A strange event - we recognised more than half of the people there but none of them knew us!

So that's it. No more will be added to this blog until 2057 when I expect the BBC to invite us to another party!

Life on a farm in Ennerdale

This is a good picture looking over the rooftops of the hamlet which contained our farm. It wasn't always as sunny as this of course but in the right conditions the whole valley looks really beautiful. I read a little while ago that Ennerdale Water, which you can just see, had impressed President Bill Clinton so much that he proposed to Hilary there while visiting in 1973.

The lambing season was always something I looked forward to and often it coincided with the Easter school holidays. There were always some lambs which for one reason or another needed to be bottle fed and here, aged about ten I guess, I'm with a boy from the next farm feeding three hungry looking swaledale lambs.

Pet lambs remain cute for a only a short time. By the time they reach this size they become a nuisance. This one, named Lucy after Lucille Ball, used to barge around looking for something to eat, here helping herself to chicken feed, and even pushed into the house in search of biscuits and salt and vinegar crisps! (to which she had been introduced by me)

This picture might have been taken before I was born, I'm not sure, but exchange the 1940's Fordson Tractor for a 1950's Fordson Tractor and it could have been taken any summer from 1960 to 1980. Each year we grew a couple of fields of oats and harvested them with a wonderful contraption called a binder. It had previously been drawn by horses but was now adapted for the tractor and it cut the corn and wrapped it into sheaves tied with twine. They were stood, eight at a time, in "stooks" for a week or more before being laid out again individually to be dried.

The above picture was taken on the farm near Frizington before the family moved to Ennerdale in 1965. The binder in the picture finally broke down in 1973 after 50 or more years' service and a 25 year old replacement was found at the bargain price of £25.

This shows the sheaves being loaded onto a trailer on a rather steep field which had been reclaimed from bracken earlier in the year. I've got the easy job - moving the tractor on a few yards every now and then. Harvesting and haytiming were often a bit of a social event and I'd take along some of my friends to help and enjoy the fun although on this occasion it just seems to be me, my Dad and Uncle Sam.

Here I am in 1976, long haired, slim and tanned helping my dad build a stack out of sheaves of oats. We didn't always get them built properly and quite often there'd be wooden props behind to prevent them falling down. On at least one occasion one collapsed while still being built and took my Dad crashing down with it!! Such calamities were not unusual and we all laughed heartily.

And here are the finished articles - or at least similar ones maybe from a different year. Having long since disappeared from the countryside generally, the stacks were a something of a curiosity and attracted a great deal of attention from passing tourists.

I too had calamities - none greater than one morning returning some milk cows to their pasture. Generally a herd of cows coming in for milking, or going back out afterwards, are quite co-operative. After all, on both occasions they are going where they want to be, so a ten year old can usually manage them OK. If however they were panicked for some reason, or if they had it in their minds to go somewhere else that morning or evening – I’d be in trouble. On the morning in question, I got up and ran outside just in time to be given the job of returning a dozen or so cows to a field known as “t’ fell field”. I set off quite happily along the lonning and out onto the road, accompanied by Jack, the dog, who expertly ran ahead to make sure the cows turned left towards the fell field which was no more than a hundred yards or so away. They’d been there overnight and so my uncle had left the gate open – I was confident that they’d simply walk in, I’d close the gate and go home for my breakfast. (Breakfast was always eaten immediately after milking while we listened to Jack De Manio on "Today" - honestly, I'm not making this up!). Our neighbour though had put a spanner in the works – his cows had had to pass the fell field gate when he brought them in for milking and, fearful that they’d go through it instead of heading for home, he’d closed the gate and forgotten to open it again after they’d passed.

The cows arrived at the closed gate, stood looking puzzled for a moment, and then started pushing and shoving each other up against it. At this point, being less than five foot tall at the time, I couldn’t see what the problem was, and started shouting encouragement while poking the cows at the back of the herd with my stick. This was all the prodding they needed to move back out into the road and set off along it. The cows began to run. They ran, and I ran after them. The faster I ran, the faster they ran. Jack had long since gone home and I was on my own. They ran past one field on the left, past another gate on the right and on and on and on and on until they were well past any of our fields. By now my common sense had deserted me and I failed to do what I should have, that is, stand still until they had come to a halt and then walk calmly past them. Instead I ran ever faster, trying to overtake them, trying to outrun them but in the process just making matters worse. Then ran on, some of them mooing in a way that sounded like a plea for help – they were probably wondering where I was taking them and wishing somebody responsible would come and take them back to a field they knew. To me, though, it seemed they were trying to escape and I had to get them back, I was in charge and I had to get them back to the fell field without having to go home for help, and thus admit failure. Eventually though, I stood in the middle of the road, gasping, and clutching my sides, which had been afflicted by an athlete’s “stitch”, and prepared to accept defeat and go home and announce that I had “lost the cows”. Then, as I was about to turn and go, a saviour came in the shape of the Royal Mail. A little Red Morris 1000 van driven by our regular postman appeared and turned the cows round. They, and I, walked gently back to the fell field, they walked meekly in and I closed the gate. By now I had been away for nearly half an hour and my Dad was on his way to find me – I confessed what had happened, we both cursed the neighbour and went home for breakfast.

Although these sort of calamities happened often one way or another, and I always felt a bit scared to admit I’d messed up, I was never criticised or told off for them. The worst that was likely to happen was that my misfortune would be laughed at, my lack of sense scoffed at and outlandish theories about what would have happened, for example had the postman not turned up, would be expounded. Before breakfast was over we’d no doubt all be laughing at what had happened and there’d be one more story to tell. Looking back, I’m sure they all got as much fun out of watching me learn to do things, and make mistakes, as I had myself.

Up up and away!

On 1 February 1970, a damp and grey Sunday afternoon, a large red and white hot air balloon, "Canada 2", came to rest in a field near our farm in the Ennerdale valley. I ran as fast as I could to the spot where it had landed to find a dozen or so other people running over to a still figure in a grey flying suit who appeared to be lying face down in a swamp. The red and white nylon canopy was lying limp on the ground and the aluminium gondola lay on its side a few yards away. The figure in the suit turned over and sat upright, his face looked as grey as his suit but he began to speak and soon got up on his feet. The adults present tried to persuade him to let them get some transport and take him to a doctor but he refused to leave his balloon. There was a brief discussion, and it was decided that I should run home and get my Dad or one of my Uncles to come with a tractor and trailer, so that the balloon could be taken to safety, and off I ran. Ten or fifteen minutes later I was back in the field with an Uncle and the required transport and we loaded up and drove home - the airman and I sitting on the trailer with our legs dangling off the side. No sooner had we arrived in the farmyard than half a dozen or more cars arrived containing police and newspaper reporters. Our guest explained that he was Ray Munro, formerly of the Royal Canadian Airforce, and that he had just become the first man to cross the Irish Sea in a hot air balloon.





Uncle Bill points to the area of sky from which our unexpected guest had fallen while my Dad poses alongside. Neither thought it necessary to dress up for the benefit of the cameras. We later found out that Capt Munro had virtually no fuel left, had fallen out of the gondola and managed to climb back in and that he'd been within inches of hitting some power cables which could have turned him to ashes.

This picture of "Canada 2" appeared in the local press under the caption "what on earth are we going to do with it?" Accompanying Dad and Uncle Bill is their sister, my Aunt, Mary. The two pictures were taken the day after the balloon landed when Mary was also interviewed for the local TV news. She amused us all by performing some sort of strange curtseying manoeuvre as she explained to viewers how the balloon had descended through the clouds.

Places like Ennerdale don't change much and this picture, taken in September 2007, shows the site of the balloon landing very well. Running out of fuel, Captain Munro hit the top of Crag Fell in the background and was thrown from the Gondola. He was seen by witnesses dangling from his safety rope before scrambling back in as the balloon passed over the lake (hidden in the picture between the Fell and the sunlit hill in the foreground.) It was a very different day, weatherwise, and he told us that he'd not seen the fell as it was covered in thick cloud and, on glimpsing water beneath him, thought he must still be over the Irish Sea. However he soon realised that wasn't the case when the whole thing crashed to earth in front of the sunlit hillside in a wet, badly drained field. (the brown area in the center of the photo).

Ray Munro, it seems, was something of a Canadian hero having been a Battle of Britain fighter pilot, an investigative reporter who uncovered a huge corruption scandal in Vancouver's police force in the 1950's, and latterly a record breaking parachutist and balloonist. His autobiography, The sky's no limit, is a ripping good yarn involving numerous brushes with death and meetings with the rich and famous ranging from Errol Flynn to Eleanor Roosevelt. The final adventure of the whole book ends on that drizzly Sunday in Ennerdale.

Reproduced below is a copy of his entry in the Canadian Aviation Hall of Fame

Raymond Alan Munro
Nickname: "Ray" Munro

Birthdate: July 14, 1921 Birth Place: Montreal, Quebec

Year Inducted: 1974 Death Date: May 29, 1994

Awards: CM "He has consistently displayed a dogged persistence in overcoming every aeronautical challenge facing him, and despite adversity has made outstanding contributions to Canadian aviation in several areas of flight."Raymond Munro was educated in Canada and the United States and commenced flying at Toronto, Ontario in 1937 and joined the RCAF in 1940. During his career in aviation, Munro was posted as a Spitfire pilot for day intruder work in France and bomber escort duty, then served as a night fighter pilot on the North Sea patrol. Following this he became a flying newsman for 17 years. He was later selected as Expo ' 67 Polar Ambassador and flew a single-engine aircraft through the high Arctic to honour Canada's pioneer bush pilots. He is one of Canada's most distinguished parachutists and holds the highest international license. He made 528 descents by day and night as chief instructor and design tester for North American Parachute Company.

Early photos

One of the very earliest pictures of me standing upright, this one of me and my mother was taken on the beach at St Bees - always a popular destination on a fine summer Sunday afternoon.

Grandma and Aunty Mary watch on as I get to grips with the latest in farming technology. If you assume I was about two here, it was another eight long years before my feet would reach the pedals and they let me have a go for real.

They had funny ideas of entertainment in the early 1960's and I'm sure they thought I would enjoy being dragged around over the snow on the lid of an old tin chest. My expression in this photo tells a different tale I think.

This is me in warmer times posing on a log outside the farmhouse probably in 1962 or 1963. The picture would likely be taken by one of my aunts with the "box brownie"

Here I am with my Grandma at the same place - looks like the log has now been sawn in half!

Grandma was the only grandparent I knew and she died in November 1963.

Same spot again!

Dogs were a big part of my childhood as I had two uncles who were successful in the world of Hound Trailing. ( a Cumbrian sport involving racing hounds over an aniseed trail) This is the 1964 puppy champion "Longcroft" and his trophies!

Dad was never a snappy dresser, but boy could he
catch fish. Summer evenings and Sunday mornings were often spent "down t'beck" in pursuit of salmon. I never thought of fresh wild salmon as being a luxury as we had it so often and, if he'd had a successful day like this one, we'd have salmon every meal until it was gone - at least until we got a freezer in the 1970's.

Thoughts and memories

I was born on Monday 28 October 1957 in Whitehaven hospital in West Cumberland the only child of a farmer and a factory worker both of whom had married for the first and only time at the age of forty. Consequently I had a childhood surrounded and fussed over by aunts, uncles and other adults in their forties and fifties and spent much of my time with them on the family farm. My earliest memories of what was then "Grandma's" are of a farmhouse without electricity, of oil lamps and candles, stone floors, cows milked by hand, an outside "dry" toilet and a radio the size of a modern TV on which they listened to the home service and, in the evenings, Radio Luxembourg.

My parents and I didn't live on the farm but in a small terraced house in a village a few miles away and we did have electricity. We also had a TV - purchased especially to watch Coronation Street in 1961 - and during my first ten years acquired a plumbed in bath, a fridge and a washing machine to replace the dolly tub I remember peering into as a toddler.
I have a lot of vivid memories from those times and one in particular strikes me as being something today's children simply wouldn't be allowed to experience. Visiting the local butcher one day with my Mum, he was loading his van with deliveries and jokingly asked me if I wanted to go with him. Apparently I said "yes" and got in his shiny new Morris Mini van and off we went, with my Mum's full agreement. We visited shops and factories delivering sausages, mince, chickens etc and, on the way back, called at the Abattoir to collect a large vat of blood with which to make black puddings. Minis were still a bit of a novelty and we played a game of counting them during the journey! Wherever we went I was fussed over and given treats and for a while "helping" the butcher in this way became a regular two or three times a week, pre-school, job and my gory tales of what I'd seen in the abattoir entertained everyone at home! I got to know people at all the places we visited including the man who seemed to spend his day stirring a large tub of tripe. Karl, as he was called, was elderly and spoke with a foreign accent - when I asked about him I was told that he was a german prisoner of war from the first world war who had just never gone home. No doubt that would prompt even more questions from me but I never found people reluctant to talk to me and explain things and I picked up lots of snippets of knowledge at a very early age. Perhaps because I had relatively old parents I heard a mass of stories from both world wars but particularly the second one during which my parents had both been adults.

In 1962 I started school at the local Church of England School, St Paul's in Frizington. It was a victorian school building with outside toilets and a rectangular playground next to a small stream into which, inevitably, children often fell. I was a reasonably well behaved and reasonably bright little boy among some fairly tough characters some of whom weren't too keen on those who they regarded as "swots" - I survived by developing and employing a keen sense of humour! By the time I was eleven the comprehensive system had been partly introduced and the 11 plus had been abolished. There was however no comprehensive school and we all transferred to a secondary modern where, two years later, the brighter children were "recommended" to transfer to the grammar school. I was the first member of the family to go to a grammar school and I remember it being quite a talking point with the adults - almost all of whom had left school at 14 to go into farm work or domestic service. I enjoyed school and made a number of lifelong good friends but it was the farm and my Dad's family's involvement in the Lake District sport of Hound Trailing which occupied most of my spare time right up to my late teens.

In 1965 my Dad's two unmarried brothers and a sister had moved to a traditional lakeland hillfarm in the Ennerdale valley and Dad travelled to work there each day. Throughout the next seventeen years I went to the farm at every opportunity - rules were few and far between and I had the freedom to explore, play and learn. Few children, it seems to me, have that to the same degree today. Health and safety was considered but not allowed to interfere with my fun - I rode on farm machinery, climbed on haystacks, played with calves, pet lambs and sheepdogs, splashed around in farmyard puddles and learned the hard way that cows kicked and hens pecked. As soon as my legs were long enough, 1968 I think it was, I was allowed to drive a tractor. (on the strict condition that I didn't tell my mother!!)

We trained hounds to follow an aniseed trail and, during the summer, travelled the length and breadth of the Lake District to take part in races, or trails as they are known. My Uncles were quite successful at the sport and occasionally I'd get my picture in the local newspaper smiling with a winning hound! In 1971 a TV crew from the BBC "Nationwide" programme filmed the family as part of a feature on the sport but unfortunately my mother insisted I go to school and I missed my chance of stardom! The programme wasn't transmitted outside London, I believe, and we never did get to see it.

There were also occasional unexpected moments of excitement - like the day in 1970 when a large red and white hot air balloon crashed nearby. (see "up, up and away") I ran to the scene and, along with half a dozen other people found a dazed Canadian called Ray Monro who had just become the first person to cross the Irish Sea in a balloon. He refused to leave the field where he'd crash landed until his balloon was safe and I was sent to run for someone to come with a tractor and trailer. We took him and his balloon home where he was given tea before being taken to hospital for checks! Incredibly, I later found out that his flight that day, lasting only four and a half hours, was, at the time, the longest balloon flight in history.

By the time I left school in 1976, with a reasonable crop of 'O' and 'A' levels, I had developed a real attachment to Cumbria and its traditions and had no real desire to leave. The choice for most leaving Whitehaven Grammar School that hot summer was either University or a job at Sellafield. Sellafield was, and still is, the largest employer in West Cumbria and has dominated the news here for most of my lifetime. Never one to follow the crowd however, I had no enthusiasm for either and, as I'd counted out becoming a farmer, replied to an advert for a trainee Chartered Accountant with a firm in Whitehaven. I eventually passed all the exams and qualified and settled into a happy, carefree, single life - I stayed with the same Accountancy practice, becoming a partner in 1992, enjoyed walking and cycling in the Lake District and took regular foreign holidays. After a trip to California in 1984 I developed a real interest in North America and have returned a number of times, particularly to the western states of the USA. I've also travelled in various parts of Europe and have a particular fondness for Italy after making some friends there and learning, rather badly, to speak the language. I love travelling and exploring places off the beaten track but still believe that nowhere quite matches Cumbria for sheer scenic beauty - coming home from Manchester airport I always take a look at the fells as we turn off the M6 at Kendal and wonder why I bothered going away!!

At the start of the new millennium I was pretty settled and still enjoying my single life. Although accountancy as a subject can live up to its Monty Python image, the people I meet at work and the situations I get to deal with can certainly be both interesting and challenging and I have no regrets about the career I've chosen. Technology of course has altered the way we work tremendously just in the course of my working life but perhaps the most significant changes I've seen in the last fifty years are the opportunities and the choices available to people from relatively "ordinary" backgrounds - the opportunities for work and travel, the choice of lifestyle, the availability of information and opportunities for continuing education, even the ability to regularly eat out in restaurants are things our parents would have regarded as being close to fantasy fifty years ago. These opportunities, together with the high quality education we received make us,I'm sure, a very fortunate generation.

I'm really looking forward to my next fifty years (I've always been an optimist) particularly as my long held single status changed two years ago when I married Pamela. Pamela, sadly, lost her first husband to cancer in 2002 – both had been friends of mine since school and he was the first of my close friends to die - and we began spending time together during the subsequent twelve months. We were married in July 2005 at St Michaels Church, Lamplugh and moved to the village, which lies on the western edge of the Lake District, shortly afterwards. We are right on the edge of the National Park - if we open our front door and run we'll be inside the boundary in less than 10 seconds! Also with us are Pamela's two children - Charlotte who is studying at Oxford and James who is heading off to University in London in September. They seem to have a more pressured life than we had at that age although the opportunities available are much greater - I do wonder though if they will see the same degree of change in their first fifty years and, given their relative affluence now, whether they will look back with the same amusement at how things used to be.

"Today" listeners might recall that Lamplugh (pronounced "Lampla", by the way, not "Lamplooo") hit the news earlier this year when entries in its Parish records revealed that parishioners in the seventeenth century had died after being frightened by fairies and poisoned by Mrs Lamplugh's cordial water! Assuming such a gruesome fate can be avoided I expect to be here for some time to come!