The Early Years

Growing up in Scilly was fantastic. With such a small community everyone knew who you were, where you lived, who your parents were, and whether you should really be at school or not. The word truant just wasn't in our vocabulary. In fact, I was thirteen before I first heard the word, and I declined the offer of “playing it” from a new lad who had just arrived on the islands and joined our class. He was quite surprised to learn that none of us had ever played truant and didn't want to.

Coming from a large family with a myriad of wonderful aunts, uncles, and cousins, life was good. There was almost no crime on the islands, so we always felt safe and knew that if we had a problem we could knock on any door for help.... and Mum occasionally had to.....

When I was about four years old, I must have seen a film in which people were crawling on their bellies under a scorching hot sun, dying of thirst, seeing mirages, and generally having a miserable time of things. This made a great impression on me, because for the next three or four years, if I was on the beach or anywhere else, under the sun, feeling hot and thirsty, I panicked like mad. So much so that Mum would have to take me somewhere to get a drink — a café, a shop, or even someone’s house. The problem was so bad that, if I was on my own, I would drink water from puddles, hollows in rocks, seawater, and even from the old horse trough on Pump Road and that was absolutely rank, full of bugs and swimming critters. How I ever made it to nine years old only the good Lord knows — and even He won’t tell! I eventually grew out of that habit, though I did still like the water in the trough on the short cut from Longstone to Holy Vale. If I pushed the duckweed aside, I would have a quick slurp whenever I passed by.

I also had another little foible, one that was rather painful at times. Born just ten years after the Second World War, I grew up at a time when lots of war films were being made. Me, being a soul of infinitely tiny brain, became obsessed with anything to do with war, especially aircraft. After watching films where warplanes strafed people, forcing them to run for cover and often meeting a grim end, I convinced myself that whenever I heard a plane coming it meant only one thing: “Bugger, they’re coming for me!”

My first reaction was always to dive into the nearest thicket or bush to hide in abject panic. Now, had we not been living in such close proximity to St Mary’s Airport — right under the flight path as planes approached or left the runway — it might not have been so bad. But at the age of five or six I was certain the Luftwaffe were out to get me.

As I mentioned, it was painful at times. Some of the nearest thickets offering “protection” turned out to be full of nettles and brambles, into which I would hurl myself and from which I then had to extract myself very, very carefully. I remember one such event when I was out with mum. I heard a plane and convinced that the Bloody Red Baron was just about to get me, I hurled myself into the closest and thickest bit of undergrowth I could get to before he started firing. Mum got really annoyed because it took her about five minutes to untangle and haul me out of a massive bramble bush. I emerged with torn shorts and T-shirt, scratched to blazes, and shaking like a leaf. I think it was after that — and the bollocking* she gave me — that I began to realise I might just survive an aerial attack. Certain death by being shot would be much less painful than that blasted bramble bush!

*Perhaps 'bollocking' was a bit strong, she was after all a vicars daughter!