Gathering No Moss , livre ebook

Andrews UK - Alan Hall

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254 pages

English

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Gathering No Moss is the autobiography of a possibly autistic child, born in 1925, who, idiosyncratically educated, grew up to see out, as a member of the Colonial Service, the end of the British Empire in East Africa. In later service with the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation, he witnessed novice states exulting in new-found independence. His last appointment, as deputy director of the Centre for International Briefing, at Farnham Castle in Surrey, was in an organisation devoted to inculcating, in those going 'abroad', better understanding of cross-cultural relations. Post-retirement, he keeps an eye, Pooter-like, on our changing world.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

East Africa

Memoir

British Empire

Informations

Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	26 juillet 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780722350874
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0350€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Gathering No Moss
The Autobiography of a Rolling Stone
Alan Hall

Published in 2021 by
A H Stockwell
www.ahstockwell.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © 2021 Alan Hall
The right of Alan Hall to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
The views and opinions expressed herein belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of A H Stockwell or Andrews UK Limited.

This is the autobiography of a possibly autistic child, born in 1925, who, idiosyncratically educated, grew up to see out, as a member of the Colonial Service, the end of the British Empire in East Africa. In later service with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation he witnessed novice states exulting in new-found independence. His last appointment, as deputy director of the Centre for International Briefing, at Farnham Castle in Surrey, was in an organisation devoted to inculcating, in those going ‘abroad’, better understanding of cross-cultural relations. Post-retirement, he keeps an eye, Pooter-like, on our changing world.

For Hilary and Jeremy
and
Beryl,
1929–2012.

First Apprehensions and Family Roots
My earliest recollections are of Caxton, near Cambridge, and the house there to which my parents had moved from a neighbouring village, Bourn, shortly after my birth on 23 September 1925. On that day my father wrote to my mother at the Brunswick nursing home, Cambridge, a letter that I didn’t see until forty-three years after his death.
The 1st Epistle of Sam to the Pudding since before 23rd December [the date of their marriage]
Bourn, Nr. Cambridge
My darling darling girl.
I was kind of flummoxed this morning and did not tell you all that was in my heart. But I was so relieved to see you well my angel. I honestly didn’t sleep a wink, & I think I rather look like it now! I had that great big bed all to myself.… I kept wondering if it had come along and if my poor girlie was having a cruel time. So that today, my precious one, I’m all of a heap, just devoutly thankful that you’ve come through it all right… and the young Sam [me] seems a good chap. His looks will improve every day… and the nine months to the day tickles me immensely.
Kiss Puck for me [Puck being me, I suppose – they obviously hadn’t yet decided on a name for me]. I’ll come in tomorrow evening.
It was perhaps typical of my father that he should regard my arrival with somewhat clinical detachment, and reserve his emotion and pride in the occasion for the fact that my mother had survived her first confinement well. It was a matter for which they were both to be congratulated, having produced this ‘young Sam’, who seemed to be ‘a good chap’, and whose looks (by implication none too pleasing) would no doubt ‘improve every day’.
I don’t know when we moved to Caxton (only a mile or so from Bourn), but we were to live there for the first five years of my life – five very happy years. Dene House and its garden were substantial, but unremarkable. Indeed, I recall my feeling of disappointment on seeing it more than thirty years later: a square ochre-coloured house with a slate roof, big front door and four high sash windows in each wall; it stood bleakly in a large, featureless garden, with a couple of racehorses in two or three acres of paddock behind. Could this have been the house described so unfavourably by William Cobbett in the Huntingdon Journal on 21/22 January 1822? He did not think at all highly of Caxton, nor of the house, if indeed it was the same one:
The village of Caxton resembles nothing English, except some of the rascally rotten burroughs in Cornwall and Devonshire, on which a just Providence seems to have entailed its curse. The land just about here does seem to be really bad. The face of the country is naked.… All is bleak and comfortless; and, just about the most dreary part of this most dreary scene, stands almost opportunely, ‘Caxton Gibbet’, tendering its friendly arm to the passers-by.… Not far from this is a new house, which, the coachman says, belongs to a Mr Cheer, who, if report speaks truly, is not, however, notwithstanding his name, guilty of the sin of making people either drunkards or gluttons. Certainly the spot on which he has built his house, is one of the most ugly that I ever saw. Few spots have everything that you would wish to find; but this, according to my judgement, has everything that every man of ordinary taste would wish to avoid.
For my part, neither William Cobbett’s description nor my own later view of the place were how I remembered it as a child, and still remember it.
For a start, the ‘paddock’ was not a paddock – it was a field ; and although we had a number of rambling old stables behind the garage (formerly a coach house or cart shed, I expect), there had been no racehorses in our time – at most, a couple of kids (i.e. goats) tethered to stakes. No doubt, Father had bought them in one of those spontaneous moments that he loved to indulge: some patient or other had probably offered them to him as ‘a good way to keep down the grass’; and Father would have enjoyed coming home to announce, out of the blue, that he had bought two goats – just as, some years later, after we had moved to London, he came back from his round of visits one day with, of all things, a banjo that he had bought ‘for only three pounds’ from a local junk shop (Mother made him take it back). We children (my two brothers and I), were not very keen on the kids – aggressive little brutes – even though a supplementary (propitiatory) reason for their acquisition had been ‘for the children’.
Our greatest joy, in that field, was to clamber over the wrecks of two old cars of my father’s that had been ‘disposed of’ in the long grass: a green Morris Cowley with a dicky, and a blue car of even earlier vintage that had conked out from natural causes. The Morris Cowley had met its end after having performed a spectacular somersault one evening for no apparent reason – at least, no reason that I was to discover. There was Father in bed one morning, all tied up with bandages and sticking plaster, but remarkably cheerful nonetheless, describing with gusto how he had been catapulted out on to the grass verge near the village war memorial, and ‘What good fortune it was that the car hood had been folded back!’ No other vehicle was involved, and the whole episode seemed to have been something of a triumph, especially as we children subsequently inherited, so to speak, the remains of the Morris Cowley.
For the first five years of my life we lived in an ideally happy world. After one year, my brother David had appeared (saluted, I am told, by a smack in the face from me); and two years later, Hamish. It was our ‘golden age’, to which we all, parents included, were accustomed to look back with affection and some nostalgia. Yet now, at a distance of ninety-five years, it seems to me that there was something not exactly too good to be true about life in our village, but it had nevertheless a beguilingly attractive resemblance to the BBC’s Toytown. There was the church; the school (to which we did not go); the village policeman, complete with bicycle, trouser clips and a square flash lamp on his belt; and the postman with his mailbag and military-style cap, which would have looked perfectly in place at the Battle of Waterloo. The village shop sold everything you might need from day to day – especially a range of sweets in big glass jars. Our neighbour, Mr Dawson, whose garden was separated from ours by a sunken, rutted lane leading to hedge-enclosed farm fields, lived in a thatched cottage and kept bees in his orchard. In May we had dancing round the maypole; and tea parties on vicarage lawns, with cucumber sandwiches, occurred with great regularity throughout the summer months. As Father’s practice included several villages, all with their respective churches, we were taken along to many of these interesting but sometimes bewildering events. Children were much more ‘in tow’ than they are nowadays, trailing round while their parents had a good time. (Today the position seems to be reversed.)
There was a retired General Henley who, too, lived in a thatched house and who annually invited the village children to a Christmas party. David and I (who were not ‘village children’) were included, but sat separately, also on the floor, together with a family of girls and the General’s grandson, Godfrey. The class distinction was marked and considered in those days to be quite natural – not that we thought of ourselves as superior, just different. In fact, to hear them singing carols that we had not yet learned put us somewhat in awe of the Caxton schoolchildren, with whom we had practically no contact at all on other days of the year. People knew their place, and Mother knew with whom we might suitably mix. She often took us several miles out to nearby farms, sometimes combining this with Father’s visits, and occasionally to the home of Gertie, our maid, where the standard fare was thin bread and butter, and jelly, and where ten or fifteen people would sit down to afternoon tea at a long table in the farmhouse kitchen. We stoically accepted t