Stooks, rats, and humpy haystacks

Newburn...I loved it, with its old walls, uneven floors and heavy doors that sang when opened wide...and I loved the old barns around the yard...they had big cobwebby beams, and sunlight shone in fingers through the sagging roof, painting golden patches on the piles of musty straw....
rats were everywhere...and it was flat, I missed the hills, I had so loved Balquhidder...but gradually a new life established itself.
we shared lessons with James and Lilias who lived close by...doing everything together, we took it in turns to ride their shaggy brown pony, Merrylegs... in the long summer evenings we played hide and seek round the little humpy haystacks in the darkening fields ...
from my bedroom I could watch lapwings wheel black and white against the sky, piping their peewit song as they watched over their shallow nests.... I loved to count the smooth dappled eggs, tucked among the feathers..
behind the barns a stream wound below steep sandy banks...willows dipped to meet the water where it joined another stream...this became our enchanted world, almost surrounded by water, and shielded by trees....we brewed tea in billycans made from old tins and slung on forked sticks over a fire...we baked potatos in the ashes, and cooked fish, caught with worms threaded on string...
.sometimes, we crossed the fields to Mcgibbon farm for eggs, we were ushered into the huge kitchenwhere the shiny black range throbbed with heat, and a cauldron of porridge bubbled, I loved to stir the softness with the huge spirtle, its beautifully carved handle polished with use ...
when autumn arrived we helped with the harvest, all the young men were away 'Fighting the Germans' ...the crop was cut by a big cutter, we gathered up bundles, bound them with straw, and stood them in stooks. the stems cut our fingers, and scratched our arms, and the stubble left red marks on our bare legs..
later there was black tea from an enormous blackened kettle...we worked till dusk, and went home in a haycart, the harness creaking, and jingling in time to the clop of big hairy hoofs.
long days were spent gathering sphagnum moss from the Carse of Stirling, I loved its mounds of crimson to pink ,to pale green and white, it smelt fresh, and the dampness was cool on our hands...stuffed into sacks, it was collected, and sent to be used as dressings for wounds of injured soldiers.
I liked the feeling of that...
wool collecting on the other hand was horrible...sheeps wool caked in dirt hung on fences, brambles, bushes and barbed wire in greasy smelly lumps, leaving my hands greasy and smelly...it went to be spun and woven into uniforms.
living in the middle of nowhere we were blissfully happy, continually busy, free and unrestricted...but of course we had to move again...no more enchanted island days, or hide and seek round humpy haystacks, no stooking of corn until sunset, no more skittering rats..we were devastated...
Dorset was closer to Father... we arrived early at Templcombe Junction, it was crammed with soldiers carrying bulging kitbags, tin helmets and gasmasks, shouting and stomping their big shiny black boots, whistling and singing Tipperary...after the solitude of Newburn it was intimidating...
we climbed wearily into the taxi, I didn't care what the next house was like...
I didn't like it here...
pim claridge