A monthly anecdote of Suffolk living

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The Suffolks

The new visitors got their heads down and started eating as soon as they were in.

by Guy Massey

The telephone rang one Saturday afternoon a week or so ago and a voice said: "Hello. How are you?" I replied: "Well, thank you. And yourself?" Although I wasn't really that interested in how he was, I was just biding time and trying to think who he was. Clearly someone who knew me and who knew me well enough to think that I would know who he was just by his voice. How very much mistaken he was; I had no idea who he was. It would have been so simply to say: "Hello. It's x, y and z here. How are you?" Then we would all have known where we were. As it was I was all at sea not knowing quite how to respond.

There was another case not so long ago, not so much of mistaken identity, more of no identity at all. It was a lovely summer's evening and I was on my way home when I decided I would stop at The Duck in the village for a glass of Pete's rather inadequate house red. Although I am not a regular, there are always people in there I know. As I went in and greeted a couple of acquaintances I saw Dave sitting on a stool at the end of the bar, as he has done since almost before time began. The Duck is pretty much Dave's home.

Dave's past is a bit of a mystery. Evidently he was born in the east-end of London but during World War II, when he was as a young lad of about eight, his family sent him to Suffolk to escape the worst of the bombing. It appears, however, that his family was no quite so lucky and died as the result of a direct hit during the Blitz leaving Dave without any family and virtually without a home. Dave will tell you that he thinks he had an older sister, who used to help handing out tea and biscuits in London Underground which was used at the time as an air-raid shelter, but that he hasn't seen or heard from her since that day some 60 years ago when he turned at the end of the street and waved good-bye to her.

Dave never married but found true love in old buildings. There aren't many houses or barns or sheds in this parish, or the surrounding parishes for that matter, that he hasn't worked on. Goodness know where he picked up his skills but Dave is a true craftsman and a real traditionalist. He always worked alone; always used local materials; would never use green wood, and always used hand tools. Money was not his motivation, the repair and restoration of timber-framed buildings was. Dave and wood just went together like a perfectly fitting dove-tailed joint. Such was the demand for Dave's carpentry skills that in the early 1970's, when Dave was at his peak, people were waiting literally years for him to come and work on their house. He would do anything that was asked of him but he would never say when he was going to do it. He had a mental list of jobs to do and he would slowly work his way through it. When your name came to the top of his list he was there, at your back door, to do what was required for as long as it took.

The only problem with Dave was that he was such a genius with wood that he almost lived in another world. He couldn't really understand that people couldn't read his mind. When I first came across Dave he still went everywhere on an old Raleigh bicycle with a few hand-tools in a bag slung over his shoulder. He, thus, arrived where he was going to work expecting all his materials to be ready and waiting for him, rather like a surgeon entering an operating theatre when everything - patient, nurses, implements - would be awaiting the big man's attention.

If you asked Dave to make a new staircase or a front door or to put in a new oak beam he would have absolutely no trouble is doing so but he would expect you to have all the wood, hinges, brackets and other miscellaneous items ready from him when he arrived. The fact that you might not know the difference between oak and pine and walnut and cherry would never enter Dave's head. If you wanted a new door he assumed you knew what you wanted it made of and would arranged delivery of what was required. This attitude caused more than a few problems and even more delays as the local timber merchants would get frantic calls from distraught housewives trying to arrange instant delivery of materials while Dave quietly sat outside reading the Suffolk Free Press.

Anyway, I said to Dave: "Hello Dave. How are you?" "Aw right mate," he said. "Yer want a drink?"

As it happens there was, and still is, a small carpentry job in the house that needs attending to and I mentioned it to Dave and ask if he would pop up an have a look at it. "Yeah mate. No problem." With that I got side-tracked when Jimmy Mount's collie dog made a lunge at Pete's cat which had just walked along the bar. Oscar's pint of Greene King went flying all over Mary, breaking the glass and leaving Mary's jeans soaked down one leg. The cat spat back, and Pete shouted at Jimmy to keep his dog in order or he would throw them both out.

As I moved away from the troubles I reminded Dave to come up to the house when he had a minute. "Aw right mate. No problem." he said. Later, just as I was pushing open the inner door on my way out he said: "Where yer live mate?" It suddenly dawned on me that he had bought me a drink and we had chatted away for while, but he had no idea who I was. Such is life!

The voice on the phone continued: "You got any grass up there?" Ah, now we were making progress. Things were beginning to fall into place. It was Ivor-the-sheep on the telephone. "Yes Ivor, we have quite a lot. Do you want to run some sheep on it?" "That would be grand." He said.

He went onto to say that he was sorting out this year's lambs and wondered whether he could bring over a small flock for a touch of fattening up. It is always good to have sheep up there at anytime of year as it helps keep the paddocks tidy - they also trim up around the buildings and down the banks of the ponds - but they are particular good in the autumn because they eat off all the grass and then the muck has the winter to get washed in before next year's growth starts. Ivor concluded by saying that he would bring some sheep up during the week.

Not an hour and a half later, when Debs and I were having dinner, lights flashed across the kitchen wall and on looking out we saw a strange tractor and trailer - well, not so much strange as not one we recognised - grinding its way up the hill. It takes a while for a tractor to get from the bottom of the drive to the house so, like Sir Francis Drake and his Spanish Armada, I felt there was time to finish dinner before it got to the house. Of course it could have been going elsewhere but it was unlikely as there isn't really anywhere else to go. We do get the occasional courting couple coming up looking for a quite place for a bit of nooky but that's about it.

I could hear the bah-bah-bahing of the sheep long before I could see who was driving although clearly it was Ivor. The sheep were in an open-topped, home-made trailer not unlike a supermarket basket on wheel. It reminded me of when we were in Africa where the native factory workers are transported across Nairobi in the back of open-topped trucks. The sheep, and the native workers come to that, didn't looked stressed at all, in fact they looked quite content. It wasn't yet quite dark and it was still warm and I suppose they had enjoyed the ride across valley looking at the new scenery.

As Ivor stepped down I said: "Doesn't time just fly by. It seems like not two hours ago that you said you would bring the sheep over during the week." He laughed that good hearty laugh of a Suffolk man who hasn't a care in the world. I commented on his open-topped trailer and told my story of the Africans in the trucks and he told me that, for short distances, he always uses it. They sheep don't get worried about being cooped up in the dark and the fresh air helps keep them cool. © Copyright Guy Massey, October 2002

As Ivor connected up the water I introduced myself to the sheep and said that I hoped the would enjoy their stay with us. I didn't get much feedback though; they just looked at me as though they didn't understand what I was saying. Then when he was dropping the ramp down I ask Ivor how many sheep he had brought. He thought about it for so long that I wasn't sure he had heard the question but then, just as I was about to ask it again, he said he thought it was 44, but he wasn't quite sure; could have been 46. Or seven. "Does it matter?" he asked.

The new visitors got their heads down and started eating as soon as they were in the field. Ivor, however, came in for a beer and we discussed the forthcoming Countryside March in London. "Ah, it will be a grand day out, but they're wasting their time," he said. "The issues have got blurred. It started off as a protest against hunting but now they're complaining about Post Offices and village shops closing down, and no bus routes and one thing and another. These things have been going on for the last 25 years. It's basic economics. If a service, whether it be a shop or a bus, isn't being used it will close down. End of story. It doesn't matter which Government is in power. You mark my words," he concluded. "That march will be a flash in the pan. Here today, gone tomorrow." Oh, we are surrounded by philosophers!

After he left, three and a half pints later, I let the dogs our for the last time that evening. Of course they knew Ivor had been in - they had all been sitting around him waiting, or rather, hoping, for him to drop a peanut - but they didn't know the sheep had arrived. Rather surprisingly it was Lad who first realised everything wasn't quite as it should be. I saw him prick up his ears at a sound. Then he ran forward a few tentative steps, not quite sure what was amiss but fully aware that something was. He listened some more, then I think he saw one of the sheep through the fence for that is when he bounded over growling and barking. By now Murphy was alert and wanted to join in. With the fencing being good enough to keep the sheep in, it's also good enough to keep the dogs out. Our fence is Suffolk's equivalent of the old East-West German border; nobody but nobody crosses it in either direction!

But the next morning. What a pleasure it was to wake up and throw open the bedroom window and hear all that bah, bah, bahing. It just makes one feel at peace with the world.

© Copyright Guy Massey, October 2002

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