The Vicarage Boy: The Longtime‑Ago‑Person Is Me

The Vicar - John 1958

father/son

“The Longtime-Ago-Person is Probably Me”

When I sit down with John, I’m taken straight into a childhood that feels almost impossible now. He grew up in a vicarage on the edge of Dartmoor, the kind of place where a boy could walk out after breakfast, vanish for the entire day, and nobody thought to worry — partly because there wasn’t a phone to reach for. As we talk through his own mind map of longtime ago people, the memories return with astonishing clarity: the huge lawn and orchard, ponies on the moor, bikes as transport, and the absolute normality of knocking on a stranger’s door for water and maybe an apple.

Being a vicar’s son in a small Devon village gives the story a unique texture. Sundays meant church, whether he liked it or not, sitting among older parishioners while his dad — the most recognisable man in the community — did the work of keeping people connected. John reflects on faith, on the tension between everyday humanity and spiritual authority, and on how those early years shaped his sense of community, care and responsibility.

Then come the stories that make rural 1960s Britain feel wonderfully alive: open fires that smoked out the room, ice on the inside of the windows, hot water bottles, the post office that doubled as a sweet shop, returnable bottles swapped for treats, and the pub hatch where children bought sweets — or sometimes just knocked and ran. John talks about camping with his younger siblings in a farmer’s field, a whole day spent wandering in search of an osprey that never appeared, and a perfect culture clash when teenage him played Black Sabbath’s Paranoid to his vicar father just to see the reaction.

If you love British nostalgia, Dartmoor history, village life, or the bigger question of what childhood freedom does to a person, this episode will speak to you. Hit play, share it with someone who grew up pre‑mobile, and leave a review telling us what you miss most about the analogue days.

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Transcript

Finding The Border And Setting Up

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Now today, where am I today, John?

SPEAKER_01 0:11

You're in between Ringwood and Christchurch on the south coast of England. And that puts us in Dorset or in Dorset, very close to the Dorset Hampshire border, and we're not quite entirely sure where that border is. So sometimes we're in Dorset, sometimes we're in Hampshire. Okay, depends.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

That's why when I arrived, I said to you, Are we in the New Forest? And you said no, it's literally just up the road. That's it, metres up the road.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Yeah, just a few metres up the road, yeah.

First Memories Of Ilsington

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Well it's a glorious day here today, so that's all good. I've arrived to see John today, and we're gonna be talking about lots of things. Now, I've never arrived to see a uh a mind map on a on a on a flip chart. So I like the fact you've got long time ago people in the middle there, and you've got lots of bits and bobs, so I can see off the top of my head, I can see village, family, house, moors is that uh off spray, bike. Anyway, we're gonna get into some of these things um uh in a wee second. Sorry, we had a Scottish reference earlier on. John, first question What's the earliest memory you have of life in a village and your you know, with your dad as a vicar uh and you being a vicar's son?

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Right, that's that's a really interesting question, Mars, because um when you asked me to do this podcast, yeah. And talk to me about your parents and all that kind of stuff, I can remember very little, and I suddenly realised when I was um thinking about as the the long time ago person is probably me. So I was born in 1958, and as you rightly say, my dad was a vicar. Earliest memory is probably just arriving at this new house that we'd moved into in the in the country and just running around on this massive lawn, had a bank on the lawn, rolling down this little bank and just sort of running around on this lawn. I think that's probably the earliest thing I could. Where was that in the country? So this is in a place called Ilsington. Okay. Now, Ilsington is right on the southern edge of Dartmoor. There's about a thousand inhabitants back in those days, and we obviously sort of swelled that because we were quite a large family when we moved in. South Devon, on the edge of Dartmoor.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

So, what was the sort of like routines you mentioned you had quite a lot of freedom, and what give me some examples of that?

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Well, I think this was back in the day when kids really got chucked out of the house after breakfast and told not to come back until until your tea was ready. We lived in a very large house, it had a very large garden, so we could run around in the garden. Vicarages in those days were huge, certainly country vicarages. So there was a large lawn area, there's a wooded area, we had a paddock attached to the vicarage. It was even an orchard with about 30 or 40 fruit trees in it. This was our kind of like playground, really. But also we could wander down to the village and we could still hear my mum and dad shouting from the house, even if we were down in the village, so it didn't really matter.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

So you're under the age of 10 at this point, yeah?

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Oh, absolutely, yeah. I went away to school after that, so it was this is sort of the time before I went to my secondary school that um yeah, we were really chatting about today.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

What sort of things did your family get up to that sort of like captured these moments?

SPEAKER_01 3:12

I think one of the things that I I remember, which is probably a little bit different to some people's childhood, was we did have a couple of ponies. They were really my sisters, but I did get to ride them occasionally as well. And we'd just take long rides out on the moors, we'd just set off or just roaming around on these ponies. And if the ponies weren't around, the sisters were were riding on those. There's my brother and I, we would just get on our bikes and we'd just cycle places or walk places. And that's that's how we got a van just on a bike or just walking around, enjoying that freedom. Um, there was no traffic, hardly any traffic, didn't worry about that at all. If we got hungry or thirsty, we used to just knock on somebody's door, ask them for a glass of water, and if we were lucky we'd get an apple or a sandwich.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

My mum my mum said that as well. She said that just knocking on people's doors.

Freedom On Bikes And Ponies

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Totally normal, totally normal to go knock on a complete stranger's door. Some of course, around the village we knew, you know, we knew people there, but outside the village we just knock on the door and just say, any chance for a glass of water? And if they didn't, if they didn't give us an apple, we'd sneak around the back and grab one if they they had one in the garden. So that was that was how we survived really. What was it like being uh a vicar's son? Uh interesting, because I don't know what it's like to be anybody else's son, really. Um but there was a kind of weirdness about it in the sense that during the week we're pretty much normal kids. But on Sundays there was a one parish church in the village, which obviously my dad had to go and do the services. So we always had to go to church. I mean, other kids could skip church occasionally or whatever, but we couldn't. So we all had to go out, we got dressed in our Sunday best as well, five kids, three three sisters and and a brother, and we all put our Sunday best on and we walked down to the church and we had to sit there and uh endure the service, really. And as I get older, I got I found it harder to endure. I just remember looking around this church, and we were the by far most of the time, the youngest people in there um looking around these old people from the village and thinking this is a bit weird.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

But uh so were there other kids of your age coming to church?

SPEAKER_01 5:17

No, not really. There were. Um obviously there must have been.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

In previous episodes, when I've talked to people about that particular era, the church seemed to be a bit of a community. Was was that the case? Is that what your dad did? Did he run a community?

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Yeah, that's absolutely right. I mean, my dad was probably the best known person in the village, I suppose. You know, everybody knew him, he knew everybody, and he made a big point of knowing everybody. Although my dad was a vicar before he became a vicar, he was involved in the family business in Belfast, in fact, in Ireland, the furniture business. He ran for a while during the war when his brothers, his older brothers, had to go off during the war and he was left running the family business. How old would he be then? 1920, something like that. Young enough not to be conscripted, I guess, but I don't know. But old enough to run a business. He always retained that understanding of normal people and that I suppose liking or I think really love of people, just people. And he and it didn't matter who you were, he could get on your level and talk to you, and you never he m he never made people feel small or anything like that. You know, he was always he wasn't a posh vicar, put it that way. How did he make the leap to become a vicar? I think he was kind of religious before he was became a vicar. Obviously, I wasn't around when all he went through all that ordaining protests. Is that what took him to England from Ireland? Yeah, he met my mum at Dublin University, I think. I think he went f from Ireland across I think the first place he went to was Manchester, in fact. And that was back in the days when Manchester was probably a bit different to to what it is now. My mum tells the story of putting a pram out on the streets with the with the kids, and she would first day she put it out, she took the pram straight back in because I don't know if you remember those prams had like woolen covers over them, no little hood over the top. But she noticed this woolen cover was being covered in soot. That's just what happened. She said, I couldn't put the pram outside after that because it was just so dirty. She retained that for all her life, even when we when we lived to the south of England, she would always say, you know, this must be great for people from the north to come down and so where were you born, John? I was actually born in Newton Abbott in Devon again at home, no hospital. No birth, yeah. No hospital. So they always went from Manchester down to Yeah, yeah, I think they might have a slightly circuitous route through Lincoln again, which um how many siblings have you got? Four. So three sisters um and a brother. Uh one of my sisters uh recently passed away, quite sadly. But um yeah, so there was there was five of us by the time my younger sister was born after we moved to Ilsington. But do you still see them? Well, my brothers and sisters, um yes, yes and no. I mean they they're sort of spread around. One sister's gone off to live in Germany, she's been there for ever since she left university. As I say, my other sister, Sadie, passed away and she lived in Newbury, and you know, we see each other quite a bit. Another sister down in Devonstil, other side of the moors, up near Princeton, and lives in probably the wettest part of England. And my brother's also down in Devonstil, so yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

Coming back to being a vicar's son, so I mean you've already said you didn't know any different. I mean, if you look at other people, do you think you had a different upbringing just because it because he was a vicar or I think so, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

I think so. I mean, not so much telly, I guess. I suppose it having that kind of like regular church going thing and being part of the community has always been a thing for me, I think. I couldn't understand how vicars could be religious. And I think this is kind of I've come in and out of religion during my life. I call myself a Christian now, but I've always had that kind of I've think a bit like my dad of kind of interest in community and looking after people and so on, but I couldn't understand how human beings could stand up in front and preach to other human beings. Does that if that makes sense? How can you attain that kind of high level of spirituality and just still be a human being? Because my my dad was just my dad, you know, and and uh I guess he was the same as any other dad, you know, he just he would get angry with us, it'd be nice to us, we'd have fun with him and all that sort of stuff, but he was just like a human being. But of course, in church I sort of saw the slightly different religious side, but not that he wasn't religious at home, but it was very it seemed to me a very high standard to try to achieve and live, and I thought I'd never never be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Did you carry on going to church until you eventually left home or did it was there a point where you stopped going? Oh gosh, no.

Sundays As A Vicar’s Family

SPEAKER_01 9:38

As soon as I couldn't go, as soon as I wasn't forced to go, I didn't go. He didn't go. Absolutely right, yeah. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

Let's have a look at your um so we have a mind map. Yeah, mind map. So we what's this about pet mice then?

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Pet mice is uh this this is a story that makes my kids laugh because we lived about seven miles from the nearest town of Newton Abbott, and my brother and I wanted to keep mice as pets. We wanted to keep anything we could as pets, really. But we didn't think that our mum and dad would like us keeping mice. So we thought we're gonna have to do this on the quiet, really. So what we would do is well, my mum would take us into Newton Abbott and she would all nip off and do a shopping, uh, and we would visit the pet shop. And the aim of going to the pet shop was to buy some mice. Right. Uh I don't know if you know anything at all about mice, but you do all you need to know really is that they do breed. And if you put girls and boys together, then they breed quite prolifically. So what we would do is we'd go and buy a male mice and a female mouse, and we'd put them up our coats or under our jackets or whatever, and they would make the journey back to the vicarage under our jacket. The next job was to get a cake tin, which is in those days over all over the place, and make some holes in the top, and the we had some stables at our house with a little bit of straw and paper in there, and then we put the mice, the male and the female mouse, with it in these little cake tin. Now, naturally what follows, I won't go into any detail, but you do get baby mice. Yeah. And we had to keep them somewhere. So we thought the best place to keep them was in our bedroom because that's where you know parents didn't go quite so much, and we put them under the bed. Unfortunately, what happened one evening was we heard my mum coming upstairs when we had the mice out and we're playing with them, because that's what you do with mice. Talk them out of the cake tins. Yeah, you take them out of the cake tins, you play with them, you know, after your parents have gone back down. Heard her coming back up, and we've got these mice in our hands, so we just literally shove them back under the uh under the bed when we hear them coming up. Unfortunately, as she came into the room, the m one of the mouse has escaped and was just walking up the curtain next to the bed. My mom had a scream, and we just and then the game was up really because there were actually mice all over the place. They were just scuffling everywhere. Yeah, exactly. So they were we were kind of outed with our mice after that. So, how many did you have then? Oh, we had loads. We had about 30 or 40 of them, I would guess, something like that. You could control them. You had to get more cakes in the memory, yeah. Yeah, it's quite an operation. We thought it was quite clever because you could sell them back to the pet shop. The pet shop here. Yeah, you could sell them back to the pet shop, but you had to get them secretly in the car back down to Newton Abbott. So it was it was a it's a hazardous sort of journey, really. But yeah. But once you've seen them on the curtains, that was it.

The Secret Pet Mice Operation

SPEAKER_00 12:24

The camera's up, yeah. Yeah. Okay, you got open fires on there. Tell us a little bit about your open fires then.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

I think that yeah, that that relates really to the house being incredibly cold. I mean, this is the main difference about houses back in those days was this was a sort of five-bedroom house. No central heating. No central heating, no other form of heating at all. There was a big arga in the kitchen, so we go around that. Most of the rooms had open fires in. Memory of those really is normally be lit, particularly on a Sunday, we'd have a a a sort of family uh room where we'd all go and sit and so on. And just that smell of wood burning and the newspaper going in front to try and draw the smoke up into the fire, which inevitably didn't all get drawn up the chimney because the chimney was dirty and it would all go all over all over the room. So you could see the bottom half of the room but not the top half of the room. So it was it was just great, you know, it was just a just a great memory. Of course, the wood was wet, so it would spit and the dog would have to keep jumping out the way of the sparks and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. I get that. Yeah. What's that one there? Good stuff. Oh, so oh, that says windows. No, the other memory, of course, with no central heating, is your bedroom is freezing cold. Freezing cold, yeah. Yeah, so when you go into your bedroom at night and you go to bed at eight o'clock or nine o'clock whenever we went to bed, the room's absolutely freezing. So you had to get under the map under the bed with your um hot water bottle if you're lucky. Yeah, yeah, I still smell those in there, that rubber, the smell of rubber. I recently bought one for my daughter now.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

Yeah, they're great. It's great. They're absolutely great. Something that should definitely come back. Yeah, it's so quick. It's um now you can get these ones, but you put it in the microwave.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

Uh oh, can you? But it doesn't beat a hot water bottle.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

No, that's a great idea. Hot water bottle Amazon of all places, yeah. Good old-fashioned hot water bottle, and it's it's fantastic.

Cold Rooms Open Fires Hot Bottles

SPEAKER_01 14:14

They're brilliant until they leak. Yes. And then you just then you get a bit worried because you can't figure out where that warm water's coming from. But yeah, of course, in the morning a hot water bottle's cooled, and in the winter you've just got ice on the inside of your windows, and that's kind of a thing that I don't miss really from those days.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Okay, let's pick another thing off your uh your your mind map here. Uh Village. So we've got there. Well, post office, and you you've got a person's name as well. But let's start with the post office.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Yeah, so the post office was it's kind of like a bit of a fun time for us because the post office used to sell sweets, proper suites in jars, gobstoffers, all that things, aniseed balls. So that's where we would take our this is why our generation's got so many fillings. I know, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that but we never had many. I think it was Saturdays we used to get our sweet money, and then we would go up there and we'd we'd grab whatever a quarter of whatever we could afford, and that was it. So it was kind of like a a weird thing having that post office all within walking distance. Post office slash sweet shop.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Slash sweet shop, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

Everything you could buy everything from the post office. You could buy anything you wanted from the post office really. They had the little vegetables there, they had food, tea bags, all that kind of basic stuff that you needed. And of course they had dandelion and burdock as well, which was uh a great delicacy.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

I don't know if I liked it or not really.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

No, but uh the other thing, of course, which has changed is the returnable bottles. So my brother and I would spend a lot of time trying to find bottles to take up and swap them for sweets, so uh yeah, that was that was good fun as well. So it's a good idea there. Mr. Paget or Mr. Agate Mr. Agate is the landlord of the pub. All right, okay. The carpenter's arms in Ilsington. Sounds good. Now I can't really tell you anything about this in case I'll get found out. A good thing about Mr. Agate was he also used to sell sweets from his pub. I see a sweet theme, yeah. But yeah, I know exactly. So the only thing I ever found about the carpenter's arms was we were only allowed we weren't allowed in the bar. So we couldn't get in there. We really couldn't get in there, and there's a little uh hatch that you used to knock on if you wanted to buy sweets, because you buy sweets through the hatch. So you knock on the door, a knock on the hatch, Mr. Agat would open it, he's like, How many sweets do you want to get your sweets? Which was great, of course. But apologies to Mr. Agatha. Unfortunately, we didn't always buy suites, it was just a knock on the hatch, and then just leg it round the corner you poor on Mr. Agatha. Yeah. So one day I'll go back to Wilsington and make a full confession of that. Yeah, is it still there, do you think? It's still there, the pub is still there. I still haven't been in the bar, I don't think. So I'd like to go back to ever go back in the bar, yeah. Definitely should go back in the bar. Yeah, probably should, yeah. So I don't know what it's like. Yeah, perhaps I've been banned, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

And you think that his family still owns it? Oh, I don't know. Maybe.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

Maybe, who knows? Who knows? You never know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

Yeah, no, I mean, I think I mean back in the day, uh I think there was some rule you had to be 14 years of age. Oh, you'd be quite old to go in the pub. And that was with a parent. Yeah, obviously it was 18.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Yeah, and as far as I can tell, it was mainly gentlemen in the pub. I don't think ladies went in pubs very much in those days either. Yeah, I could we could only just sneak a peek past the city. What decade are we in now then? So I was born in 58, so we've been in the 60s, this is yeah, yeah, early 60s. Okay, school life? School life is great because it's got village school and if you haven't never been to a village school, I recommend you go and and and s see one. Uh Ilsington Village School was they still exist, so that's good. Yeah, they do still exist. Was as as far as I can remember, it was two classrooms, but probably uh two teachers, one of which was a head teacher, and a playground, and that's it. Yeah, we spend many happy times there just and it was just people from the village, just people from the village, yeah. I don't know how many kids were there, probably thirty or something like that, and we used to just play football and have fights and and and and then he used to call us into the playground. So yeah, it was it was all good fun. No, exactly, yeah, yeah. We'll go out and play and then we'd be alright outside, but inside is what's the next one on there? Oh, that was an interesting thing. It came back to me. See, the the great thing about doing this podcast, yeah, that says cobbler. Cobbler. Because it makes you remember stuff. I mean I put you off for my for ages, didn't I? So I'm too busy, too busy. No, it's okay. But but what it's reminded me, you used to get your shoes fixed. Yeah. So we we had our shoes and we used to take them to the cobbler in the village. And I wish I'm apologies, I don't remember his name, I'm sure it'll come to me at some point. But he used to take your shoes down there and you get them fixed, and I always remember going and picking up the shoes because you had a again, it was a little you walked into his house, but he had a little bar there to get your shoes, and on the back, all the shoes are lined up, people's names on and how much they cost, so one shilling and sixpence and everything. You had to go and pay and get you get your shoes. But yeah, shoes lasted forever, seemed to. Because but they had a lot of different soles on them, and it was classic. You just kept resoling them. Just kept reselling them, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Remember the um Blakeys? Yeah, the little metal things you used to knock them on with a hammer onto your ears. Yeah, that's right. We used to try and make sparks out of it.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Yeah, I think they came and possibly came a little bit later, but um yeah, Mr. I wish I could remember his name, but yeah, it was uh probably Blakey. Exactly, yeah. Yeah. I never saw him outside of this little shop. No, and of course it smelled with leather as well, yeah, which is a lovely smell. Absolutely fantastic smell. Smell it now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really great, yeah.

Sweets Pubs School And The Cobbler

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Okay, what else we got on here then? I'll take a pick in this. I think I'll I'd have to get everyone to do this. I think we've covered big family. You got camping there?

SPEAKER_01 20:01

We've yeah, camping. I thought I'd mention camping because I was talking to my sister about this podcast coming up, and uh because she's younger than me, I thought she might be able to remember something useful. And she reminded me of um and again, this is probably stuff people don't do so much now. She must have been about eight and I was about ten years old, I suppose. And my dad had wanted something for us to do during the summer, get us out of it. So he he just chatted to one of the local farmers and said, Can my kids come camp in your field? So he obviously said yes, this farmer, and he dropped us off in some field with no idea where it was, it's up towards the moor somewhere. Uh with a tent. My brother and I, so my brother's younger than me, so he must have been about nine. Perhaps my sister was about seven years old, and we just lived in this field for two or three days. What on your own? Was your dad then? No, all three of us, no, no, no, my young sister was seven or eight. And we had well we we dug a hole as a latrine, um, and we had some tins of you know those beans and sausages and things like that. And we dig a hole with some stones around it, that was our fire. I love it. Um that's what we did for two or three days, and we had a radio as well. We did a radio. We had a radio, and that's how I know when it was, because I don't know if you remember a band called Hawkwind. Yes, I did. The Silver Machine. So that was a real big song for me in those days. And uh that that was on the radio, so I can still remember hearing that. Um my sister sent me a photograph of her sitting washing dishes, which was obviously what the why she why we took her so she could do the washing up. Yeah, it's great. It was great. And we just lived on this in this.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Did she pop back at all during the three days?

SPEAKER_01 21:46

I think at the end of it, yeah, just to see if we were still there, I suppose.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Just to make sure you hadn't been eaten.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

Yeah, exactly. But it wasn't I mean we had no phones, we had no connection with them. Amazing different time, isn't it? It'll probably I mean it's not obviously not here, but if Perhaps he told us he perhaps he would have fought back, but if he did, we didn't notice it. No, no, he might have just looked in the car or something. No, no, not at all. Somebody coined a phrase of benign neglect as a good way of bringing kids up. Yeah. And I thought that's perfect. That describes my childhood. Well, certainly this period of living in the country and just being allowed to do what you want, really.

Camping Alone And Benign Neglect

SPEAKER_00 22:22

Uh you mentioned music and Haltwing just then. Was music part of your father's life?

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Uh church music, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

So was he popular music at all?

SPEAKER_01 22:31

No, not really. My uncle was and my I think my uncle gave us, we had a we had a rich uncle, right? Well, we thought was this his brother or your mum's this was my mum's brother, Uncle Ian. Um we always and he was much younger than my mum, so we thought he's rich. And he used to come down with fast cars and things like that, and a fancy, uh, fancy girlfriend always. He was one of those, yeah. Uh my auntie Evelyn, she's still around today. Um and she was lovely, absolutely gorgeous, looked gorgeous, looks fantastic, still looks fantastic today. So, yeah, so he bought a record player down, uh, an old record player, uh, the type that used to get electric shocks off, and a big pile of 78. I discovered these and they had all sort of Bill Haley records and stuff like that on it. And I can remember getting this song called Rock Around the Clock, which I thought was fantastic. I've never heard music like it.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Fantastic era.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

Rock around the clock, Bill Haley. It just so I used to play this on this old record player, just sort of dance around to it and make try and try and play along with it with a vase that had sort of ribs on it, and it just like make a noise, you know. That was my earliest kind of encounter with I suppose popular music. Being starting to be a bit of a rebel as I got older, I got into Hawkind. Um and the first album I bought was um Black Sabbath's Paranoid, which was£2.15 in uh in the record shop, and I managed to save up and I bought a copy of that. And I can remember bringing it home and listening to it with my dad. I said, You've got to listen to this, listen to this, you know. And it was War Pigs and all those songs. And I don't know what he thought, I have absolutely no idea, but he was good enough to sit there and listen to it. And listen to it. I can't remember what comment he made. I don't think he ever said listen to it again. I mean, this was a the period where you know people you know people of his generation didn't really approve of popular music at all. It was too loud, or you know, you couldn't hear the words and all that kind of stuff used to come out.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

But um It's an amazing time, I think. It's funny you st you mentioned Bill Haley because you're not the first person, and it's quite interesting because everyone thinks of you know rock and roll and they immediately go towards Elvis or whatever, but it was Bill Haley here, wasn't it? It was Bill Haley here that broke rock and roll in this country for sure. Because my mum mentioned it. I had a guy called uh Loz the other day, he mentioned Bill Haley straight away. Oh really? Bill Haley straight away. It's uh it must have been the moment in time.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Oh, incredible, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

Because it was just incredible, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 24:59

Yeah, because I think a lot of these other I can't remember the artists, but a lot of them were sort of Negro spirituals and that kind of music. I'd have to I'd have to think more about that. But that's what your dad was listening to. No, no, well, this is what the the records that came from my uncle, yeah, yeah. Presumably moving.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

But again, I mean everyone thought Elvis was black when he first came out. It was in the world. Did they? Yeah, no, no, that was that that was a thing. Because obviously they couldn't see him, they could just hear him on the radio and everything. Oh, right, okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:25

Yeah, but it wasn't no, it wasn't my parents sing at all. I mean, they um most of the time the house was fairly quiet. We had a piano, of course. I think a lot of people seemed to have pianos in the house. And my mum used to my mum and sisters used to play. I've no ta no musical talent whatsoever. But but she used to be practicing hymns and things like that, stuff like that. They'd be playing really, or my sisters were going through all those piano grade things. Did you remember them? You went and did exams every now and again, and they got a grade one and grade two and all that sort of thing. The piano.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Yeah, doing the piano, but yeah. So I'm still I'm I'm I'm thinking of you now, sitting down with your dad, and um Paranoid starts, and Ozzy Osborne starts off with finish with my woman. Prince of Darkness, yeah, finish with my woman because she couldn't help me with my mind.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

Exactly. Brilliant. I know. I know I'd love to see what you're doing. What a contrast, though. What a contrast. What a contrast.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

What a record to sit there with a vicar daddy who doesn't really get pop music.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

I think you're quite brave, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

Well, I suppose it's yeah, I I just didn't know any different. I just thought it was just fantastic. He sat down and listened to it. Everybody's gonna love this. Um, I don't think he did. That's when I started trying to grow my hair and all that kind of stuff. But uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:34

Well, you you were into the 70s then, so yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all long hair and absolutely. First pair of Levi's, Levi jeans, yes.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

Yeah, sitting in a bath trying to make them shrink.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

Batter and leave them out and leave them out at night and just hope that they looked a bit worn and all this sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

I remember that that was in the film Quadrofinia Phil Daniels is in the bath to the floor. Oh, is it in Quadrafinia?

SPEAKER_01 27:00

He's trying to shrink his jeans. Yeah, you have to shrink your jeans, yeah. Yeah, you do, yeah, yeah. That's how you bought them because then you buy them sort of pre-rect now, don't you? But in those days they were absolutely pristine. Yeah, and they're really hard as well, really thick denim, and you had to sit in the bath and try and get them to fit your body.

Music Rebellion And The Osprey Quest

SPEAKER_00 27:17

Right, is there anything we haven't covered there, John? Osprey.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Oh, osprey, so the bird, the bird of prey, yeah, exactly. So what this is a massive childhood memory for me. I mean it would sound completely boring for everybody else, I'm sure. But one day I was really keen on bird watching. I used to feed the birds in the garden and everything else, and ospreys are quite rare birds of prey. They're quite relatively rare now, but they were relatively rare then as well. I was told by the dentist, oddly enough, that there was an osprey up on the moors, and you could go and see them in some particular place up near Hator where there's a reservoir. And this just sort of epitomizes the freedom that we had, really, because I decided to go and look for these ospreys. That was it. I just walked out of the house. I actually did take a pack of sandwiches that day, and I walked around for hours and hours and hours and hours, and I never ever got to see my osprey. No, but it was like a completely pointless day, really, you know. But it was just a sort of thing we did. We'd just go out for days, you know, and and nobody knew where you were. I'm sure they did care, but they they knew you'd be back, and when you got back, that was it. So yeah, unfortunately I never got to see my osprey. But um, I have seen them more recently down and iron in the in Pool Harbour.

SPEAKER_00 28:34

But um So did your father have an Irish accent? Nope. Nope.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

No, no. A lot of our relatives had Irish accents. We used to go over to Belfast and up in in the sixties, this was before the troubles really started. So we would go over there and see all these Irish relatives who all you know spoke broad Irish accents. It sort of came up 69, 70, I guess, is when we stopped going for some reason. Apparently they were having some sort of disagreement between the Protestants and the Catholics at stage. Um wasn't very safe, so we we decided we weren't going in there very have a little break from Irish holidays. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

When did you lose your dad?

SPEAKER_01 29:15

I would say terrible, probably about close to thirty years ago now. So what do you think he'd make of today then? I think he'd love it. In what way? I just think he was interested in stuff. You know, I don't think people actually change that much. I mean, I know you know there's probably some things about my childhood that are different to what there are today, but I don't think people have changed. Not really. Not really amongst it all that so I think he would have loved it, yeah. He loved travel. Yeah. He loved travel. I mean, my sister lived in Hong Kong for a while, um, with the forces, married a naval guy, so they went and lived out there. He he absolutely loved going there, he went to Singapore when he retired. So yeah, and it's easier to travel now, isn't it? Much easier to travel. I mean, in those days we would we would jump in a a little car, a little Renault 4L with really uncomfortable metal seats and with a bit of cloth fabric for a backseat and drive to France or somewhere, and it was just horrendously uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_02 30:13

That's all I can remember about. Constantly got more.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

The worst possible thing was going on holiday, you know. You just wanted to stay at home, really. But yeah, he loved it. He loved it.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

Yeah, so what would he make of things like mobile phones?

SPEAKER_01 30:28

Oh gosh, I'm no idea. No idea, it's weird. Imagine that, eh? Yeah, our phone was in our hall. We had three numbers, you know, when people phoned up, it was HATOR245, I think was the number. It's funny how you know the number. Yeah, exactly. But you had to announce it. Yes, and you had to say who you were and who was speaking and all that sort of stuff. And I have to say, even now, I find it weird when people go answer their phone just going, or they don't say anything. It's like, well, who are you? You know, just tell me who you are. Have you answered this phone? But no, yeah, it's hate or two four five, and then you spoke, and you know, that was it. And then you get the shared lines as well. So people would be you you'd end up with uh yeah, another conversation across lines, that was a thing, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:10

I've forgotten all about that, but that was a thing.

SPEAKER_01 31:12

Yeah, yeah. Suddenly someone else would be on your phone call. Yeah, and I think when maybe when we first got our phone, we might have been one of the few families in the village who had a phone, and occasionally people come in to use it and all that sort of stuff. So yeah, that was that was great. My dad always used to tell people um that his day were on his days off first, but that's and he used to get really annoyed because of course everybody's the phone on his day off. I think it was a Wednesday, so they used to get loads of phone calls and he'd go, This is really annoying, but my day off, but everybody's the phone, they'd go, Oh hello Vecor, we thought you'd be at home because it's your day off. So uh yeah, uh the phone became a even in those days it was a bit of an intrusion, I suppose. But we weren't allowed to use it, you know. No, yeah, because it cost money, didn't it? It costs money to speak.

SPEAKER_00 32:00

You had to make your phone calls after six o'clock at night. After six, it was different times and it was cheaper, wasn't it? Yeah, that's it, yeah. Oh, it's crazy. And now you can pick you got a phone on you all the time, and you've probably got three minutes now. Nobody wants to speak on it now, do they?

SPEAKER_01 32:15

Just send little pictures of things to each other. I think you'd be moved by that.

SPEAKER_00 32:21

Well, John, I think we've covered everything on your um your mind map. I just want to thank you very much for your time today. It's been a pleasure speaking to you.

SPEAKER_01 32:28

Thank you, Miles. It's been uh been fun trying to remember. No, it's all good.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

And thank you for taking the time to do this mind map. It's uh it you definitely made my job a lot easier. Oh good.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

So uh thank you very much. That's great, and I hope if people find that of interest, they will. Thank you.