The Day of the Midden

I spent most of my spare time, in the Summers, at the nearby farm. The farmer's 2 youngest children, both girls, were good friends of mine and I was usually to be found with them.

The farmyard was a haven for a good many of the local children. At any time of day or evening youngsters would turn up, alone or in groups. A knock at the farmhouse door would elicit, "Come in," from any one of half a dozen voices inside and the visiting child or children would enter another world. There was no electricity to the farm, in those days, in fact it didn't arrive there until the early 1960s. The one room where the family ate and relaxed was lit by oil lamps and warmed by a large range where the farmer's wife did most of the cooking.

In the yard the cockerel reigned supreme. He was a brindled brown colour with a dark tail and he was a bully. He would attack anything that moved, if he felt like it, and only Monty the old sheepdog could put him in his place. If the old cock attacked Wendy, my Cocker Spaniel who went everywhere with me, Monty would run at it, growling. He was a heavy dog with a large head, a sweetheart with all decent human beings but that cock knew better than to mess with him.

Monty had a kennel, next to the farmhouse door, lined with straw topped with several blankets. He would lie half out of the kennel on quiet days, his head next to his big water bowl, but was always ready to get up and pad along when kids were around. He adored my Spaniel and it appeared to be mutual. They would snuffle around together, companionably, and trot along with us when we went off from the farmyard. Poor Monty, well-trained and highly intelligent, couldn't always go where his young masters and mistresses ended up and, on the command, "Kennel Monty" would trot off back home, giving sorrowful glances over his shoulder as he went, but supremely obedient.

Another incumbent of the farmyard was Mettle, the horse. She was a chestnut Shire and she was large. Mettle came into her own at hay-making when she pulled the heavily loaded hay-cart from the meadow to the farmyard half a dozen times a day and we children vied with each other for the honour of riding on top of the hay. The sweet hay smell and the warmth of the sun is a tangible memory that has never left me. In the yard, Mettle would plod around and whicker, softly, as she followed you. I first made her acquaintance when I was about 8 years old and I was scared of her at first. Gradually I realised that, even if she was so huge, she was gentle and liked to have her nose patted - even if I did have to reach up to do it.

Next to the barn were several horse-drawn farm implements and a plough. In those pre-Health and Safety days we kids would scramble about on the machinery - the metal seat of a harrow was a wonderful bouncy-chair - and climb the outer wall of the barn to enter the hay-loft through the apperture 15 feet up. The hay-loft was a place to build dens, spend wet afternoons idling and dive from, to a pile of hay on the barn floor below. You left the barn either through the massive, wooden double doors or through the shippon where a dozen Friesians came to be milked twice a day and mooed, gently, and smelled of that wonderful combination of hay and dung that you only get in a cow-shed.

At the back of the barn were the pig styes. Now my dad had kept pigs for a while, just after the war. He had built a pair of styes at the bottom of the piece of land we rented, all smart Nori bricks with sloping concrete roofs and exercise yards with channels for the wee to drain off. The bedding was mucked out daily and went into a huge bin. At the farm, the arrangement was a little different. The midden was next to the styes and had a brick wall round it. It was a common feat, amongst all the neighbouring children, to walk along the narrow top of this wall and jump off where it connected with the sty where a very large boar lived.

It was a warm summer evening when I had a go at wall-walking round the midden. I had, in fact, done it twice already that evening but a boy (I can't remember who) had done it hopping on one leg and I was not going to be outdone. I started to do a third balancing act but, this time, backwards.

Everything was going well and I was nearly there when the boar, suddenly, came rushing out of his sty and grunted at me. Shocked and startled, I wobbled and I knew I was going to fall off. Instinct took over and made me avoid landing on the pig so, there was no alternative, into the midden I went.

A quarter of a mile can seem like a hundred miles when you're covered in pig muck. Even Wendy, my beloved dog, trailed a respectable distance behind me as I slunk, stinking, home. I went in through the back gate, opened the kitchen door and trailed into the living room. To my surprise, a smartly dressed man and lady were sitting talking to my parents and having a cup of tea. I was about to say, "Hello," when I saw their noses wrinkle in obvious disgust and my mother got up and shoved me out of the kitchen door and towards the outside loo.

"Get in there and take your clothes off," she hissed. She passed me a kitchen towel and told me to put it round me, when the clothes were off, and go straight up to the bathroom. A few minutes later I ran past the still-startled couple and shot up to the bathroom where my mother was running a bath for me. I was told to get in, scrub well and get rid of the odour.

I never knew who those people were but they, obviously, never had children of their own or, if they did, they didn't have a free-roaming, happy and, occasionally, stinky kid like me.