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My Earliest memory at age four and a half or five years circa 1949 in Dorset England

I close my eyes and try to recall and the memories start flooding back. Nothing coherent at first, just lovely smells and sights. Summer in dorset and a beautiful life on a farm, the redolent smell of hay and silage, molasses and manure. The gypsies on the common, living in colourful, wooden, painted caravans. A mill stream that ran through our farm and the huge water wheel it drove. Thrashing the corn in the farmyard with machinery and spinning belts. Massive black and shiny sweating horses pulling iron wheeled carts, their eyes bulging and facial veins bursting as they struggled with oversize loads. The fascination of tractors which became a passion later on. I loved to ride the old Fordson with my old man, these machines were alive and talked to me while they worked, and the smell of the tvo burning was a heady and fragrant perfume.( I didnt know at the time of course but these were really old machines supplied by uncle sam to help the war effort in 1914). I can remember two mill ponds and ducks and geese, and the farmers son in a tin bath on the pond collecting eggs. The bath capsized when he tried to pick up eggs from the bottom of the pond and we all laughed.

Then came the day I got new boots, I dont remember how I got them but they were exactly what I wanted. Shiny black lace up boots with the fragrance of a new leather sole studded with rows of hobnails and steel horsehoe'd toe and heel. What a wonderful sound they made,just like the men on the farm. I stamped around the farmyard but the best sound came from the tarmac lane across the common so I strode out in the direction of Corfe Castle. Past the gipsy painting his caravan and past the field where the cows were, the big black and white bull gave me a nasty look but I was not scared, he was the other side of the fence. I marched on down the hill slipping and sliding and struggling to keep a balance(if you have ever tried walking on hobnails you will know exactly what I mean) but then I started thinking perhaps I had gone too far. Feeling a little bit tired now I turned to go back home, going a bit slower now up the hill back to the farm. Almost on the summit I saw a sight that made my heart stand still, there was the black and white bull and he was stood in the middle of the lane with no fence between us. Now I was scared, this was a mean bull that would chase you, I had seen him chase the farmers son in the farmyard

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