So I have sat here this week and been thinking back over my soon to be 61 years on this earth, looking at how I have live, kicking myself for not doing it differently and wondering what to do with the rest of my time, and not wanting to waste any of the knowledge I have gathered. My son said I really should start a blog, and, while I may think that I don't have much to offer anyone, perhaps he is right. He usually is.
Just in case anyone might, be interested in living a frugal 'alternative' lifestyle, I'll give it a go.
If by a slim chance, other people might be interested in things like growing your own food, milking a goat, keeping various species of animals, cooking and preserving what food you grow, living a time rich/money poor life, I hope this blog keeps you interested.
I hope to have pictures and videos and recipes and 'how to' things, and, of course, you are free to contact me with any queries.
Now, as to how I got to where I am in life.................
I was born in Bristol. Dad had come out of the army (national service) and while he was doing the service in Bielefeld , Germany, he fell for a pretty young German N.A.A.F.I. worker. After much disapproval from the'powers that be' (this was only 5 years after the 2nd world war) he took her home to Birmingham and married her. Life was hard, as the family who had lived through the blitz on that city and Coventry too, weren't too happy. They moved to Bristol and lived in a slum area. I came along in 1955 and my Mother insisted on Dad joining the army as a career soldier because they were so poor. This he did, and we were stationed in Blandford forum in Dorset. Eventually Dad got posted to Germany and that's more or less where I grew up, never returning to live in England until I was in my late 20's.
As an army daughter, of course, life was very different to anything normal English children would experience. Take pets for example. Apart from my mother not really being 'into' animals, there was the problem of being posted and having to wonder what to do with the pet. And there was my Father's explosive rages. Terrifying in the extreme. Both my brother and I got badly beaten. My brother more than me. Before he was 2 years old he had had 2 broken collar bones from them. With hindsight, I can see that my father had some kind of mental problems. He was probably autistic, (as am I, and as is my son), he was a lowly private, and my mother had delusions of grandeur and a sense of entitlement. She wanted more, more more, she wanted regular hairdressers, holidays, new clothes. She had a need for people to look up to her. That made him short tempered, as he remembered being poor all of his life and he wanted to be frugal, while she wanted to spend.
I on the other hand, simply wanted not to get screamed at or hit, as did my brother I expect. I was so terrified of my father that even into my teens my heart would pound and my mouth would go dry when Dad started and aged 16, I can remember peeing myself in terror as he started screaming at me.
So I got married at 17 to escape. There was no other way. We were in Germany, I had no family I knew back in England, I had a place in Horticultural college in Herefordshire near my Gran, but Dad refused to let me go to it, so marriage was the only escape.
Throughout my childhood, the thing which gave me peace and made me happy, was animals. They liked me, and like a flower bends towards the light, so I basked in their respect and affection.
Mum once told me a tale about when I was 2 years old in Bristol. The coal man came around in a horse and cart, pulled by 2 huge black shire horses. One of them had to wear a muzzle because it had bitten a man in the chest and hurt him badly. She was chatting to someone and not taking any notice of me, when the person she was chatting to went white, and pointed at the horses, where I sat, playing with the feathers on their legs. Mum said she was too terrified to move as I sat between iron shod hooves, the size of dinner plates, while the horses stood like statues, just looking at me. The coal man came back and told mum not to try to get me, but he spoke to his horses and took my hand to lead me away. The whole time the horses just stood without moving a muscle and I went back to my mother who slapped me for wandering off and for giving her a scare. Hmm, those horses didn't hurt me, but the woman who was supposed to love me;did.
Then another time I put my hand between the slats of a gate to pet a fox terrier, again, one which was 'vicious' and had bitten several people. Again, the dog never hurt me. So perhaps right from a young age, I had a smell or aura about me that animals liked.
Dad, as I said, was a soldier. He was a very intelligent man. He could literally fix or build anything. He was in the R.A.S.C. (Royal army service corps) which later got changed to the R.C.T. (Royal corps of Transport). He would tinker with things, fix cars, weld stuff, mend fences, build gates, grow veg', scythe lawns.literally anything. He also loved reading. When he wasn't in a temper, he would teach me how to grow veggies in the gardens of our married quarters. Nothing fancy, but I had my own patch where I grew radish, and in the cellar, carrot tops, and onion, and cress. He showed me how to fiddle about in car engines and sand wood, screw, nail and do general DIY, and I remember him saying to me way back in the 1960's "Pam, there's nothing a man can do, that you cannot do just because you aren't a man".
I think that those early days of wanting to grow things, my love of reading and making things, and my frugal nature, started then. Despite my fear of Dad, I loved him, and now, looking back, I think he loved me, his first born. Here he is on his motorbike and side-car (the one which brought me and mother home from hospital after I was born)
Well that's a bit about my start in life. I shall have to have a think and remember things for the next part of the blog.
