One Young Fool in Dorset

by Victoria Twead

Back in our garden, we stood and watched.

  Mrs Cox took Jeannie to Timmy’s run. She lifted the roof off Timmy’s little house and Jeannie snuffled the straw inside, her feathery tail lashing in wide sweeps. Then she looked up at Mrs Cox for instructions.

  “Jeannie, go find it!”

  Jeannie flew down the garden path and bounded onto the lawn. We all followed at a run.

  “Go find it!” repeated Mrs Cox, panting.

  Jeannie zigzagged across the lawn, nose down, tail high. We trailed her. At the lawn’s edge, she paused and looked up at her mistress as though asking for permission.

  “Jeannie, go find it!” said Mrs Cox.

  Jeannie plunged into the flowerbed and I heard my mother’s sharp intake of breath as her precious plants were pushed aside. Jeannie weaved her way through and out the other side. With her wet, black nose inches from the ground, Jeannie continued down another path, along the side of a hedge, then paused at my mother’s compost heap.

  The compost heap was a giant box constructed by my father with slats of wood. In very cold weather you could see it steaming. On warm days I sometimes saw slow-worms (harmless legless lizards, not worms at all) sunning themselves on top.

  We all stopped, a little out of breath. Jeannie was panting now, pink tongue lolling, tail swishing hard and fast. She gave a low woof and waited for Mrs Cox to speak.

  “Does Jeannie know where Timmy is?” I asked.

  “I think so,” said Mrs Cox. “Jeannie, go find it!”

  Jeannie gave another deep woof and disappeared behind the compost heap. We waited, but not for long. Within moments, Jeannie backed out, feathery tail waving like a triumphant flag. In her soft mouth was Timmy.

  “She found him!” I squealed.

  Jeannie walked over to Mrs Cox and sat down in front of her. She was so gentle, and her mouth was so soft, that Timmy hadn’t even withdrawn into his shell. His legs were still waving indignantly, pedalling the air.

  “Good girl, Jeannie!” said Mrs Cox. “Drop it. Leave. Good girl.”

  Obediently, Jeannie set Timmy down. Timmy, relieved to have solid ground under his feet, set off again.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” I said, and grabbed my athletic pet.

  Jeannie was the heroine of the day and was rewarded with hugs, praise, and a bowl of cold water. An unrepentant Timmy was replaced in his run to plot his next break for freedom.

  My brother, Jeannie and me

  * * *

  To a child, summer lasts for ever. Days were long and my brother and I were often sent to bed before the stars popped out, and before the glow worms lit their lamps in the grass. In the morning, I could run barefoot across the lawn, leaving a trail of zig-zag footprints in the dew. Soon, the sun rose high in the sky and dried the dew, leaving no sign of my crazy dance.

  I checked the little fairy houses I had made with sticks and leaves in secret parts of the garden. Of course I didn’t believe in fairies, I told myself, but just in case they existed, I’d give them nice houses to live in.

  Summer also meant visits to the beautiful beaches of Dorset. In that part of the world, one is spoilt for choice. Lesser known beaches, like Dancing Ledge and Chapman’s Pool could only be reached after a walk of many miles across heathland and down farm tracks.

  But it was worth it. These wonderfully wild beaches are unique. At Dancing Ledge there is a natural pool cut out of the rock, much like an infinity pool with a sea view. At the turn of the tide, the pool becomes a jacuzzi as the water churns. It was far too dangerous for us children to be allowed to swim, but there were still plenty of rock pools to explore. Sometimes we took big pieces of seaweed home and hung them from trees. Apparently they made good weather forecasters: slimy seaweed meant wet weather ahead, while crisp, dry seaweed meant sunny spells to come.

  Another favourite was Worbarrow Bay with its ghost village which sent shivers down my spine and my imagination into overdrive. I stared past the ropes at the empty cottages where people used to live. In those days, the beach was only open to the public on rare occasions, and you couldn’t enter the village of Tyneham at all. The reason for this was that the Army used the surrounding land for driving tanks and armoured vehicles, and the whole area was a firing range.

  In 1943, the War Office commandeered the entire acreage, including the little village of Tyneham. The War Office declared that it needed the land, beach and village to carry out military manoeuvres. The residents of Tyneham had no choice. Every family was forced to pack up and leave, abandoning their homes, school, and church. It must have been a devastating time but they were promised they could return after the war was over.

  But it wasn’t to be. World War II ended, but in 1947 the Army placed a compulsory purchase order on the land, and the villagers were never allowed to return.

  The ghost village of Tyneham still stands, though it has fallen into disrepair and is damaged by practice shell fire. The church and schoolhouse, however, are intact and are now museums, I am told. And something very good came out of the Army owning the land. Because it is largely left alone by humans, and not cultivated in any way, the land now supports rare plants, birds and wildlife.

  Oh, the joy of living along the Jurassic coastline where fossils revealed themselves as though clamouring for attention. We often visited Kimmeridge Bay. The village of Kimmeridge is tiny and very picturesque. The estimated population in 2013 was just 90. But Kimmeridge is well worth a visit for two good reasons, both of which I loved as a child.

  First, it had an awesome folly. Perched precariously on the cliff edge and overlooking the semi-circular bay, was the folly known as Clavell Tower, which inspired P.D. James’s novel, The Black Tower.

  Who built it, and why? I didn’t know. I imagine the person who built it thought it would stand proudly for ever. Indeed, there used to be space for horse-drawn carriages to drive on the strip of land between folly and cliff edge. But the cliff was constantly being eroded by the weather and the sea below. The folly was now mere feet away from the edge of the cliff and in real danger of collapsing into the waves beneath. Every time we visited the bay, I checked to see whether the folly was still standing, or had collapsed into its inevitable watery grave.

  Clavell Tower as it was

  To my astonishment, I recently learned that the folly survived for many more years. Finally, in 2006, it was taken over by the Landmark Trust which rescues eccentric buildings and converts them into holiday homes. They dismantled Clavell Tower and re-erected it on a firmer foundation 82 feet further inland.

  Now it looks almost the same as it did when I was a child, except that it’s no longer ruined, or in danger, and boasts a stunning interior with four floors of beautifully styled rooms. I imagine a few days’ stay in this spectacular building, surrounded by breath-taking views, with the waves breaking beneath the cliffs, would make a truly unforgettable holiday.

  The second attraction for me was fossils. The shale at Kimmeridge is soft and constantly crumbling, making the finding of ammonites easy.

  “I’ve found one!”

  “Me too!”

  “And me!”

  Ammonites, with their characteristic ribbed, spiral shell are probably the most widely known fossil. These creatures lived in our seas some 240 million years ago, before they became extinct along with the dinosaurs. It was awesome to uncover such an ancient thing. The windowsill in my bedroom became cluttered with the ammonite fossils I had found. I could never bear to part with them, and I know they came with me when I moved to Spain forty years later. I haven’t seen them for a long time; perhaps they are languishing in a box somewhere. Perhaps some future fossil hunter may come across them in decades to come and wonder how Dorset fossils could possibly be found in the mountains of southern Spain.

  But sometimes we visited beaches simply because they were beautiful. Durdle Door is a perfect example of a stunning setting, and often used in films, including the unforgettable Far From the Madding Crowd.

  Durdle Door

&nb
sp; But my very favourite beach was much more ordinary, or so I thought when we first started visiting it.

  My mother didn’t enjoy driving. She refused to drive any car at all, even though she had passed her driving test many years earlier. Then one day, my father came home with an old ex-army Land Rover. It had a torn canvas roof that was rolled back and tied at various points.

  “Get in,” he said handing her the ignition key. “Turn the engine on, see how it feels.”

  “Ach, this is not so bad,” she said. “I feel high, much safer than an ordinary car. If I scratch it, it wouldn’t really matter, would it? And I like that the engine is loud because I can hear what I’m doing.”

  She crunched the gears to demonstrate. My father winced.

  The Land Rover had seen better days and was badly in need of a coat of paint, so my mother bought some and opened the lid. She peered at it, then dipped in her paintbrush.

  “This is supposed to be dark green!” she said, as she began painting. “Ach, never mind. It’s not a bad colour. It’s like variegated ivy leaves.”

  The name stuck, and Ivy joined the family.

  We kids loved Ivy. There were no seats in the back. We just sat on the floor holding onto anything we could, slipping and sliding and landing in a tangled heap when Ivy sailed round bends. It was great fun.

  Sometimes we’d get up early and my mother would drive us to some local fields where we picked mushrooms. Ivy’s big tyres left tracks in the silver dew.

  Of course Ivy was also the perfect vehicle to take to the beach. The nearest sandy beach where kids could dig, make sandcastles, and bathe safely, was Studland. I don’t remember my father ever going, but I guess he was at work. We kids piled into Ivy, along with the towels and picnic boxes. My mother would grip the steering wheel so hard that her knuckles were snow-white and off we’d go. The canvas roof flapped, the wind roared in our ears, and Ivy’s engine was so loud that we had to shout to each other, or talk in sign language. It was all part of the fun.

  Looking back on it now, I’m surprised we never had an accident as my mother’s driving was appalling. We kids didn’t care, and as we bucked and stalled all the way to the beach, we sang Ten Green Bottles at the tops of our voices.

  Studland Bay is renowned for its fine sand and expanse of sand dunes. Dorset has a great deal of precious heathland where the adder (or viper), and the rare smooth snake thrives. Studland’s sand dunes were a refuge for these shy snakes. In all the years I went there, I never saw a single one.

  Studland is also renowned for something else, but I didn’t know that at the time.

  My mother ignored the car park and set off into the dunes, gloating over the fact that Ivy, with her four-wheel-drive, could go places where standard cars couldn’t. We could navigate over quite soft sand and my mother would crow with delight at the thought that lesser vehicles may get stuck in the dunes. Over the dunes we sailed, Ivy lurching dramatically, with us kids grabbing each other in an effort not to be bounced out of the back.

  Then came the search for a good place to park. Luckily, there was heaps of parking choice, because my mother’s aversion to reversing meant we had to find somewhere where she could circle when it was time to leave.

  Out came the towels and swimming stuff. We also brought a bottle of homemade suntan lotion. It was a nasty concoction, 50% cooking oil and 50% vinegar, to rub into our skins making us smell like fish and chip shops. These were the days before the dangers of skin cancer were known.

  Weighed down with buckets, spades and beach paraphernalia, my brother and I cantered down to the beach, leaving my mother and older sister to follow at a more sensible pace.

  Once on the beach, if one looked to the left, one would see the Sandbanks ferry crossing back and forth. Look right, and you’d see the Old Harry Rocks. Old Harry and his wives are white chalk stacks and stumps, chiselled out by the ocean and time. Poor Old Harry regularly loses wives to the waves.

  Old Harry Rocks

  My brother and I built sand castles, sand boats and sand cars. We buried each other and chased in and out of the waves.

  “Picnic is ready!” called my mother.

  We ate sandwiches, then my mother produced a tin opener and big can of sliced peaches. We held out our plastic bowls into which she tipped a few peach slices which slid around like goldfish. Then came a dash of evaporated milk. Tinned peaches always remind me of those days at Studland beach, and I still adore evaporated milk.

  I learned to swim at Studland. I was at that stage when I was nearly swimming, but too nervous to lift my feet off the ground. A complete stranger detached himself from his family group and walked over to me.

  “Put your chin in there,” he commanded, cupping his hand.

  I was so shocked, I did so.

  “Now lift your legs and kick. Don’t worry, I won’t let your head sink under water.”

  I did as I was told as my family watched. I kicked my legs - and I was swimming! I never saw the stranger again, but he did me a big favour.

  Sometimes my brother and I would explore the dunes for a while.

  “Don’t go too far!” called my mother. “And if you see something suspicious, don’t dig it up.”

  We knew what she meant. Studland had been used as a practice firing range at one time, and it wasn’t unusual to unearth an unexploded shell.

  On one particular occasion, perhaps that year or later, we went deep into the dunes. We were African explorers hunting big game. Sometimes we had to drop onto all-fours to hide from lions. Once, a giant python (well, a piece of discarded tubing) nearly grabbed us, but we were too fast. We rolled down the dune out of its reach. We crawled, commando-style, around a particularly large dune, utterly silent, then froze.

  In front of us lay a group of adults sunbathing. They were a mixed bunch of men and ladies, stretched out on towels. Their eyes were closed and apart from a hand swishing away the odd fly, they didn’t move.

  But there was something astounding about these grown-ups that caused my brother and I to gape, then stare at each other with round, disbelieving eyes.

  4 Naked

  Jam Roly-Poly

  “They’ve got no clothes on!” I mouthed to my brother.

  “They’re bare!” he whispered, his eyes out on stalks.

  We backed away, hands covering our mouths, eyes like manhole covers. I don’t know why we were so shocked because both our parents often wandered around in the nude at home, and there were no locks on the bathroom door. They were totally uninhibited, and if it was hot, they took off their clothes. To them it was logical. We kids accepted that, but to see other people, in public, without clothes on, was most unexpected.

  The quickest way back to our picnic party was along the beach. We pelted over the dunes, back to the normality of the beach, then froze.

  Everyone was naked.

  Family groups, children making sandcastles. Couples stretched out sunbathing. People paddling at the water’s edge. Grandparents under sun shades, reading or dozing. Teenagers throwing balls or frisbees to each other.

  They were all naked.

  “We’re the only ones with clothes on!”

  Crimson with embarrassment and without looking left or right, we made a dash for it. Along the beach we galloped, not stopping until we reached our own beach party, who were decently clothed.

  “Whatever is the matter with you two?” asked our sister.

  “Back there...” I squeaked, clutching my chest and gasping for breath.

  “Ach, what?” asked my mother.

  “Back there…”

  “Yes?”

  “Nobody has got any clothes on!”

  “They’re all bare!” said my brother, whose eyebrows had disappeared into his hairline.

  “Ach,” said my mother, not in the least concerned. “You wandered too far, that’s all. You went as far as the naturist beach.”

  “Naturist?”

  “Yes, some people prefer not to wear clothes at all. Did you not se
e the big blue warning signs?”

  I thought hard. Yes, I’d seen the signs, but I thought naturists were people who liked nature and wildlife, like me. And I certainly didn’t know that for decades, in fact since the 1920s, one kilometre of the beach had been given over to nudists. Studland is probably the best known naturist beach in Great Britain and is run by the National Trust.

  Studland was a popular beach for naturists, naturalists and families alike, and some summer days the cars queued for miles as families headed to the beach. Often they sat stationary, nose to tail, engines idling, baking in the sun as they waited to creep forward. This set my mother’s brain ticking. She had an entrepreneurial spirit that constantly devised ways to make extra money.

  “Ach, I’ll go to Cash and Carry and buy Coca-Colas,” she said. “Then I will park Ivy in a lay-by and I’ll walk up and down the line of cars, selling Coca-Colas. I will make a fortune! They will be so thirsty and tired of queuing, they will definitely want to buy my drinks. Ach, I can’t understand why nobody has thought of it before!”

  “Are you sure you don’t need a licence?” asked my father mildly.

  “Ach, who would stop me selling a few cans of drink?”

  My father made her a tray that she could carry, like cinema ice cream sellers, and the next hot weekend she loaded Ivy with cans of Coke. With a crunching of gears and cloud of exhaust fumes, she set off towards Studland.

  I don’t know exactly what went wrong. Perhaps the police put a stop to her activities as she had no licence. Or perhaps nobody wanted to buy warm Coca-Cola. Whatever the reason, I do know that she arrived home in a bad mood and with almost the same number of cans she had taken. She stacked the unopened crates of drinks in the garage, where they remained for years.

  I once asked her if we could have one.

  “Of course not,” she said. “Ach, that would be drinking the profits.”

  Summer was drawing to a close, although Dorset was still packed with tourists. Hardly surprising as it is a particularly beautiful county with the most sunshine hours in England and more than its fair share of castles, stately homes, stunning coastline and ancient historical sites. My mother knew how attractive Dorset is to visitors, and predictably came up with another money-spinner.