Fluffy bunnies and petrol bombs, some biscuits a tractor and a hedge

Much to the relief of my snobbish superiority complex, I wasn’t born in Frome where I’d go to school, have some rather crappy jobs and in a case of mistaken identity one evening be dragged out of a kebab shop by some pissed-up moronic chav. I was born in Bath on June 26, 1972 at about 9.27am. It was a Monday. It explains a lot.
Many years ago my parents purchased a house in the sleepy (nay, dull) village of Great Elm, about three miles from the market town of Frome at the foot of the Mendip hills. It was quite a large house with about five acres of land for Dad’s nursery and landscaping business, and it was here where I (arguably) grew-up learning such vitally important lessons in life such as: pouring petrol on already blazing bonfires is not the smartest of things to do, hanging a sit-on lawnmower from a tree is an altogether pointless exercise, and going to school in Frome was about as advantageous to my career development as trying to play the pavement with my teeth.
All things considered I had a great childhood. Because we actually lived about a mile or so out of the village itself in a sort of sub-micro-hamlet type-of-thing I had a huge playground of wide open spaces with woods and fields, a valley and the odd hill.
Great Elm was almost quite a nice village. There was not really a great deal to it apart from a village hall and a duck pond, but it had a farm in the centre from which Mum would buy fresh bread each morning. Monty Norman, the man responsible for the James Bond theme lived there but that’s almost irrelevant. I say ‘almost’ because Eon Productions, the company responsible for the movie franchise, would one day try to sue the living piss out of me, which would in turn result in my being awoken at 3am one morning by a hitman who moments earlier had jemmied open my front door with a screwdriver... but that’s another story. Great Elm had a church and an old disused school too, together with a row of pebble-dashed council houses with Ford Capris and Astras parked on blocks out front. Aside from that, like I said, it was almost quite a nice place.
A couple of miles to the west, beyond the ruin of the abandoned iron works lies the village of Mells where I went to school. It was, and still is a very pretty place with dozens of old stone cottages with thatched roofing and a charming little pub known as The Talbot. There were about sixty kids at our school and I do remember it quite well. I remember playing football in the yard (probably the last time I ever did) and kicking the ball over a fence into the caretaker’s garden where his huge St Bernard dog named Borg, far more Cujo than Schnorbitz, would pounce upon it and tear it to shreds, thus making me the object and target of ridicule and harassment for the rest of the day (see Book). We were all petrified of that dog. I remember how fortunate I was never to be sent to the Headmaster’s office to have my backside thwacked with the cricket bat, and I remember my duffel coat and my mittens. Actually, I really don’t remember a great deal else. Err... sorry about that.
Ho-hum...
Anyway. Since Dad ran his landscaping business from home there was a large area for us to explore and my friends and I had many things to play with. As one gawped from the rear of the house one would see a lawn and below that the orchard with its dozens of apple and pear trees. Across from the orchard was a field in which Dad had decided to build an arboretum (of-sorts) and it was filled with shrubs, trees and saplings, many of which would often be attacked by wild rabbits. Below the field was a small copse and his yard in which stood a couple of greenhouses and sheds to house the absurd quantities of clapped-out and dilapidated lawnmowers (12), rotavators (9), vans (3) and tractors (2) that he would use for his business. Over the years I’d make the most of this vast playground and its arsenal of highly dangerous toys, very nearly getting myself torn asunder and incinerated on numerous occasions.
Like many, I am sure that there was some time during which my father had high hopes that I would follow in his footsteps and take-over the business one day. I guess it’s kind of like doctors who hope their children will enter the medical profession too, or perhaps military folk hoping that their offspring will become military folk as well. In a way, it’s a bit like all those mindless Jeremy Kyle-fodder chavs in tracksuits: many of whose parenting skills lead their spawn to becoming mindless, Jeremy Kyle-fodder chavs in tracksuits too. But despite growing up surrounded by all the flora and fauna and defunct machinery, even at quite a young age I was unable to muster up any enthusiasm for a lapis lazuli... and, if I’m honest, I still don’t know what one is. Despite his efforts, I think that Dad gave up on the idea of me following in his footsteps long ago. Still, it was inevitable that during those first eighteen years of my life I did often attempt to ‘assist’ my father in his business. I would sometimes accompany him on jobs and dig holes in the ground with a piece of machinery. Sometimes I’d mow lawns, plough-up gardens with rotavators or simply burn stuff. I’d help out in the office occasionally too, but because I didn’t have the first clue about designing gardens or providing quotes or anything else remotely relevant to his business I’d mainly file things and get in the way. For me it was all about childhood fun and with a playground so vast and with the fields, meadows and the woods all around, so childhood fun was something that my friends and I had a great deal of indeed. I remember my first petrol bomb like it was yesterday. It wasn’t. I was nine.
I must confess that preparing Molotov Cocktails was not actually one of my responsibilities helping my father in his landscaping business, but my friend, Joe and I had both developed a rather unhealthy enthusiasm for all things flammable. At the time it simply seemed like a good bit of fun. It was an enthusiasm that would get us nearly killed on more than one occasion, but the thrill of driving my father’s tractor through piles of burning boxes, pouring petrol on already-blazing bonfires and dropping matches into vats of other miscellaneous flammables was simply too good a thing to miss.
As children we were quite partial to biscuits. Nice, chocolate bourbons and digestives were high on the list of favourites and we would often swipe a couple of packets from the kitchen cupboard and hide under the bed. There, after devouring the contents as quickly as possible we would then torch the packets to destroy any evidence of the theft. Naturally, it did not occur that fire and bed linen tend not to go together particularly well since we were somewhere between the ages of five and ten. I guess I should probably thank Lady Luck for the fact that during those pyromania years not once did we manage to combust ourselves or any of the household furniture... although we did once blow our neighbour’s Cindy doll apart...
Action Man had been sent to rescue Cindy from a petrol-filled pit in which she had also been strapped to a large firework that I had smuggled back from a holiday in France. The mission was not a success. Our neighbour really wasn’t best pleased with us about that.
Anyway. I met Joe when we were both about two. Our parents were friends and it was inevitable that we would become friends as well. We did. And I still regard him as one of my closest today. He works at the Theatre Royal in Bath. Many years later I would get a job working there with him, but that’s another story.
One day Joe and I were helping Dad burn some garden rubbish. He had built a rather healthy mound of ‘stuff’ over the course of the previous week but heavy rain a day before had sodden much of the wood. Telling us to stand well clear he retrieved a can of petrol from a shed and poured a little onto a plank of wood. He then struck a match and with a WHOOSH the mound of rubbish was engulfed in flames. Dad was soon called back to his office for a phone call and Joe and I were left with the strictest of instructions not to go anywhere near the fire. And so we did. With some time having passed since its original ignition we took note that it had almost burned itself out. In our wisdom, Joe and I took it upon ourselves to save it and decided to add some more wood.
Now, for a nine-year-old the combination of a dying bonfire, trees, petrol and impatience is not a particularly healthy one. It is however, rather exciting.
Joe heaved an old wooden pallet onto the top and I picked up the jerry can. Joe then took out a match as I began to tip the petrol onto the fire. The match was not actually necessary because things then became rather entertaining indeed.
There was an almighty WHOOMPH! as the flames leapt twelve feet into the air and onto the spout of the can. I immediately dropped it to the floor as Joe appeared to jump ten feet up and backwards through the air at the same time. This was not a situation of which either of us were entirely familiar, and so we did what any nine year old would do: I picked up Dad’s newspaper (and Joe its Sunday supplement) and we both began to hit the flames on the now-raging can of petrol. It was only a matter of seconds before it exploded and engulfed both Joe and I in a rather uncomfortable outfit of flames and significant aggravation, but repeatedly thwacking the flames as if imitating Animal from the Muppets or teaching an illiterate oik to read, we soon managed to extinguish the fire, Dad’s paper soon lying a tattered, blackened mess across the floor. With our hands and faces as black as night Joe and I immediately tried to hide the evidence, washing ourselves at one of the nearby sprinklers and returning to the happily blazing bonfire to stand with our hands in our pockets, look skywards and whistle our innocence just as Dad returned from his office. ‘Everything ok?’ he asked.
‘Err… yup!’ I replied.
‘Good-oh. Right, you boys go off and play. I’m going to tidy up here and then sit down and read the paper.’
Oops.
Anyway...
Among the many clapped-out vehicles Dad used in his business he had a small Kubota tractor, which Joe and I would often drive around the garden enjoying all sorts of fun. Sometimes we would simply ride it around and at others dig holes in the ground with its semi-permanently-attached bucket for absolutely no reason whatsoever. One winter we decided to build a giant sledge.
Across the road from the house there was a small valley and a steep slope that led down to a river. In the winter (back when we actually had snow) it was the perfect place to slide down on old fertiliser sacks. This year however, bored with the usual plastic sacks we decided to build a proper sledge. We hammered a wooden pallet together with three wooden posts and nailed some rubber hosepipe to them to help it run smoothly down the hill. Unfortunately, we had neglected to consider the combined weight of the pallet with the posts and so despite the rubber hosepipe on its ‘runners’ it was simply too heavy to move. No matter. We tied it to the back of the tractor and took turns pulling each other around the garden instead.
On that day almost everything was covered in a beautiful white carpet of snow. It was the perfect hunting environment for a fridge, but that aside it was also ideal conditions for using a tractor to tow a sledge.
Now, for the sake of a pseudo-description, the Kubota tractor in question was about the size of a horse. Not a big horse, mind you, but about the size of a Shetland pony standing on top of a pig. It had six gears and a high and low differential (what with it being a tractor and all) and could probably outrun a reasonably quick dog. A sticker illustrating a turtle and a rabbit indicated the differential selection of high and low, and erring on the side of caution we began to create a sort of track around Dad’s arboretum in ‘turtle’.
Driving around the yard and then through the trees in an almost figure-of-eight with a chicane in the middle, the tractor and our sledge quickly compacted the snow beneath. We then slowly increased the speed as we completed each lap. After a while, requiring some additional element of excitement we piled some cardboard and wood at a particular point towards the end of our circuit. This we then set ablaze. It was my turn to drive and I climbed into the seat and selected ‘rabbit’. Joe hopped onto the sledge and took hold of the makeshift straps fashioned from a length of rope and I thrust the accelerator forward (it was a secondary control to the side of the steering column, the first being a foot pedal). Moments later we raced away through the snow.
The first part of our circuit featured fairly wide turns around a variety of obstacles including the family car. This was no problem, and we were soon through the yard and into Dad’s arboretum to complete the ‘figure-of-eight’ and the chicane part of the course.
By now we were travelling at maximum ‘rabbit’, slightly faster than half a whippet. We entered Dad’s arboretum and followed the ‘figure-of-eight’ and shortly before entering the chicane I gave a quick glance over my shoulder to see if Joe was having as much fun as I. Only, I’d glanced a little too late. I saw Joe’s expression transform from childish fun to absolute terror, and turned forwards again to see us a fraction of a second away from hitting a medium-sized tree. I steered the tractor away from its current path towards my own certain aggravation, immediately glancing back again hoping that the sledge had turned too. It hadn’t.
From the outset neither Joe nor I had considered either the dynamics of momentum and trajectory or the responsiveness of a sledge towed behind a tractor travelling beyond the speed of that half-whippet. The sledge had therefore, simply remained on its course towards the tree. I turned back just in time to see Joe leap off the sledge a fraction before it slammed into one of Dad’s favourite shrubs, and slammed on the brakes to come to an abrupt halt. I climbed off to check on Joe who was now laughing hysterically inside a snowdrift next to a hedge. Relieved that he wasn’t dead, I then went to check on the sledge.
The smash had torn away one of its runners and had snapped the tree in two. We decided then to hide the evidence by extinguishing the fire and hurling the remains together with the now-defunct sledge onto a pile of garden rubbish. We then parked the tractor and hid for the rest of the day.
My father failed to notice the destruction of his tree for some time to come. He discovered it long after the snow had melted when he and I were wandering around the garden and he was looking for fluffy bunnies to blow off the face of the Earth with his air rifle. He responded with raised eyebrows and considerable suspicion when he demanded to know, ‘What the bloody hell happened to my tree?’ and I replied,
‘I don’t know, Dad. It must have been the rabbits.’