(With apologies to Gerald Durrell)

I have started a book trying to link our seven houses to the tumultuous changes in the last 90 years. But I got diverted. Been watching, on French TV, the dramatised version of Gerald Durrell’s books based in Corfu.

We took over a 17 roomed wreck in 1969 when the rumoured M25 forced us to look for somewhere which was big enough for 5 children (and Tom the cat). We had an income from the tenanted farm where we produced intensive vegetables, but not enough to do up the wreck and educate the children. We had loads of buildings (in a poor state) and grazing, some owned, some rented. So being near a conurbation with loads of rich people we started a major livery stables. We bought Welsh pony foals down from Wales and sold them.

The human population was large, au pairs, lived in, groom ditto. Rich Europeans sent their spoiled brats to learn English. We had 3 Malayan girls spend the summer with us. There were often 12 people at meals. To the horses we added 200 pigs to fatten (my responsibility, white dungarees, white wellies), change, get pig smell off and take the kids to school. I had  a secretary, Mrs Winder Wynder, useless. Got another, charming, useless as a Sec, she took over school run and some of the horse work and cooking. We were Jills of all trades. We needed a dog for security, a rescue dog, Jason the Great Dane, was found by the Vet. He guarded me, even to the point of clinging to me when disco dancing in the barn, poor blokes.

We had chickens, the postman sold the eggs. Then the chickens started eating their own eggs, postman said blow an egg and fill it with curry, that will put them off – they loved curry, so they got sent to market. The pig in the picture had been savaged by the others in his pen, left there they would have killed him. Getting pigs in a lorry was a challenge. Mother in law emerged, all 6 stone of her, opened her umbrella and said ‘shoo’, they shot up the ramp.

When we had got the house liveable in we started on the ‘grounds’. Discovered a moat and a duck-pond. Bernard Cribbins lived nearby, he came and put frog-spawn in the moat. We got a swan with a broken wing, and lots of ducks. They had a hut on an island in the middle of the pond.

My family were great ‘rescuers’. The cat had a mouse or bird, the kids took it away, I had to make it a shelter, they always died of shock then we had a funeral. Were your children satisfied with a hamster? Or did your house and garden become a Zoo. 

The Gardener

A Moodscope member