Exmoor Lockdown Diary 70 - Two Old Chaps Write About a Gate and a Lifelong Friendship

The sports-car was Tim’s - this was me and my less-than-racy transport at the time

Back in 1976, when gender wasn’t fluid and correctness wasn’t political, men were men and women were girls  – or that’s was the way it was for most. But some of us were ahead of the curve, with our long hair, androgynous clothing and freedom from the kind of hierarchies and formalities to be found in most work-places and institutions of the realm 50 years ago. So when I stumbled on Nettlecombe, tucked away in the lower edges of the Brendon Hills, it seemed like a paradise of free souls in a paradisal garden all of its own.

And when I was invited to live there, after a few months of working as a reporter on the very local paper, I leapt at it. Not only did I feel at home, an added benefit was escape from endless weeks of Prid’s everlasting stew. 

Randolph Priddy (see LD 4) was the photographer of choice for weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs and the Free Press and lived with his large, protective Alsatian, Anushka, in a little cottage tucked away in Roadwater. There he played classical music at full volume on his record player and lived off a constantly topped up stew, seemingly all winter long. Nevertheless, I survived several months living with this wonderful round gooseberry of a man and his other lodger, a young woman.

The phrase ‘ahead of the curve’ most certainly didn’t apply to the West Somerset Free Press, one of the last of the Methodist tradition of independent, family-run, hand-built local papers, most of which have long gone now.  Top management resided on the ground floor of the Williton office, including the gentle and self-effacing editor, Jack Hurley, and rather more bullish elements elsewhere. The three reporters, one junior (me), one senior and the Chief Reporter shared one room upstairs in the Williton office. And of course there was the almost mediaeval print shop across the walkway from the office.  Here another world of hot metal, blocks, ink, and vast rolls of paper was squeezed, along with the sub-editor and a small army of print workers, many from generations of the same families, who kept it all, literally, rolling, as they had, on a weekly basis, for a hundred years or more.

Nor does ‘ahead of the curve’ apply to one of my principal peccadillos, then and now, I’m ashamed to say. This is a strange inability to resist cars of a certain character, nearly all old, cheap and not usually good at being ‘ahead of the curve’ in any sense – if they could get round the curve at all.

I’m very glad that my dearest friend of the last 44 years is still around to invite me to contribute to his august Lockdown Diary. The fact is, he might well not have been if the gate-post, and the gate – but I’m getting ahead of the curve myself here.

This is the story of how Martin and I met.

I was the new boy on the block at the Free Press, in the very seat Martin had sat in himself not many months before, if from a more tender age than me. This was where my strange experience with the ghostly ring and the Poltimore Arms (see LD 66) had led me to, thanks to a lift from the then Chief Reporter who took pity on this young man down on his luck. 

Well, by the end of our conversation in his car, he had virtually offered me the job. A rash, impulsive, kindly move which might not happen in these more exacting times. Fortunately, Jack Hurley, bless him, took pity on this wandering soul at my interview and I was formally given the job of junior reporter a few days later.

Pubs, I should add, come a close second in the peccadillo stakes, so it didn’t take long for me to sniff out the best watering holes. The White Horse near Roadwater was one of many, with the initial attraction of a grumpy landlord, which always adds character, I find. Much more attractive was the array of folk, from traditional farming and artisanal trades, to loose-limbed youths of both sexes, some distinctly more exotic than others. And the cider was okay too.

One of these characters of the loose-limbed variety, was a handsome, somewhat louche young man who turned out be my predecessor at the paper. His name was Martin, Martin Hesp, usually to be found with a bevy of sparkling-eyed women surrounding him, hanging on his every word.

We got on immediately and a pint or two was sunk before the subject of vehicles arose. It so happened that my car outside was low and yellow, had no doors or roof (it had blown off somewhere) and not much bodywork altogether. Oh, and a very loud exhaust.

I know. And am, fairly deeply, ashamed.

But Martin loved it. So, predictably, a ride was suggested and off we roared. No more than half a mile up the road on this lovely Spring evening, just at twilight, when light and shade merge in an opaque, hazy sense of well-being, there was a gateway. And in the gateway was a gate. Closed. Attached to a sturdy, oak post.

In the dim light, which headlamps just made dimmer, I mistook the gateway for a bend in the road and made a very bad choice. I was, indeed, ahead of the curve.

We went under the top bar of the gate, splintering the rest of it and tore out the gatepost with my right wheel.

Coming quietly to rest in the field, miraculously untouched, I turned to Martin to see blood streaming down from a cut in his forehead. Much more concerned about him than the car, I’m glad to say, we abandoned ship and somehow made our way to A&E, or its equivalent, in the hospital in Minehead. There I handed him to a nurse and, promising to return, I quickly made for the nearest pub to settle my shaken nerves.

Feeling guilty, after a soothing pint, I ordered another and carried it carefully back to the hospital where I found a sewn up and bandaged Martin to whom I held out my peace-offering.

What the nurse made of it all, I can’t remember but at least it made Martin laugh and still does, I believe. Well, he hasn’t sued me yet so it must have worked – so far – despite the scar.

The farmer whose gate I’d demolished wasn’t very pleased. In fact he wished I’d well and truly crossed the bar, so to speak. But Martin – as I said, we laugh about it now but if the gate had been solid steel, and the gate-post ditto, as, of course, it is now, at a rightly hefty cost to the low-waged perpetrator, well…

Did I learn my lesson regarding my ‘principal peccadillo’, or the second, for that matter? That’s a story for another day, I’m afraid.

Another not-so-glamorous car I owned at the time - worth a bloody fortune now

And My Own Memories of That Day

What memories from my dear pal Tim… He writes so well - far better than my old newspaper style hackery - which is apparent because it’s here for all to see.

I took a huge liking to Tim Bannerman the very instant I saw him in the White Horse that night more than 40 years ago, and I am pleased to say we have remained very good friends ever since. 

And that’s despite the run-in with the gate just 30 minutes after our first ever meeting… Or maybe because of it, because the incident brought us much closer together than a couple of quick pints in a pub normally would.

I’d left the Free Press in just a little bit of high-dudgeon, as they used to say, having been told that - after 18-months of writing the front page and half the paper most weeks - I was being sent to journalism college to be trained. Apparently I needed to learn shorthand and journalistic law - but as I already had rapid Pitman classic note-taking capabilities and an A-Level in law, I didn’t see the point in going to some awful college in Cardiff when I was having such a wonderful time in my native West Somerset. 

Spending time at dreamy and beautiful Nettlecombe “surrounded by a bevy of sparkling-eyed women”, as Tim puts it, suited me far better than the lure of stale classrooms, boring lectures and dodgy digs. So I told the extremely unpleasant managing director at the paper (a smiling bully of a man who was loathed far and wide) to shove his training up his arse…

And I walked out one sunny morning to a future promising nothing but, perhaps, for bevvies of sparkling-eyed women. (Whatever happened to such dreams….) A walk-out which upset my dear old dad for quite some time, but later he envied me the freedom I’d managed to gain through not adhering to the inside of a newsroom. Although, he probably envied the poverty less.  

God knows what kind of journalistic career I’d have endured had I stayed on. I’d probably be dead by now. Had I gone off to work in newsrooms and climbed the slippery pole of newsprint and editorship, I’d have hated it - and the boredom that is news-news-news would have killed me.

And I’d never have met my dear friend Tim Bannerman. 

I remember being told that the guy who’d been given my job at the paper owned a rather special yellow sports-car - so, driving past the White Horse early one evening and seeing the beast parked by the river I immediately requested my companion, a diminutive moustachioed man called American Bob, to pull over. 

It took Mr Bannerman and I all of 30 seconds to become pals. After a while the car was mentioned and this friendly new mate said to me: “Why don’t you take her for a spin…”

I’ve always been a little notorious for my overly fast driving style, but this habit was honed on a series of Morris 1000s and A35s which had difficulty in accelerating from 0-to-60 in two minutes. You can imagine the thrill I felt when I found myself grasping a steering wheel the size of a digestive biscuit, sitting as high as a viper’s arse-hole, blasting up the road from the White Horse to Fair’s Cross.  I’d never experienced speed, handling or acceleration like it. 

But I was being careful - after all, I’d only just met the really nice chap sitting next to me, so the last thing I wanted to do was prang his beloved car. After ten minutes we returned safe and sound to the White Horse - and I shall never forget the words which came out of Tim’s mouth as we clambered out from its doorless fuselage…

“Let me show you what she can really do.”

When you are young, you are so stupid. I’ve been stupid for a great deal of my life, but not even I would climb into a vehicle after such an invitation in normal times. But these were not normal times - I was held entranced by the lure of my new pal. 

It took far less than a minute for the enchantment to fall away. I can still vividly remember hurting south up the Roadwater road at a speed which I’d never before have believed possible. The world had turned into a blur, and it wasn’t so much a case of IF we were doing to die, but WHEN.

And I didn’t have to wait long for the answer . There is a point in the road where it leaves the Washford Stream - if you can imagine a Y shape, the road curves gently to the right and the river swings to the left. In the middle of the Y there is a field - and at the apex of this field, there stands a gate. Today is it is a big sturdy steel gate. Had it been there back then, neither Tim nor I would be writing on this website. 

We were lucky. It was a fairly rotten old gate back in those days. And suddenly it had a sort of cut-out shape in it - the shape of a very low sports-car with just one higher bit, which happened to be left by the rapid passing of my forehead.

We went right through that closed gate, leaving the top bar of it intact. It was almost cartoon-like.

I can see how, in the gloaming, Tim thought perhaps that a wide and wonderful road continued south. Why would you turn up the little lane to the right if you could carry on blasting up that nice big wide highway? I, on the other hand, knew the road well - and remember thinking that perhaps he was going to demonstrate the amazing braking power of the car. Why else would he be heading straight for a five-bar gate?

Bang! Through we went —- and the next thing I knew were were spinning and spinning in the field, and I was clutching for dear life watching as four wheels went bobbing off in all directions.

Then my world went red, because the cut above one of my eyes started to pour blood in a mini-tidal wave. 

I remember walking a little shakily back to the pub where the charming landlord - one Bill Mills - roared at me to get out as I was dripping blood on his very dirty old slate floor. Then American Bob conveyed us in his Morris 1000 van to Minehead Hospital, where a nurse ushered me into some place where a middle aged doctor with an Indian sounding name told me to lie down on an operating slab.

What bothered me at that moment was that the nurse - a girl I knew - fainted. Crash! Down she went pole-axed.

I thought: “What has she seen that is so horrible it has caused her to pass out? Whatever has happened to me, it must be very bad indeed.”

She later told me she had never fainted at work before, despite seeing many terrible tings in hospitals - but it was because she knew me and there was so much blood. 

So the poor old Doc had his work cut out looking after her - then he turned to me and began the painful process of stitching. At which moment the double swing doors crashed open and there stood my new sports-car owning pal with a frothing pint of ale in his hand, purchased from the Carlton Plume of Feathers (now long gone) across the street. 

The doctor protested, but I croaked that I could really do with a drink - and at that moment the nurse moaned from her bed next door - so he shrugged and saw to her needs while Tim duly delivered the pint. 

Eventually, after a great deal more painful stitching, American Bob took us home to Nettlecombe where Tim Bannerman’s life was about to change forever - and where I sought solace among the aforementioned bevy of sparkling-eyed sirens.

So a lifelong friendship had begun - and it’s not over yet. Tim and I have many, many, adventures yet to come when this lockdown is over - but hopefully none quite so painful.

Here are a couple more photos I’ve found from the time - the first of the beautiful Nettlecombe girl Tim would later marry - then there’s John Wolseley who owned the place and still does with his sons - and also dear old Alex Hollweg who passed away recently…