I was born 10th March 1937, in Barnstaple Royal Infirmary, Devon, England. Dad, Edwin Henry Tucker, was from generations of farmers, and Mum, May Elizabeth nee Heywood, was a local farmer’s daughter.
My older brother Ian (1932-2006) farmed Warkleigh Barton, Umberleigh with Dad after he left West Buckland School at age 16 until the mid 1960’s and then managed his own smallholding as well as contract farming for neighbours and friends when Dad retired.
Living at the lovely old Mark Rolle farmhouse, though very cold at times with no electricity, only lamps, candles and stone hot water bottles, had many compensations, especially during the World War II period (1939-45). Everyone was always at home or near – no petrol or travel and only the odd bomb dropped on the farm as German pilots scuttled home. Grandad Tucker loved to play cards and draughts with me, though he cheated frequently when losing, a technique I was quick to learn and use to my own advantage when my own children and I played games together in later years. Grandma was a born gardener, full of old fashioned country skills. She was really kind but never let us play any games (board, cricket or soccer) on a Sunday because Sunday was the day of rest. We went to Chapel morning and evening and Sunday school as well from 2:30 to 3:30 pm and then entertained and fattened up the Preacher before he cycled back to his home, 10 kms away, at around 8-9 pm.
Gran and Granddad died at home in their mid/late 70’s and then sport was allowed on Sundays even though the three visits to Chapel continued for nearly the whole of the war. I think that the discipline and thinking about others probably had lasting value for us all.
One important aspect of Grandma Tucker’s power was to insist that I should learn the American Organ which had been lying idol and unloved in the back room for some years. There was no one available in our tiny community to teach me how to play Grandma’s Methodist hymnal tunes (some 968 or so). Fortunately, I had an ‘ear for music’ and, after listening to the hymns week after week after week, I was able to blast out her favourites without actually seeing any music or having any lessons. This proved to be extremely popular in the Granny popularity stakes race and has allowed me, to this day, to hear and reproduce music without a single lesson. Such are the beginnings of an Alpine musical contribution with many ski slopes and falls and very few Matterhorn moments.
So few were our musical assets, they amounted only to five Master’s Voice recordings of Dame Clara Butt (”Abide With Me ”), three Strauss Waltzes (the really well known ones), and an Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance version of the known words of Land of Hope and Glory – all massive favourites to this very day in the 2020’s.
My main (and only) reference book,apart from The Bible, was the edition of the Children’s Encyclopaedia beginning with the letter ‘C’. I read it many, many times and became an expert on all things beginning with the letter ‘C’: Constantinople, Caesar, Cleopatra, Cyprus, Cats, Cinnamon,Chopin, Cerebral Hemispheres and Cyclops. All other volumes from A to Z were missing.
ON THE FARM DURING WORLD WAR II
During the war years, we were allowed to have German prisoners, from a nearby Army camp, come and work 4 to 5 days a week to help with the production of food for the Country. They really loved coming to our farm because Dad and Mum were very respectful toward them and they all ate the same lunches that Mum cooked for the family. The only food they were sent to work with every day was a very large bread sandwich with very little filling. They worked hard and well and often made wooden presents for me to play with – aeroplanes, warships, little wooden chickens that pecked grain on a rotating board – all from thrown away lumps of firewood. After the war was over, some of those workers regularly came back to the farm as returning visitors. That was so great. Two continued to work as farmhands on a nearby neighbour’s small farm for many years.
Mum and Dad also provided our home as a refuge to an East London “Cockney” family, The Lloyds, who had been bombed out. We looked after them as evacuees for a couple of years until the war was over and they were safe to return to their previous home area. Fred, his mother and his sister were our “extended family”. He became a Baptist Minister and eventually I caught up with him and his son 25 years later in the little town of Sheffield, Tasmania.
My mother adored Dad and rarely, until the late 1950’s, left the farm for more than the odd few days. She was so very, very supportive in every way of my early admission that the only job I ever wanted to do (from age about 9) was to be a doctor. Dad fully supported all of my reasonable wants and needs, often very frugal ones given the financial state everyone was in post war. I was so very lucky that all the family, relatives and friends cared for each other. No shouting, fighting or abuse and Ian and I never had a cross word or argument throughout our lives. He taught me so very many useful things.
Mum’s father Mark Heywood died at age 36, when Mum was 5, from tuberculosis, and Mum was fostered out for 6 years with cousins until her mother, by then a housekeeper, eventually married the farm owner and took on his kids Stan and Ernest so that Mum could again be living with her Mother. So very sad. The family never really talked about those things and it was many years later, as a doctor, that I was able to fathom out what had happened. Grandma Nellie spoiled me at Xmas and the few other times that we managed to visit her in Stoke Rivers. Her Trifles were to kill for, probably because they were laced with Sherry flavouring.
MY BROTHER IAN
Ian was a dedicated, highly respected, adored father, farmer, Champion fly- fisherman and a National Clay Pigeon Shooter/Champion who won trophies across the Western Counties of the UK over many years. He taught me to fish, shoot rifles and shotguns, drive cars and tractors, smoke cigarettes and respect everybody, rich or poor, lessons that I have always valued and cherished.
He was buried on the slopes of Warkleigh Churchyard overlooking the farmland he loved and looked after so well. VALE: Ian, my friend, much loved and much missed brother.