The Life and Times of a Country Lad

By Clive Towle

This is the life story of Clive Towle, born in 1939 a few months before the beginning of WW2.

A shy lad who grew up to be adventurous and creative and admits to still being a little shy on occasions. Clive has experienced many things in life, mostly good, but some not so good.

His story relates to many different aspects of life that, suggested by some, few could equal.

In his own words, “I've done so many things in my life, quite a few people have said, 'You should write a book', so I did.”

He covers the war, school, farming, army, various jobs, self employed, two marriages and old age.

A fairly compelling read to say the least.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Feb 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9781398486423

Clive Towle

As a retired mechanical engineer Ive always been creative, designing and building farm machinery, making and mending things and doing some truck driving. Im also a collector of various things including vintage tractors, old tools, Dinky toys, cigarette lighters and cards to name just a few. It was a cigarette card featuring a centaur that inspired me to write this book. Id written a few articles for magazines and my local paper, so a book seemed like a good idea and a possible step further, so I did it. I hope you like it. Clive.

Book preview

About the Author

Author, Clive Towle, born in 1939 a few months before the beginning of WW2 shares his life-time memories with the readers. This is a full and very lively story covering many good, and not so good aspects of life. But with honesty and belief in himself.

Dedication

I’d like to dedicate this to my grandmother who was my hero. Also, to my son, Harry, and daughter, Maurilla, who are by my side whenever I need them.

Copyright Information ©

Clive Towle 2024

The right of Clive Towle to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398486416 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398486423 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgements

Alan Dawson, Dorothy, John Bell, Martin Blacker, Ray Jones, Cynthia, Albert Smith family Collector’s Gazette.

Appleby home front.

Introduction

Books normally have an introduction and although I’ve written some odd things in my book, I do consider myself to be fairly normal.

However, I have been called a few things in my time and one of them was being a big head.

Mainly because I do know a lot of things. People have said ‘how come you know so much?’ And my answer has usually been the same. How long is an apprenticeship? Five years, how old am I? I have had time for a few apprenticeships and I love learning.

So, I have written my life story as it has been to the best of my knowledge and included a lot of the things I have done and achieved and I will say I am proud of most of them.

But it is common knowledge that no one is perfect and I admit I have done a couple of things I maybe shouldn’t have. Never, ever anything bad but usually trying to help someone when I should have minded my own business.

So, I apologise if I have over promoted myself, but this is me. (Blame me, mam n dad!)

All people and characters mentioned in this book have been done so with all good intentions and just been included as fact during my life. Some names have been changed for legal reasons.

I have written it as it happened and history is a fact and cannot be changed.

Chapter 1

I was born on 8 January 1939 in the village of New Holland on the south bank of the river Humber opposite Hull.

We lived in a row of small terraced houses known as Cook’s Row; the real name was Holland Place. The first thing I can remember would be late 1942, I was coming up to four years old and I actually started school not long after, well before I was five, I remember we had to carry our gas mask with us at all times; gas mask in one hand, pack up in the other, no school dinners. A dark night and sometime after tea, the air raid siren started howling, bombers coming.

My dad worked away at that time; he was an electrician in power stations.

So, coats on and mum piled me up with some blankets, my little sister Wendy nestled in the clothes basket and off to the air raid shelter which was only about 40 yards away.

As we were only a mile and half from Hull, we caught quite a few bombs that missed their target. We sometimes stayed outside and listened to the, what we called them then were Buzz Bombs, the VI rockets, they sounded like a motor bike and as long as you could hear that, you knew they were still on their way. But if the noise stopped, into the shelter a bit quick, it was coming down. Then the drone of the German bombers and the horrendous noise of the bombs dropping on Hull.

One morning, we got up and there was a quite large lump of shrapnel (bomb fragment) stuck in our back door. A bomb had fallen not too far behind our row of houses. I remember later catching tadpoles in the hole it left which was by then a pond. My dad kept that lump for many years but when he died, I couldn’t find it so I don’t know what he did with it.

Soon after, we moved to live with grandma and grandad, I don’t know why, but we did.

I even remember Aunt Iris getting her call up papers as she still lived at home.

The post came through the letter box and I ran to get it, I could read by then and said, This is for you, auntie. She read it and said, I have to go and join the war. I can’t remember what the reaction was from whoever was there.

One night after the all-clear had sounded, we were in grandma’s back yard, from where we could see all across the Humber from Salt End to Hessle. Grandma sat me on the wall and we looked across to Hull, It was a sheet of flames from salt end to just past where the ferry landed. I knew this because as Aunt Iris worked in Hull she often took me with her across on the ferry. That night, I remember saying to grandma, Is there a war every year? but I have never remembered what she replied.

Not a lot but I was only 3/4 years old.

Two years later, I remember the 1947 Winter in New Holland. There was a very large hedge on the east side of the street and a snow drift formed to about eight or nine feet high going half way across the street. We kids climbed over it going to school every day right until the Easter Holl’s and it disappeared. What would they do now? Shut the school!

The following years were some of my happiest childhood years as my best mate Terry Osgerby lived on a farm where his dad was foreman, but I really didn’t spend a lot of time with him until we left New Holland Junior School and moved to Barton on Humber seniors in 1950

I spent many hours on the farm with my mate, evenings, weekends and I actually started tractor driving when I was 13, just a bit at harvest time etc.

As mates, we would always be challenging each other with what to do next. One of our best projects was ‘Bird nesting,’ not to take eggs, but to keep a record of progress.

We drew a big map of the area, including all fields and hedges and logged all nests we found. We kept a complete record of all activities from eggs laid to hatching and fledging.

Then we decided to go one step further.

We would make our own nests and see if we could get birds to use them.

Now most birds prefer to make their own nests, but there are some that will take over from another’s, sparrows being one. Well, we built a nest in a big bush to look a bit like a Blackbird’s nest and we actually got tree sparrows to use it.

Another mate was Lionel Smith and I remember as some kids wore hot nail boots’ in those days, Lionel and me decided to add a trilby hat. I can see us now, short trousers, hob nail boots and a trilby hat to go to school, daft, but we loved it!

During my senior school years, I had lots of mates and one was Charlie Sampson.

We got to be good mates as well and Charlie still remembers the time we were playing a game we called ‘ton weight.’ There would be two teams of five or six each, one team would crouch down starting at a wall. Then the next member would crouch behind the first with his head between the legs of the one in front and so on. Then you had a line of backs to jump on. The other team would then run up and leapfrog on to the line of backs and try to get as near to the wall as possible, or until the line collapsed. I was in the team crouched down; third in line I think. Nothing seemed to be happening, so I pulled my head out to have a look just as Charlie came thundering down in his hob nail boots and jumped. You’ve maybe guessed what happened, Charlie’s boot got me square across the side of my head, I didn’t pass out but the game was called off for that play time.

Just a couple of bits about school. The head mistress at New Holland infants was Julia Morgan and she also taught my mum. One of my teachers in Barton seniors was Harry Furness, and he also taught my dad.

One Saturday, it happened to be 31 January 1953, Terry and me decided to go to the pictures in Barrow. At that time Barrow-on-Humber had a cinema.

I biked to meet Terry at the farm which was about half way to Barrow Haven.

We went to Barrow through Barrow Haven, the weather was terrible, but we saw our film.

We obviously came back the same way, but when we got to the bridge at Barrow Haven, on the other side, it was flooded and water was pouring over the top of the haven bank.

We ventured down, but it was about a foot deep or more and was pouring into the fields.

I was just 14 Terry was 13 and maybe you can imagine what we were thinking, even now I can’t! But we decided to carry our bikes and climb the bank, through the water that was pouring over the top and see if we could get through it. I seem to remember slipping and Terry caught me before I was swept away. Terry was, I’m pleased to say, a big strong lad.

But we made it to where the road was visible and we managed to carry on home.

Now, you may have guessed Terry and I were best mates, we spent a lot of time together. At school, we did lots of things and one of them was gardening. The school had quite a large area that had been gardened and the school had decided to bring it back to life.

It had been divided into small plots and in our last year, we were paired up and given a plot to work. We could make our own decisions about what we wanted to grow and it would be a class competition to see who ended up with the best garden. Terry and me had obviously decided to work together, and guess what, we won.

Well, the prizes we won were books, I don’t know how they knew but mine was on birds and Terry’s was on butterflies, our favourite subjects. I still have mine.

On leaving school, I went to work at Kirkby’s farm about three miles up Brigg road from Barton). Charlie actually lived on the farm with his three brothers, mam and dad and a lodger. So, Charlie and me continued our friendship at work.

My first week at work on the farm was part of the ‘muck leading’ gang.

Now you have to realise that in 1954 everything was done by hand and in May it was time to muck out the crew yards.

A crew yard is a large covered, or half covered shed where the cattle spend winter and our farm had two of these. The ‘muck’ is created by starting with a clean floor and then a covering of straw which is added to once or twice a week to keep the cattle clean.

So, by spring time, it could have reached about three-foot thick, so mucking out time.

The gang was usually three tractors and flat trailers, three drivers and two more men, one in the crew yard loading and one in the field unloading. The drivers would help at each end loading and unloading. My job was unloading in the comer of the field making a muck hill. (That field was going to be for potatoes next year.)

My official title was ‘stood teem’ which meant I stayed in the field all day and helped the driver unload each trailer as it arrived.

Our day was from 7am to 5 pm, 8:30–9 for breakfast and 12:30–1:30 for dinner.

So, when those times came around, you sat with which ever driver was there at the time, on the floor leaning on a tractor wheel.

Now hygiene hadn’t been invented in those days, so if you happened to drop your sandwich on the floor, among the ‘muck,’ you just rubbed any bits of muck off and carried on eating it. (Creating a good immune system.)

Well, I did that for about three weeks until the job was done, then I was told I would be working with the game keeper for a while.

The game keeper was a really great fella and he and his wife sort of took me under their wing. For a lot of the time, we were working together he would take me home with him at dinner (lunch) time and have dinner, with them.

Just for the record, his name was John Harry Lidget and his father, Edgar Lidget, was head keeper for Lord Yarborough of Brocklesby.

So, I spent the rest of the year helping to raise pheasant chicks so when they matured, rich farmers could shoot them for fun, because they didn’t need them for food!

One chick I remember was quite an unlucky little fella. One day while running free, it was caught by a Kestrel, but luckily, I saw it and grabbed the shot gun and fired a shot in the air.

Tlie Kestrel dropped the chick and I went to pick it up to find it was almost unharmed. A few days later, I accidentally trapped it under the coop when I was moving it. But again, it was OK and I even got it to come to me regularly and it would feed out of my hand.

As the year moved on to the shooting season, I often thought about why we were doing this breeding, just so these beautiful birds could be shot for fun!

There are many different species of pheasant and some are the most beautiful birds I have ever seen, one particular one was called a Chinese and a beautiful cream colour, speckled with lots of other colours.

However, the shooting season had arrived and I had to go hush beating this particular day. (A bush beater is someone who knocks hell out of the countryside to scare the wildlife into flying so rich morons can shoot them for fun.)

So, I was bush beating in this particular wood where we had released our young birds into the wild.

You may have guessed what is coming next. My ‘pet’ pheasant was stood in front of me. Someone to one side of me said something and I just picked my pet up and threw in the air hoping it would fly behind me away from the guns, but it didn’t.

As we were near the end of the wood, Bang, and my little bird was to be hung on a rail with lots of others as just another bit of meat for some rich b******d that didn’t really want it anyway! I stood in that wood at 15 years old and cried my eyes out!

You may have gathered that I do not like blood sport of any kind and I find it barbaric and utterly selfish of those who do it! They are committing murder, for fun, of innocent wild life who have more right to be on this planet than we have as they are not destroying it as we are, The keeper and me stayed friends and I have friends now who are game keepers, but that doesn’t change my views on what they do!

During this time, I had met my first girlfriend Dorothy, an absolutely beautiful girl. We spent some wonderful times together and will never forget her. Sometimes, on a Sunday morning, I would cycle to Barrow on Humber, where she lived only about two and a half miles away. Then we would walk back to my home ready for Sunday dinner at about 2:30, when my dad got back from the pub! From there, we