About the Author

Having left school without any qualifications, apart from winning

a school writing competition, David joined his father who was a

nurseryman and landscape gardener. These stories from the early

part of his working life tell of some of the characters his father

employed, David’s friends and their escapades.

Dedication

There’s a saying… “Behind every great man, there is a woman”.

Whilst not claiming to be a great man, there are two great women

behind this man. To my late wife, Patricia, without whose help,

understanding and support, this book would not have been

written.

And to my wife, Susan, who with her love and understanding has

persuaded me to once more pick up the pen and finish this book.

D a v i d G . C o x

A S L I C E O F L I F E :

A C O L L E C T I O N O F

S H O R T S T O R I E S

Copyright © David G. Cox (2014)

The right of David G. Cox to be identified as author of this work

has been asserted by him in accordance with section 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 unauthorized act in relation to this

publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims

for damages.

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

Library.

ISBN 978 1 78455 336 4

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2014)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LB

Printed and bound in Great Britain

CONTENTS

THE PEARSONS 11

GALLOP EASY TRAINED BY GO LIGHTLY 15

THE ACTOR 19

THE GARAGE BASE 23

THE WASPS NEST 27

THE WILDERNESS 31

OLD GEORGE 35

THE JERSEY CALF 39

THE MOTOR BIKE 43

THE ROLLER 47

DICKIE'S MOWER 50

THE OLD CAR 54

THE FISHING TRIP 58

DOODLES 62

THE SHOOTERS 67

SNIP IT QUICK 71

THE FLOWER SHOW 74

THE NEW GREENHOUSE 77

FATHER 82

THE PEARSONS

Like many thousands of young people I left school at the age

of 15 before the advent of A levels and O levels and without

knowing what I really wanted to do as a career. My father

owned and ran a successful landscape gardening and nursery

business and he was keen for me to join him, and so at the age

of fifteen I went to work for him in the family firm. When I

joined, my father was in the process of moving the business

from the small premises near Slough to a much larger site in a

rural village just outside Windsor.

A firm of contractors owned and run by friends of my

father was engaged to clear the site, construct a roadway and

car park and to erect the glasshouses and various out buildings.

At that time we still lived not far from the old business

premises in a small village near Slough. The new premises

were large enough for father to have a house built on the site

which would be more practical, but while the new house was

under construction we had to travel to the new premises each

day. While the core of the new premises was being built my

father and I concentrated on moving the stock of plants and

machinery and started to lay out the planting areas ready to

plant the next season’s stock. Unfortunately the new plot was

old meadow land and had not been worked for some years, and

our small cultivators that we had used at the old site were not

man enough to tackle the job.

Being a rural setting we were constantly visited by the

local characters, one of these was George who worked as a

gardener for one of the local gentry who lived in an old manor

house in the village. On hearing of our difficulties George

suggested that we contact the Pearson brothers who were the

local odd job boys and would undertake any job on offer.

There were three brothers John, Roy and William and one

sister Nora. Nora, the eldest of the Pearsons’ four children

looked after them and was housekeeper, head cook and bottle

washer and general dogsbody. She was a very large lady who

was always jolly and she would help anyone out if she could.

She was married to Eric who worked for the Electricity Board

but on the weekends he would help out his wife's brothers in

their various escapades. Although they had been married for

several years they did not have any children and Eric who was

as thin and tiny as Nora was large made up for this void in

their lives by keeping tropical fish and exotic birds. Eric was a

keen bird fancier and kept a large number and variety of birds

in aviaries at the family home which was down an old unmade

lane leading to one of the local farms. John was the second

eldest and was a tall rugged man with an untidy beard. He was

the fixer and he claimed that he could fix anything and he

usually could. John looked after the pigs that the Pearsons kept

on their small holding and would butcher them when the time

came to fill the family’s larder. Roy came next and he was a

short dumpy man, nicknamed the dreamer; Roy was always

dreaming of better things and he was convinced that one day

he would become a millionaire. Roy used one of the family’s

many old lorries to deliver coal on contract for a local coal

merchant in Windsor and most of the time he was as black as a

coot covered in soot. The youngest member of the family was

William; known as Willie to the others he was just an

impressionable lad in his late teens who liked fast cars and fast

women. Willie drove like a maniac anything from motorcycles

to ten ton trucks and usually helped out Roy with his coal

deliveries. The parents were both elderly and retired and the

whole family lived together in a long low bungalow that had

been constructed from two old railway carriages which had

been joined together and had been extended from time to time

as the family grew. Their homestead covered about two and a

half acres and they had erected a couple of old ex-army Nissan

huts that they had acquired at an auction sale, along with other

various out buildings.

The Pearsons’ kept pigs and chickens and earned their

living doing anything for anybody who would pay them to do

it.

So, my father contacted the Pearson boys by leaving a

message at the local pub, the Red Lion, which was the

Pearsons’ watering hole, and one day they duly arrived all

piled in to an old battered almost unrecognisable twenty year

old Morris van. They scrambled out one by one and lined up

leaning on the old van while John who was the unofficial

foreman and my father discussed what he wanted them to

undertake, ‘No problem,’ said John, ‘we will do that for you

on Saturday morning.’ John and my father agreed a price and

the Pearson boys all piled back in to the old van and roared off

up the drive leaving a trail of white smoke pouring out from

the exhaust pipe which was held up with a piece of fencing

wire.

Saturday morning came and soon we heard the clatter of

machinery being driven along the road and in to our driveway.

When we looked out of the window we were stunned by the

sight which met our eyes. Rumbling down the drive was an old

Fordson Standard tractor with just the faintest sign of the

original green paint showing through the rust. The exhaust

pipe was a length of old guttering down pipe which had been

jammed on the stub of the manifold when the old exhaust had

broken off. The wheels were of the old metal type without

rubber tyres and trailing behind was an old rusty converted

horse drawn single furrow plough which also had iron wheels.

Riding on this contraption were all four of the Pearson

brothers and following closely behind were the mother, father

and sister Nora in the old Morris van. When we had got over

the shock of seeing this procession and its participants arrive

we ventured out to have a closer look. By this time the

Pearsons had dismounted and the argument had begun as to

where to start and who was doing what. John the fixer was

busy getting the plough ready for use with the aid of the

biggest hammer I have ever seen and lengths of old fencing

wire to stop bits from falling off. It was decided that Willie

was to drive the tractor and Roy would ride on the plough and

operate the various levers that would normally have been

operated by the ploughman walking behind his heavy horse.

Eric was to stand on the sidelines directing the operation while

John was to be held in reserve for when some part or other of

the contraption broke down. Mother, father and Nora settled

down on a nearby grass bank with the refreshments to watch

the proceedings.

Well, the ploughing started with Willie roaring off as if it

were the start of a Grand Prix and Roy falling

unceremoniously off the back of the plough. Willie stopped

and Roy remounted and the ploughing continued for most of

the day with innumerable stops for John to repair the

machinery and for the Pearson boys to refresh themselves from

the mountain of food and drink which had been brought along

by Nora. We just stood there amazed at the spectacle, as at one

stage all four of the Pearsons were perched on one part of the

machinery or other shouting instructions to each other as to

what to do. At one stage, three of them were hanging on to the

plough trying to get it to bite into the soil. When they had

finally finished the meadow looked like the battle field of the

Somme; there were no neat furrows laid out in lines as you

would expect when you see a newly ploughed field, there were

just big holes and mounds with the turf still showing in patches

in some parts of the meadow. George who had suggested that

we contact the Pearson boys came along just then to see the

fun and asked, ‘How's the ploughing match coming along?’

and just laughed. It was then we found out that George was the

local practical joker and that we had well and truly been the

butt of one of his practical jokes. After this experience we used

the local agricultural contractor until we purchased our own

tractor and implements and I learned to operate them.

GALLOP EASY TRAINED BY GO LIGHTLY

To help run the business, my father had to employ several

people one of whom was Harry. Harry was getting on a bit and

had been out of work for some months and was getting on his

wife's nerves being stuck around the house all day. So, one day

when he visited the nursery to buy some plants he asked Father

if there was any chance of him working for us. Father in one of

his rare moments of positive decision making agreed to take

him on and Harry joined the firm working part time mostly in

the afternoons.

Harry had spent most of his life in a factory operating

some machine or other making screws for the motor trade and

had recently been made redundant, but he was a keen gardener

and had a good all round knowledge of gardening, which was

why Father had decided to hire him. He was a tall, thin man

who was always well dressed and he usually wore a suit to

work, together with his trilby hat with a small sprig of feathers

stuck in the band. He rode an old black Raleigh bicycle which

he kept polished up as if new and he would pedal slowly up the

drive smoking a cigar most afternoons. He would change into

his overalls and his suit and hat would be carefully hung on a

hanger in the shed the men used for their tea and lunch breaks.

Apart from gardening, Harry's other great love was the horses,

and most days he would call in at the local betting shop on the

way to work and place a bet.

Another member of the work force was Frank, a short

stocky chap and a real countryman who loved working

outdoors. Instead of working on the land he had been

apprenticed as a stone mason when he left school and worked

making and fitting replacement decorative stone parts for

churches and other classic buildings, but for the last few years

he had worked for the local council until he retired at the age

of sixty. He came to work for Father to keep himself occupied

during his retirement and with his skills he was quite a

valuable addition to our work force.

Now Frank was a real worker but Harry had only one

speed and that was dead slow. He used to skive off whenever

he could for a quick smoke , finding some corner in which to

hide, and Frank would track him down by the foul smell from

his cheap cigars and the plume of smoke rising from behind

some bush or other.

Frank would always be saying ‘Where's Harry hiding

now? and off he would go and look for him. One day in

particular Harry was nowhere to be found and Frank set off to

search for him. When Frank found Harry he was asleep in the

wheelbarrow down by the compost heap. It was then that

Frank gave Harry the nickname that was to stick with him all

the time he worked for us. Due to Harry's fondness for the

horses Frank nicknamed him ‘Gallop easy trained by go

lightly' as if he were a racehorse.

One day Frank and Harry were sent out to erect some

fencing for a customer at Datchet near Windsor. Harry was

hammering the posts in to the ground whilst Frank was

steadying them but Harry kept missing the top of the post and

kept sending the sledge hammer skimming down the side of

the post. Frank was getting rather annoyed at Harry and

jokingly laid his hand on top of the post and said to Harry,

‘That's where you are supposed to hit it’. At that moment

Harry delivered one of the few blows that afternoon that

landed on target and sent the sledge hammer crashing down on

Frank’s hand. Luckily the blow lacked force and no permanent

damage was done but Frank let out a few good expletives

about Harry's parentage.

Harry was always rather slow to put his hand in his pocket

and whenever the lads went to the pub at lunch time Harry was

always the last one up to the bar and very seldom had to buy a

round of drinks. I remember he was always on the lookout for

anything he could acquire and therefore avoid paying for it,

and most days he would ride off on his bicycle carrying

something or other that he had acquired.

One day he had acquired some timber that was going

begging and had carefully laid it down by the side of his

bicycle ready to take home that evening when he finished

work. Frank had spotted Harry carefully hiding the timber and

decided to play a joke on him. He found some six inch nails

and nailed the timber to the side of the shed where Harry had

left his bicycle. That evening when Harry tried to collect the

timber that he had secreted, the entire staff hid behind the shed

watching him trying to figure out why he could not lift his

cache. We could not keep quiet and when we all came out

from behind the shed laughing Harry was not amused. After

lighting one of his cigars he got on his bicycle and pedalled off

home leaving his timber behind.

Harry remained with us for several years and Frank and

Harry worked together on many jobs covering all aspects of

the landscaping side of the business from decorative stone wall

construction to lawn laying. They were inseparable and always

worked together and became great friends. I learnt a great deal

from both Frank and Harry, especially Frank who taught me to

lay flagstone terraces and patios and to build decorative brick

and stone walls.

Harry, much to the annoyance of my mother who

disagreed with all forms of gambling, eventually got us all

involved with the horses and we all used to have flutter but

only on the big races like the Gold cup, the Derby and the

Grand National. Harry would act as the bookies’ runner and

would place all the bets for us and collect our winnings. We

often won but it wasn't a lot as we would only place a small bet

usually a shilling or two each way. We continued to play jokes

on poor Harry but in the end he took them in the spirit in

which they were made and we all had a good laugh.

Harry was the person who got me involved with tobacco

and I joined him in smoking. We would compete with each

other to see who could obtain the cheapest, foulest smelling

cigars. Later on, after numerous complaints from my mother

about the terrible smell from the cigars I took up smoking a

pipe and I smoked one for many years until one day I heard

that an old acquaintance had died of lung cancer. I stopped that

day but I guess it was too late, as I was to be diagnosed with

cancer several years later.

Sadly Frank suffered a heart attack one summer and a

short while later he died. We closed the firm down for the

afternoon of his funeral and we all attended. It was never the

same for Harry after Frank died, and although he continued to

work for us for some time after, he eventually left and retired. I

think that he missed his old mate Frank so much that he did not

like to be around where there were so many happy memories.

THE ACTOR

The River Thames was not far from where we lived and along

its banks there were several very large houses and mansions,

one of which had been converted into large self-contained

flats, with the grounds laid out as a communal garden.

The residents had joined together to form a committee to

manage the maintenance of the grounds which covered several

acres. They invited tenders for the maintenance of the grounds

and my father and I were eventually successful in being

awarded the contract. The residents were all successful

wealthy people and included an actor and an advertising

executive. The actor was a tubby bald-headed man and was

well known for his appearances in several major films as well

as television appearances, and in his spare time he was a keen

gardener. The advertising executive was a tall thin man who

sported a huge handle bar moustache and who was constantly

being ribbed by the actor who said he could sell sand to the

Arabs.

Both these men, along with some of the other residents,

were members of the gardening committee. They both lived in

ground floor apartments which looked out over the gardens

and the river to the rear of the house.

Having been awarded the contract for the maintenance of

the grounds, the first thing we did was to attend a meeting of

the garden committee to discuss some modifications they

wanted to the area around the mansion itself. The committee's

requirements were duly noted down and we drew up the plans

and presented them at a further committee meeting. The plans

were duly accepted with some minor modifications and shortly

afterwards the work began. This included the removal of some

shrubs and trees and replanting others in different locations.

Also included in the plans was the provision of some gravel

pathways that were to wind down through the gardens to the

river bank where we were to construct a paved terrace with

provision for the mooring of the residents’ motor launches.

Well, the work started and the unwanted trees and shrubs

were removed, the ground landscaped and contoured ready for

the planting of the new specimens. The new trees and shrubs

were delivered and planting began and was progressing well.

However, one morning, shortly after our men arrived at the site

we got a telephone call from Frank who was acting as the

foreman for the job. ‘I think you should come round,’ he said.

Father and I drove to the site and when we arrived we could

not believe our eyes. Several of the newly planted trees and

shrubs had been dug up and were lying on the ground

alongside the now empty holes where they had been planted,

looking as though a family of giant moles had moved in. The

actor and the advertising executive were standing there arguing

with each other, with Frank and one of the lady members of

the gardening committee trying to calm them down. Now,

these two chaps were normally the best of friends but that

morning they looked as though they were about to kill each

other; insults and fists were flying and it was getting quite

violent.

‘What on earth is going on?’ asked my father. ‘It's these

trees and things,’ said the actor. ‘They were planted in a

position where they would block my view of the river’. ‘And

he wants to put them where they will block mine’ said the

advertising executive. ‘Who dug them up?’ asked my father.

‘He did’ they both said simultaneously. Well the argument

went on for quite a while until a compromise was reached and

new locations for the plants were agreed upon.

When all was settled and the two chaps had made friends

again, the actor who was 'resting' as they call it in the business

when they are not working suggested that we should all have a

drink, and he went in to his flat returning shortly with a

mountain of booze. Father mentioned something about not

paying for his men to spend time partying and the actor said

that he would pay the days wages for all the men himself. So

we all stopped work and had a great spontaneous party down

by the river bank, where we all got rather tipsy, especially

Father.

When we had finished the work around the house, we

started on the construction of the terracing and mooring

facilities down by the river. Now, the residents really wanted

lights installed along the terrace so they could party down by

the river and telephone points so that they could conduct their

business from the terrace. This of course was before the arrival

of the mobile telephone. This involved us digging a trench all

the way from the house across the grounds down to the river

which was quite a distance.

Well, Frank and his team dug the trench but we had to call

in some specialist tradesmen to install the wiring. The

electricians came and completed the installation of the wiring

for the lights but we had to wait for the men from the GPO as

it was then to come and install the telephone cabling. As the

residents had wanted to be able to connect their boats to the

telephone we had to run the trench right up to the water’s edge,

and it would eventually be covered by the flagstone terracing.

Unfortunately, the wash of the river as the pleasure boats went

past gradually washed the soil out from around the hole that

we had left between the concrete walls of the terracing through

one of the drainage holes that we had put in to allow the water

to drain away from the garden beyond the terrace.

Well, the telephone men were a long time in coming to lay

their cables and the hole that we had left was getting bigger

and bigger as the days went by and to stop anyone from falling

in Frank laid a piece of plywood across the hole.

Unfortunately, the piece of plywood he had chosen was not

very strong and would not take the weight of the average man.

One day when we were all on site for a meeting, the actor

came down to the terrace where we stood. He was dressed in a

black blazer, white trousers and wearing a peaked hat with

gold braid around the rim. He strutted around and walked up

and down the terrace inspecting the view, letting everyone

admire him and his outfit. Suddenly he stepped on the plywood

that Frank had placed over the hole left for the telephone men.

There was aloud crack and the plywood broke and down he

went. He sank slowly into the river until just his hat was left

floating on the water. For a moment no one said anything but

then we all burst out laughing and Frank and I raced over and

pulled him out. He stood there on the terrace soaking wet and

covered in mud and bits of weed with water running out from

the bottom of his trousers. After a few minutes the actor

himself saw the funny side of things and laughed as well and

again we all had another impromptu party, compliments of this

most generous man.

THE GARAGE BASE

My father had a long-time friend Bill Adaway; they were both

gardeners and they also were both frequenters of Bill’s local

watering hole, The Three Bells. Bill had three children, two

boys and a girl. His eldest boy Tom was a bit of a lad and took

a shine to my sister Gillian. The outcome was that Tom and

Gillian married. Tom at that time was working as a lorry driver

for a building firm and they were enjoying life until the firm

went bust. This left Tom without a job and so Gillian asked

Father if he would employ him. Tom and I always got on well

and so I persuaded Father to take on Tom as the landscaping

work was growing steadily.

With Tom, Frank and Harry on board the business grew

steadily and we were able to take on more and more work. In

order that we could have two teams working on two different

jobs at the same time Father decided to buy a second-hand

pickup truck to complement the two vans we already had. He

bought a Jowett Bradford half ton pickup truck from Curly,

one of the local scrap dealers, and Tom and I were given the

task of refurbishing it into working order. We enlisted the help

of Don, a mechanic who lived in the village and in our spare

time we all worked on the old truck until it was serviceable

once more.

The old Bradford was a willing workhorse although it was

only equipped with a small unusual two cylinder horizontally

opposed engine, but we used it for many years and ran it on

tractor vapourising oil mixed fifty/fifty with petrol for a time.

This was not strictly legal, but at this time there was a period

of petrol rationing. It ran quite well on the vapourising mixture

although it smoked a bit, but at least we managed to continue

working during this period. At last the poor old Bradford

showed its age and it became more and more unreliable. When

it finally died we returned it to Curly who had sold it to us and

he broke it up for scrap.

One of the first jobs where we used the pickup was on the

construction of a garage base for a customer in Wraysbury. I

drove the little Ferguson tractor to the site with the hydraulic

bucket attached and Tom drove the Bradford. On the first day

Tom and I dug out the area for the garage base using the Fergie

and bucket and installed the shuttering to contain the concrete.

The next day the ready mixed concrete that Father had ordered

arrived and the lorry driver started to offload it. Luckily we

were able to get the lorry near enough for the driver to offload

the concrete directly into the shuttering. As the driver of the

lorry continued his task Tom and I looked at each other and

thought, `There's too much concrete here'. When the driver

finally finished offloading we were confronted with an

enormous mound of wet concrete that was overflowing the

shuttering of the garage base and steadily covering the

surrounding garden. ‘The old man's ordered too much,’ said

Tom; the old man was how we reverently referred to my

father. ‘What the devil are we going to do with the excess?’ I

said to Tom. ‘We'll have to take it back to the yard,’ said Tom.

‘What in?’ I asked. ‘The pickup,’ replied Tom.

Well, we finished laying the garage base and it didn't look

too bad, but the timber that Father had given us to use was a bit

too thin for the job. He had as usual gone for the cheapest he

could and it just wasn't up to the job, so the base wobbled a bit

here and there where the thin shuttering distorted.

With the garage base laid we loaded up the pickup with the

first load of now not so wet concrete. The poor old pickup was

right down on its rear suspension and we were concerned

about the springs not being able to take the load as we had

much more than half a ton of the stuff. We set off back to the

yard with the first load of concrete, wondering what on earth

we were going to do with it when we got there. The poor old

Bradford was swaying from side to side and by the time we

arrived back at the yard the concrete was already beginning to

firm up. We dashed into the office to find Father. We

explained the problem and Father was convinced that he had

not made a mistake but that the lorry driver had delivered too

much. ‘I don't care who is wrong,’ I said ‘But I would like to

know what we are going to do with it as it is starting to set and

there are several more loads to bring back yet’.

As luck would have it, as we were deciding what to do

with the concrete, Frank and Harry returned early from the job

that they were on and came into the office. Father as usual

came up with the answer. ‘Frank can go back with Tom and

collect the next load, and you and Harry can get the tractor and

dig out the base for those new cold frames that we have been

going to put up’.

While Tom and Frank unloaded the concrete and went for

another load, Harry and I started work on the base for the new

cold frames. By the time Tom and Frank returned with the

second load of by now very stiff concrete we had just finished

constructing the shuttering to hold the mix.

Luckily, by spraying the concrete with water, we were able

to soften it sufficiently to allow us to lay it, and by seven

o'clock that evening Tom and Frank had collected all of the

excess and Harry and I had laid the base. Father of course, as

usual, had disappeared long before we finished. Tom and I

often wondered if Father had it planned all along. With the

base for the cold frames finished Frank and Harry left for

home somewhat later than usual and Tom and I were left with

the task of cleaning up the pickup and the tools. It took us until

well into the evening to clean off the concrete from the pickup,

and when we had finished we paid one of our rare visits to our

local pub, the Red Lion, to recover from our hard day's work

and downed a couple of well-earned pints. As luck would have

it we met George in the pub and we had to spend the remainder

of the evening listening to him taking the mickey out of us.

George had been milking the cows that his father kept in a

meadow opposite the pub and afterwards, before going home

he had made a detour for a few jars.

When the landlord finally called time we had downed

more than the couple of pints we had intended to and we all

left for home, George pedalling away very unsteadily on his

rusty old trade bicycle complete with the churn that he used to

transport the milk home. He finally made it home that night

after a couple of excursions into the ditch by the side of the

road where he lost most of the milk that he had collected that

evening.

Tom and I staggered home together holding each other up,

Tom to face his wife, my sister, and me to face the wrath of

my mother who did not agree with drinking; she let us both

know it the next morning.

THE WASPS NEST

My Uncle John was a builder; he was rather tiny like my

mother, about five foot three, but he had a big heart and a grin

like a Cheshire Cat. He had an infectious laugh and loved a

good joke. Uncle John’s passion was trout fishing and he

would often take me with him when I was a lad, and we would

visit some out of the way place and spend a relaxing day

together. We never caught much but we both enjoyed our

outings which usually ended up in some country pub to partake

of the falling down water, another of Uncle John’s loves.

Uncle John was awarded the contract to build a large

Georgian style country house in the village of Wargrave in

Berkshire. The house was to be set in its own grounds of some

five acres and Uncle John asked Father to fence the perimeter

of the site and to landscape the grounds. So Father, Tom and I

set off one day to start work. When we arrived at the site, apart

from where the builders were working, the entire plot was

completely overgrown and we spent the next few weeks

clearing the site and surveying the boundaries to establish

where the fencing would run. It took us about a further three

weeks to complete the fencing and as soon as that was finished

we turned our attention to landscaping the grounds. The first

task was to plough, rotovate, level and then consolidate the

ground so that the turf could be laid down to construct the

lawns. It took a further week to accomplish this and our old

Ferguson tractor found the task too much so Father had to hire

a more powerful machine from one of the local dealers. We

had almost finished levelling the ground when, one morning,

whilst I was ploughing the last strip, the tractor stopped dead

and the engine stalled. I restarted the engine and tried to pull

away again but the tractor would not budge. I got down and

found that the plough was entangled with a length of old pipe

which was buried in the soil. Tom came over to see what was

wrong and I explained the problem, ‘I'll get the heavy chain

and we'll pull it out’ he said. While Tom went to fetch the

chain I disentangled the plough from the obstruction and drove

over to the edge of the site and uncoupled the plough. With the

chain firmly attached to the buried pipe I opened the throttle on

the tractor and slowly let out the clutch and let the tractor take

the strain. At first nothing happened and Tom said ‘Give it a

bit more throttle’, I duly obliged and the tractor began to raise

its front wheels off the ground as the strain increased.

Suddenly, the tractor lurched forward and the pipe came out of

the ground and so did wasps. Apparently the old pipe was the

entrance to a large wasp nest that had probably been growing

steadily in size over the years while the site had been

overgrown.

Tom ran for cover with me in close pursuit. I just managed

to switch off the tractor and jump down from the seat and I

think I beat Tom to the shed where the builders kept their

supplies and quickly closed the door behind us. Father and

Uncle John of course thought it was a great joke and stood

there laughing, ‘You can't leave the tractor there,’ said Father,

‘We have got to finish off the levelling, the turf is arriving

tomorrow.’ ‘If you want it you get it,’ both Tom and I replied

in unison from safely inside the shed.

When we finally ventured outside the shed the wasps were

still angrily buzzing around their now badly damaged nest

showing no sign of calming down. An old chap who had been

leaning on the fence watching the work progress walked down

the drive and introduced himself. It turned out that he was a

retired pest control officer and he still had both his licence and

contacts at the local council where he had worked and offered

to see if he could get something to kill the wasps. The next

morning the old chap came over and said that he had managed

to obtain the poison and would treat the wasp nest that night

when it was all quiet and there was no danger of any one being

stung. The next day we returned to work confident that the

wasps were dead and would not trouble us anymore. I hooked

up the plough to the tractor to finish turning the ground which

hadn’t been completed.

All was going well until I came once more to the place

where the wasp nest had been. As soon as the plough dug into

the soil out came the wasps again and once more I dived for

cover; it seemed that the old chap's potion had not done the

job. He had told us where he lived in the village so Tom was

dispatched with great speed to contact him to see if he had any

more ideas on how we could dispose of the wasps. He was

surprised to hear that his first attempt had not worked and told

Tom that the nest must be deep. He suggested that we could try

pouring paraffin down the hole and setting fire to it to burn the

nest. Tom duly reported back and we decided to stay late that

night and try the paraffin. Father as usual went home early and

left Tom and me to sort out the wasps.

When we thought it was all quiet at the nest Tom went to

get the paraffin and found that Father had taken it home with

him in his van and the only thing we had left was two gallons

of petrol. ‘We'll use this’ he said ‘that should sort them out’.

Tom and I carefully poured the two gallons of petrol down the

hole and from what we thought was a safe distance threw a

lighted bundle of rags at the hole. As the lighted rags hit the

hole it erupted with a blinding flash and a loud explosion

which sent earth and burning petrol along with very crisp

wasps high into the air, leaving a large smoking hole in the

ground and Tom and me covered in mud. The flash was so

vivid that it lit up the surrounding area and the explosion was

so loud it sounded like a bomb had gone off. The neighbours

came out from their houses to see what was happening ‘Oh we

were only getting rid of a wasps nest,’ we said.

The next day we were convinced that we had won and

there would be no more wasps, but as we went over to inspect

the hole there they were still buzzing around very annoyed at

whoever had tried to blast them out of existence the previous

night. Just then the old chap came along and asked us if the

paraffin had worked. We explained that we had used petrol

instead of the paraffin but even that had not worked. ‘You are

lucky you did not get hurt’ said the old chap and told us that

there was only one other way that the nest could be destroyed;

it would need to be done with cyanide gas and he agreed to

arrange with his old chums at the council to do it for us as it

was rather dangerous.

Well, the men from the council came and gassed the wasps

nest and this time they were killed and we were able to

continue with our work to complete the landscaping of the

grounds. The old chap would often come along for a chat and

we would have a good laugh about our attempt to blow up the

wasp nest.