Friday 19 January 2018

The Gypsy encampment

I was sewing the Random Quilt this afternoon, listening to Radio 4, and there was a good programme on about Eric Gill (very artistic, but some very bad family habits . . .)  They said something about him turning a box over, and sounds spilling out - voices from gypsies setting up camp on the common.  All of a sudden I was transported back over 55 years, to when I was 9 or 10, and Tricia and I had gone up to the rough bit of woodland by the Ivy Tree, which divided our road into a top third section.  The gypsies were there - with proper gypsy vardos  and horses - though I don't remember the vardos being brightly painted or showy in the way you see them in photographs. 

The womenfolk were crouched around a large cast iron cooking pot on a hook over a smoking fire, stirring something in it and smoking stubby wooden pipes, skin tanned and wrinkled. They looked as old as Queenie Goddard, who lived in an old creosote-painted wooden cabin behind the sighing pine trees opposite our house, but were probably only 35 or 40.  There were pieces of washing thrown over the bushes, and their children, shabbily dressed in woollen jumpers either too big or too small , and ragged trousers splashed with mud, pulled a reluctant dun coloured puppy about on a length of string, whilst it dug its paws in the mud and tried to bite at the string.  Later, they would come knocking at our door, and asking for any shoes or clothes in return for a bag of pegs, or some Primroses in a bed of moss inside a little basked hand-woven from willow.  It wasn't begging, as there was always something in return - and something that they had made from next to nothing, just the things they found in the countryside. 

We weren't afraid, we knew these folk of old - they would come a couple of times in early spring and summer and camp there, and visit their folk.  They were never there at harvest time, when their menfolk would always find a bit of work on the farms, or when it was hop-picking time, and in recent years I have found them up in North Hampshire and Surrey, having babies and hop picking as if the two went together like bread and cheese.

Of course, it was the horses we wanted to see.  Big shaggy-legged vanners, half Shire crossed with cob, and in those days, largely whole-coloured dark brown or bay, not like the coloured gypsy cobs you see at Appleby Fair today.  The horses would be tied beside the vardos, if they were going to be used that day to go visiting with the flat cart they borrowed from Queenie, or tethered on chains amongst the brambles and brush, manes and tails tangled (we longed for a brush) and coats dirty with dried sweat.  Standing floppy-lipped, they would nibble gently at our hands, rubbing their moustachios against our knuckles,  and blowing down their big carthorse nostrils, shaking their heads with wobbling ears to get the flies away.  They had chestnuts on their legs like giant lumps of rubbery slate and there would often be the clink of a loose shoe when they shifted weight from one hind leg to the other.   If they had names, I don't remember them, although the Goddard horses (of similar stock) were Doby, Bill, Julie, and the vicious dock-tailed brown-black mare Mandy who would fly the length of her chain, teeth bared, to see you off.  Bill would do the same, only he was loose in the orchard next to the Rec, opposite the cemetery, with piebald Julie and we knew exactly how far we dared leave the Safety Tree behind us if he was up that end of the field.

Just two words, and I am half a century away, seeing it all like it happened last week.  A memory which belonged to just Tricia and I, and just me to remember it now.

18 comments:

  1. What lovely memories and lovely description.
    Proper gypsies. I remember them always trying to sell lace table mats

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    1. There were several local families - some proper ROmany gypsies, but others more the Didakoi sort. There was a little enclave of them along Botany Bay Road. I can see the people (there was one family who called every male child Edward so as to confuse any copper who was out to chase them up!)

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  2. Lovely post BB; you really should write a lot more. You had me there with you. xx

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  3. Pattypan - I have to be in the moodto write, and I haven't been for SOOOOOOOOlong, but that one little comment today just set me off down memory lane. I will try and write up some more memories over the weekend.

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  4. What a lovely story, thank you for sharing!

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    1. Welcome Mary. I did enjoy writing it - the words just flowed for once. I am now deep in my childhood memories in my head . . .

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  5. Such a lovely story. Thank You so much for posting It.
    I was enthralled reading, especially the part about the horses.

    cheers, parsnip and mandibles

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    1. Glad you enjoyed it parsnip. Horses I know . . .

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  6. What a lovely memory--and some of your best writing. Its one of those where-in you transported this reader, drawing me into the scene to see, smell, hear, feel.

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  7. Thanks Sharon. I lose so much writing which is in my head when we are out and about. Memories like this are forever in my head, and just need plucking out and writing down. I fear some more will be shared with you over the weekend . . .

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  8. What a lovely memory and a super piece of writing. You made it so easy to imagine the scene and events.

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    1. RR - thank you. The words just flowed because I was "there" in my head.

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  9. You SHOULD write more BB!

    I loved reading this. I was there with you. Thank you.

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    1. Yes I know dear. It's such a juggling act though, and I DO have to be in the mood to get anything written down as I really WANT it to be.

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  10. Hi BB! Thanks for visiting my bit of the internet! You perhaps recognise me from commenting on your blog from time to time and Sue and Colin’s bit of the internet!
    This was just enchanting to read. I could instantly see what you saw with your vivid description- sommuch so I could almost smell the woodsmoke!

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    1. Ah, I knew I knew you but addled brain couldn't remember you visiting me here!

      I am glad my writing pleased you (and everyone come to that). Watch out for some more.

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  11. Beautifully crafted writing, enticing the reader to travel with you to the past. Very reminiscent of Juliette de bairacli Levy although with her encounters she always took gifts. Yours is the first I've heard of "bartering" for clothes and food with things they'd made first. Although living close to Stow fair, we were kept away from any gypsies of any kind as my mother was totally fearful of them. It didn't help that my parents were burgled during the time of Stow Fair about ten years ago and my father has never really recovered.

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    1. Hello again Sarah. I love the Juliette de Bairacli Levy books, and have read Wanderers in the New Forest again and again.

      I think these ones who visited were quite enterprising and perhaps too proud to beg. I can remember their delight one year when Iswopped a pair of leather jodhpur boots for a basket of Primroses- both us thinking we had the better part of the deal! The boots rubbed me, so I was delighted to be rid - that must have been later into the 1960s too - 1968 or so? I was so pleased to find these families in the census, travelling from our area up to North Hampshire and beyond to go hop picking, and literally working right up until the baby was born.

      As for your mum, some gypsies do have a rather poor reputation, but the ones I've met were all generally good, though most were on the make in one way or another. I'm so sorry to hear of your parents being burgled and I quite understand how upsetting that must be - you would never really feel safe again would you?

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