It's nearly midnight and I just can't sleep. If I turn the light on to read a bit more of my book (I'm re-reading Lark Rise to Candleford again), I will probably wake my husband, so I decided to write a blog entry.
The theme song to "Out of Town", a programme I grew up with, won't leave my head - having suddenly sprung into it when I laid my book down and put the light out! There were two theme tunes -the first was Max Bygrave's song of that name: "Spring starts to spring, the cuckoo starts to sing, a song to take the edge of winter's frown, and spring cleaning, has a meaning . . . Out of Town . . ." Later, Jack Hargreaves (for it was his country programme which showed on a Friday evening at a 1/4 to 7) changed the music to a soft Spanish guitar melody. The programme ran for 25 years and I vaguely remember that before Jack Hargreaves was Olly Kite, who sadly died young . . .
Isn't it odd how some things just stick in your head like this programme? I can remember him showing unusual countryside objects and asking viewers to get in touch if they knew what they were used for. At Christmas he would suggest suitable presents for the horsey girls in a family - his favourite suggestion being a folding hoof-pick! I can remember him getting a new bridle and soaking it in Neat's Foot Oil to soften it. My golly gosh, I should think you could still tie it in knots ten years on! He had a wonderful workshop where much of the inside filming was done and where he would sit and show you how to tie a fly or how a lark twirler worked! His passion was fishing, and he had the knack of making it interesting even to a totally horse mad girl not even in her teens. He used to show all the sights and sounds of the countryside. HERE'S a clip of him on You Tube. He always had a driving cob about the place, and in later years it was a white mule. I met him once, towards the end of his life, at a tack auction at Dorchester Market. He was looking for a browband for the little white mule - not a bridle, just the browband! He was obviously careful with his money . . .
He died, aged 83, in 1994 and his ashes strewn on Bulbarrow Hill which overlooked the Dorset village where he had spent his final years. HERE is a link to his obituary.
