How dreams, self belief, looking for adventure... and ferrets... led us to Exmoor.
My Mother used to call me “Dolly Daydream” in the early years, by my teens she called me a lot worse. But we won’t go in to that!
I was what you might have called an ‘average’ student. Sitting at my desk thinking about anything but the subject up on the board, but more than able. Coasting through lessons with a smile, but no interest. “Could try harder” and “talks too much”, also often on my school reports. School, for me, was all about the social life and nothing about an education!
The lessons didn’t seem relevant to me. Looking back, I can see that it was probably part my disconnection and part the old school way of teaching. It was all so dull. I often had the board rubber (blackboards and chalk in those days!) thrown at my head to shut me up! It was only Art that fired me up. I loved the creativity and freedom in the class. We would have the radio on, or recordings like “Hancock’s Half Hour” and George Orwell’s “1984”, playing as we worked.
My Farmer, only four years older than me, and also at school in the 70’s-80’s, tells fabulous tales of his private boarding school. He describes his school as Dickensian. With dark wood panelled corridors and tall curling stairways. Teachers wearing long black robes over their suits and all the boys in short grey flannel. Not just board rubbers being thrown in his classes, but canes and ‘damn good thrashings’ were still the order of the day.
He was always STARVING and often pinched food off his neighbours plate. He still eats as if a pack of hungry wolves is approaching! I will never sit next to him when we are eating, as he makes me nervous with one eye constantly on my plate! Never a meal goes by when he doesn’t ask me “Are you going to eat that?”, whilst poking his fork at my plate.
He had the strap to his backside most days, as he always hated to be inside and would sit, gazing out of the window, dreaming about his Grandfathers farm, or how he was going to get out of the dormitory that night and go ferreting for rabbits. Hilariously, he only consented to attending this boarding school if he could take his ferrets with him! His parents were so keen for him to go as he was such a poor student, that this school was the last resort. So the ferrets sealed the deal. He would go to lessons with his favourite ferret in his jacket pocket. Until the sad day when it ‘ceased to be’ during Biology.
Just a little aside…I asked My Farmer if he could remember the name of this favourite ferret. He wasn’t even sure if any one of them had ever had a name. Perhaps he’d named it after the matron? I recalled he had a ‘fascination’ with her. This jogged a funny tale of how he had to be freed from the bannisters on those curling stairs, when he had leant forward to try and look down Miss Rose’s top, and got his little bony knee stuck! The lovely lady herself helped to free him…'“She was very sweet and did have great breasts!” The image of that skinny, half starved, shorts wearing little boy stuck on the stairs (with the ferret in his pocket) may never leave me!!
But having come from such different school backgrounds My Farmer and I found each other after having forged our own paths, where none of our parents could have hoped, at one stage, we would have made anything of ourselves. Having seen a careers adviser, he was advised to get a van drivers licence! As he was clearly not able enough to achieve much else
How could they not have noticed the incredible drive, determination and astounding confidence that My Farmer had?? However disappointed they were with him, he never believed their lack of faith, or interest. He was going somewhere great! Thank heavens for his self-belief and resilience. Those qualities, and his sharp brain, led to him starting work as an errand boy, to eventually building, from scratch, a multi-million pound advertising agency in London’s West End. That bravery led to the return to his first love, farming. Now he could afford to buy his own farm.
Those imaginative careers advisers, again, pulled out all the stops and I was told to go to secretarial school, having studied English Literature and Art A levels. Art was very much thought of as a waste of time. No ‘real’ job could be taken in the art world, especially for someone as ‘average’ as me.
Fashion was what I wanted to study. Where it came from I can’t remember. I hoped to be a designer and use my creative spark. The spark was in there, just hidden and a little shy. So after my exams on I went to Art College and my creative path began. I loved it! Wow what a shock though! I had to start with a years Art Foundation course within spitting distance of my home. I could have travelled in each day, but I so wanted to be independent. We found a room for rent in a shared student house, and I moved in to a decent sized room in a double fronted Victorian villa in Worthing, Sussex, at 18 years old.
What an introduction to independence that was! New friends with hair spiked up by sugar water, ‘Roxy Music’ and ‘Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ blaring out at all hours, discovering second hand clothes and stitching up a storm on my sewing machine. I wish I had some pictures of some of those outfits. They were amazing! Or so I thought!! So much freedom to be different.
We never had enough money to eat, but always had enough to party. There were so many ‘firsts’. My introduction to Life Drawing classes was interesting…me, pathetically, trying to act cool when sketching my first nude man. Only to stand back from the sketch and see that in my effort to be casual, I had ‘over emphasised’ the important bits! I made some good friends after that episode though…we laughed so much! Wish I had kept that sketch.
I went on to start my career as a fashion designer also in the West End. It was a vibrant and exciting place to be. My Farmer and I worked and partied(both equally hard!) in the same streets and bars for several years without knowing it.
I feel proud that he and I were able to make our own way, stick to our dreams, and find a path that we LOVED! With a passion. It’s disappointing that those shabby careers advisers should not have noticed the passion, in either of us, and helped to nurture it. Imagine all those students who followed the poor advice and didn’t chase their dreams. But that was education then. Everyone had to fit into the same boxes. Where’s the hope and adventure in that?!
Neither of us here have ever believed dreams weren’t possible to achieve. That’s how we found Exmoor. Searching for a better way to live how we choose, and having faith in dreams and adventure.