Jackie Ellis - Sheepwrecked

Contents

For Eleanor and Phoebe,
two very special girls, with love

Thanks, as always, to my husband Malcolm for his continued unstinting support and encouragement. The publication of this book proves that I have been writing properly from time to time and not just playing on tinternet.

Special thanks to Patrick for his foreword and to Jane, my old partner in crime from schooldays, for her brilliant photos. Other fantastic pictures have been kindly provided by Lionel, who has become a friend as a direct consequence of his reading The Funny Farm. Lionel, thank you.

Grateful thanks also to Simon, my editor at Bantam, and to all the Transworld team who are wonderfully tolerant of my ignorance about matters they all understand so well. Thank you all.

I should also like to express my appreciation to all the people who have made contact with me since The Funny Farm was published Sheepwrecked is for you all and I hope you enjoy it just as much.

Early in life the authors mother must have recognised her daughters revolutionary tendencies and that the saying You should never mess with a redhead is unfortunately true. Son-in-law having broken his back in a fall from a horse on holiday at Morecambe Bay, one detects her despair at the announcement that said daughter, plus damaged husband, planned to emigrate to a disused smallholding in ultimate Cumbria to pursue the Good Life in preference to their more conventional habitat of Walton-on-Thames.

The ensuing story is told, as she speaks, with humour and self-deprecation. It touches on the wider lunacies of central authority and the idiosyncrasies of newly discovered agricultural neighbours.

Knowing Jackie, who, with her husband Malcolm, has been my occasional friend for twenty years, has greatly enriched my life. Her scepticism of official doctrine is healthy, unusually free from spite, and completely in tune with the countryside to which she has become accustomed at a time when its best traditions of the care of livestock and the soil have been bleeding to death.

This book will encourage those who believe that if you have sufficient to live on, a roof over your head and conviction about what you are doing, plain financial wealth in the purlieus of Walton-on-Thames is irrelevant.

Jackie is a brave and beautiful woman married to a man who has supported her through thick and thin, having learnt from his days in the police force that it is wise to come along quietly.

The girl done good.

Patrick Gordon-Duff-Pennington
Muncaster Castle, Ravenglass, Cumbria

The contents of a womans handbag are a pretty accurate barometer of her lifestyle. A quarter of a century (gosh, how time flies when youre enjoying yourself) ago, mine contained a train season ticket outrageously priced; keys so handy for disfiguring muggers; various lipsticks, spare tights and hair spray. Now, a quick rummage reveals a box of a hundred Elastrator rings for castrating lambs painlessly (orange, so that you can see them in the long grass, and as far as the painless goes, well, youd have to ask a tup lamb really expect a high octave reply); a very un-cool mobile phone the size of a shoe box, and a leaflet about domestic wind turbines. Would you trust a woman who carries such things about with her? No, me neither.

SEASONS SHIFT. DAILY tasks and patterns change and living in harmony with the land means that you, as much as the wildlife or the hedgerows or the skeins of geese overhead, are part of that unchanging seasonal rhythm. Nature calls the tune and the countryman keeps time with her seasonal music. Theres no option: try telling snowdrops to come up in summer, or ewes to mate in spring. The man on the top deck of the Clapham omnibus, as he cruises the townscape, is not part of those changes in the same way as his country peers and that is probably the biggest, most important difference between their parallel lives. It may also be the benefit of staying put in Clapham.

As far as seasonal changes go, mere mortals like me can do little about it except watch, groan and grumble about the weather. Here in Cumbria there is a joke they have an odd sense of humour, Cumbrians that we get nine months of winter and three of bad weather. I dont think that is especially true but I do confess to a wry smile some might say its not a smile at all but a pretty unpleasant smirk when its sunny here and pelting in Basingstoke.

As far as the changing patterns of life go, ours have changed as often as the emphasis of life at Rowfoot has shifted.

In the beginning, there was the Word and ours was Construction. Or deconstruction, as we concentrated on some sort or other of earth-moving enterprise, mostly inside the house. At the height of activities, we came to regard proper wardrobes as a petty bourgeois affectation after all, we had managed for the best part of a year with Pickfords cardboard ones and plaster dust had become an essential ingredient in our tea and coffee.

As Malcolm toddled off each morning for another day at Newton Rigg learning how to castrate calves, milk pigs, shear goats and tinker with tractors, those being a few of the unlikely topics he claimed to be studying while the younger students concentrated on getting their PhDs in beer drinking, I tooled up for another day as brickies mate. Ted was chief brickie and a long-standing friend. Indeed it was Ted who first suggested to us, on one of our house-hunting forays, that we should have a look at Rowfoot. Sometimes I think Ted has an awful lot to answer for. He dished out orders and I executed them. Under his direction, I pulled plaster off the walls, found the odd rats nest lurking in the stonework where normal people have cavity wall insulation, and dug out floors. I can still see my mother standing in the doorway of the old dairy, wondering precisely why her only offspring needed great sandstone slab shelves when she was perfectly happy with blue Formica ones in Barnes. I just dont understand you, Jacqueline, moving from a perfectly dry house in Walton-on-Thames to a damp one in Cumbria, she said in bewildered tones. At times like this, she became more convinced than usual that she had been sent home from hospital with the wrong baby.

Somehow, there seemed little point in even beginning to explain about the views, the space, the fields, the livestock, the imminent translation of the self-sufficiency dream into lip-smacking reality. Besides, I knew that it wasnt really the damp that bothered mum, it went far deeper than that: the real problem with this country living lark was the lack of a Marks and Spencer within walking distance.

The day before, I had cursed at a sudden lack of cheese; the wall-rats descendants might conceivably have been responsible but allusions to intramural rodents might have upscuttled a lady who had been a spectator of lifes unfolding tapestry from the vantage point of a blue kitchen chair (to match the Formica) as mice scurried about on the floor of a rambling Edwardian house in deepest suburbia. As an infant, I found it amusing to flick small morsels of dry bread at them as they scurried about my playpen, an activity whose entertainment value my mother never fully appreciated.

Ill have to nip to Armathwaite for some cheese, I said.

Mother, pouncing on a chance to escape her uncivilised surroundings, thick with plaster dust and builders rubbish, exclaimed excitedly, Armathwaite? Does it have a Marks and Spencers?

Briefly, Armathwaite beckoned like a Lorelei, glittering and irresistible. It was a shame to disillusion her but it had to be done. No Marks and Sparks: Armathwaites allure faded immediately.