Kaga Simpson - his life and memories

The only `clod banks` I knew were at the far end of Henley Road. For many years (in the 50`s) they were permanently smoldering with acrid smoke puffing out of them. Rumour had it that they were from the old mine at the end of the mineral railway which spurred off at the top of the Slough.

I remember many farmers wore breeches and leather gaiters, highly polished on "high" days and market days. I also remember many cleared their noses without the aid of handkerchiefs, I don`t mean just farmers

Greg. The clod banks were a prominent land mark in that area, but no one knows how or when they were put there - they were there before my granddad's time as a boy, 1880 time. I used to think it was from the pits, then from the building of the canal, but no, it was long before then. It was a green slime soil, like nothing from that area. I have another thought but am awaiting a book for some more thought to the subject. They tried testing the tanks up there during the war, but one slithered over and there was some other thought, they stopped using the clodbanks anyway.

There are many references to clod banks in the newspaper archives. Most of them refer to them as belonging to the national coal board and people being prosecuted for taking coal from them. Many are referred to as "steaming". Were they not waste from the pits in the same way as you get many " Mount Pleasants" near an old mine. There is one near us and the mine was there in the early 19th or maybe 18th century.

Another of my very unusual successful stories. The sun was shining on this day 57 years ago as I walked up the path to a very 'old church' in Coventry. Inside, the church was decorated in old fashioned Harvest Festival fashion as I waited for my young bride to join me. And so we married. But on the day we learnt that my father and father-in-law played for the same football team at twenty year difference. My mother-in-law and my elder sister had been in the same class at school. My young brother was a mate of my brother-in-law and had visited their house before I. And all but for three months I was twice as old as my bride (you can imagine the bric-bats I got about that). Today we still hold hands, support each other, me with a stroke leg, my wife with her tick-tock pace-maker. We are just off for a meal and drink to celebrate

Hi! Yesterday about five-thirty we were sitting eating dinner, almost finished when the knife in my right hand crashed onto the plate - my fingers just an inch away from the handle of the knife would not budge towards the handle. I tried to move my right leg, again no response. I looked at my wife, said "I'm having a stroke". She looked alarmed and misty eyed. "I'll ring 999. No, wait, it will take them more than an hour at this time to reach here, the coast road is jam-packed. Let's wait a little while." I lifted my dead weight arm with my left hand, my right arm heavy like a leg of pork. I let it go, it crashed to the table - I had no pain, no headache. I was well aware what was happening, I had this weird feeling that my right side did not belong to me, as though someone else's. My wife asked me questions, I answered them. We just sat there, me willing my hand to move it's b----- self. For 90 years I have been called Kaga, now it seemed a twist of fate was going to make me Kaggy-handed - what irony! Again my wife said "I'm calling 999." "No, wait, there is something happening, the weird feeling is moving". I willed my arm with all my willpower and it began to move, then the feeling spread and the life came back to my right side. My wife helped me to stand, then walked me to the bedside. I was beginning to feel good. The whole episode was just 15 minutes. Aan hour later and you wouldn't have thought anything had happened. My wife phoned the night doctor, but a girl answered. She asked questions, put them on the computer - she was not medical. She then said the doctor would ring us within the hour. He did, asked the same questions - at the end he said it was a mini-stroke, a warning. Exactly what we knew. Here I am the this morning typing to you, I feel ok. Just another one of my little tales, hope they don't bore you. Kaga.

Summer of 1950 and the Precinct was one big builders' yard - only small pathways criss-crossed it, planks criss-crossed the pools of water. One time the wind was blowing a load of sand like a sandstorm down the Precinct, scaffolding rattled and swayed. Where the smoke from the factory chimneys filled the skies. Where a labourer after having the insurance from his wages stopped he took home about £4 and probably had bread and jam wrapped in newspaper for lunch. People still 'turned out their room', still days where people sat in the firelight and tedious boys would get a slap and a spoonful of syrup of figs and packed off to bed. A time where you bought 6d savings stamps and dreamt of what you could do with a thousand pounds. A time when young and old alike chainsmoked, with the ease of long practice - and the electric power was 'off' without warning and meals got spoiled and tempers frayed and women queued at the Gas Showrooms to get their modern electric stoves back to gas.

A few days ago, a bright, sunny morning but very cold. My wife and I wrapped warm, we limped to the clifftop, sat on a bench - the tide was out, and no one about. The scene was a divine, clean, marine greatness. The sun more in our faces than above. One could hear the murmur of the slow running breakers, long waves came running in, like a storming army, that filled the rocky pools, they sang and sighed in the strangest way as the water returned. The beauty of the radiant day was so perfect that you bent under it. the light on the water and the sun setting, and a companionship of unclouded years at my side that anyone could have.

Our laughter echoes through the house, the elm trees behind the house tossing in the breeze, and spring comes fast. I blink and the grass has turned a light green, the meadows and trees in invisible frenzy, moisture hurls upwards. The sap can rise three feet in one minute. Two days later and the meadows turn into colour, the breath of springtime fills the air, birdsong wakes us in the morning, and the sash windows are left open day and night. Chocolate Easter eggs appear, large ones, trapped inside are small toys, Mother scrapes some on her finger, pops it in the baby's mouth - he giggles with wonder. We walk to the farm. Dad pushes the roller over the tennis court, while we picnic. Days go by, the sky is depthless, the lawns full of daisies like covered in snow, Grandad now warns us not to splash the pump water about - the grown-ups are getting edgy, they were now praying for rain, the farmers for the failing grain. By mid-June every day we are swimming in the canal, and sweating by night. I am more aware of my parents anxiety, they are talking of water carts and water restrictions in Coventry. People are complaining about the heat, looking for cool spots. Even we kids find it to warm to play and seek the shade of a tree. The meadows brown with stunted grass, the roaring streams and brooks down to a trickle, the birds now silent, deep inside the hedgerows. Cattle seeking the shade under the large oak trees. Old people moaning, they had never known a summer like it, and suffering badly from the heat. But comes the day we wake to thunder, it cracks over the city, the windows tremble in their frames. We stand at the bedroom window and watch lightning split the darkness. We dress quickly and race outside, splashing in the water. I see the teardrops in mother's eyes as she gently holds her hands together in prayer.

When I was a child, daily we would pump our drinking water from a small cast iron pump on the side of the house, and almost every day we saw and chatted to neighbours as we pumped. The trickle of gossip, rumours, the girl I liked, the old man that frightened me, the dog that once bit me. I catch a tram into the city, discovering new things all day long in my childlike awareness. A policeman on a box, orchestrating in white gloves, trams and cars swarming round him, the engine noise of the city rinses everything else away. The leaves off trees skid down Priory Row, alleys rear and twist around the Cathedral, two clouds part and a fan of sunlight surges through the gap, and everything comes alive. The cathedral stonework bleached by time, a view on a thousand postcards. A centuries old stone staircase that makes my pulse race, and I pretend to be calm. Then everything goes dark again as they crowd together, a contest between sun and shadow that flicker and waver like candle flames. Pigeons hop through the blowing trash. It was like walking in a waking dream, everything strange and impossible. It is as if history is seeping out of the stones. I walk down the churchyard and step into a crowd of people, make my way to the tram stop and ride home, tired and hungry.

Many years ago there lived in King Street a well-to-do manufacturer, who had a hasty disposition. In an excitable moment he struck one of his female workers, who summoned him for assault. He pleaded not guilty. She threatened him that something heavy would fall at his door for saying so. The manufacturer went home with a friend and whilst they were standing outside the house talking over the case, there chanced to come along the street a very large boiler, drawn by six dray horses, going to be placed in some works in Bedworth. When the dray were opposite them, the wheels gave way under the weight onto the ground, the boiler rolled towards them. In a state of alarm they just had time to jump out the way.

To a young lad that knew the countryside, and loved the freedom of the fields and woods, this time of the year, April in Warwickshire, was a beautiful time. The wild fields full of yellow-white primroses, below the trees, the ground a blue haze covered in bluebells. The scent of olden days, of history - I wanted someone to share. I ran across meadows, I hurled over low bushes, ran with my voice full of song. I ran past the old pond, stagnant with duckweed, I burst through the tangy veil of scent, poured myself over the oak-railed fence. I cried out with joy. Hedges of dense hawthorn, where blackbirds and thrushes burst out with a shimmer of silvered wings and clucking alarm and dived back in again far ahead. I had achieved a reputation for being missing on shopping days, loved being left to my own devices, exploring the fields and woods. Those dreamy solo sorties, surging excitement of discovery. Mother would shout, "Now don't you go getting in to any trouble", but I would be out of the door and away before she could finish the sentence. I didn't know where I was going, it was just out and away and come what may. I sat on the swing that hung from the bough of an apple tree. Suddenly the fowl started to get alarmed. I kept quiet, spotted a willowy old stoat in the hedgerow - he dropped to the ground and did a weird dance. A hen watched, fascinated - he then leaped up and down, the hen and I were mesmerised. He then chased his tail round and round but each time getting closer to the hen. Ashe was about to pounce on the hen I shouted and ran towards him. He disappeared in a flash.

1942 and I was fifteen years old, and things weren't really going well for the allies, and Coventry had taking some awful punishment. I had lost relatives and friends in the bombing, I wanted to join up and help in the war, so I joined the Air Training Corps to get basic training. I was fitted out with simple uniform and forage cap, and I was proud as punch. After a few months I was selected to take air experience lessons at Ansty Airfield. I had watched these men training to become aircrew from as little as a mile away when I was evacuated, and marvelled at their skill. I arrived at the airfield ten minutes before time, shown to a nissen hut and introduced to the flying instructor who was to take me up. "Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked. "Yes please". "Right then, I'll put you in the picture", he said. "Now the plane is a Tiger Moth, it is totally efficient and a very aerobatic little biplane, but we won't be doing much of that today. It's powered by a gypsy engine, you can throw the plane all over the sky and it won't fail, you can spin, loop-the-loop, the engine might cut-out, but that's because the carburettor's upside down, but it will start again with no trouble, so any questions?" "No, Sir." "OK, you will sit on your parachute, and there is a little rubber tube so we can speak, and keep your goggles down or you will suffer watery eyes." I climbed in the cockpit, the engine was running and I felt the slipstream. I was apprehensive, excited, I kept asking myself how many young men were lucky enough to be allowed to go whizzing through the sky, above as beautiful a county as Warwickshire. I never had the education to become aircrew, but did meet the slipstream at full force when I did pass as an airborne soldier.

I was four years old and dad had taken me down to the farm. The farmer's son, nicknamed 'Boss', was leading the big shire horse out of the stable. He stopped to talk to dad, who picked me up to stroke the giant horse's head. He then put me down on the ground and I immediately ran under the horse's belly to see what 'Boss' was doing on the other side. He smiled down at me, swept me up in his arms and placed me on the back of the horse - they both held my hands on either side while the horse walked to the granary door. I was grinning like a Cheshire cat. When we got to the door dad lifted me into his arms, 'Boss' opened the door and the great horse walked out into the field. I was then taken into the kitchen of the farmhouse and I was passed on to 'Boss's' mother who sat me at a table. "I've baked a cake", she announced, and placed a huge warm fruit cake on the table, gave me a big slice and fussed round me. The two men then went off to play tennis behind the big Dutch barn. As a four year old I knew none of this, blissfully unaware (I was told all this when I was older). On the kitchen table was a large glossy white china pot, dressed in a fitted blue and yellow cosy, that I would become to know well in the coming years. The tea was poured through a strainer, for the tea was loose in those days. I can remember dozens of those days, of toast and honey straight from the hive, and homemade jam and crumbling fruit cake. In common with many old houses, Main Pit Farm possessed a distinctive personality, an aura far more with the past than the then present.

A colouring book I once got for Christmas, a picture of the Three Spires, a leafy avenue of trees, headstones in the graveyard, iron railings scratched, about six feet tall, pigeons on the buildings. I was about four years old. A tram drops me in Broadgate, a small roadway that is West Orchard opposite. I walk across, there's old houses on one side, the other side a factory, as a large furnace blasting hot air into the street, men hammering iron rods and bars into artistic designs, flowers, birds, trees for fireplaces and ovens, a haze outside the door, I move on. Next a seed merchant's that was once stables and hay loft, a man ties a chain round the neck of a sack of grain then hauls on another chain and the sack moves up to the next floor. I cross through a jetty, past the mighty clock tower that steals old peoples lives away, on stalls piled into small pyramids, of potatoes, apples, etc., that just beg for kids like me to take out the bottom one. Stalls of every kind of fruit and veg, a sweet stall that sells gob-stoppers that fill your mouth and makes your jaw ache, take about an hour to finish, turn a different colour every time you look. An old man chopping firewood into uniform lengths, puts them in a round vice, clamps them tight, he then binds them with wire and sells them a bundle for a threepenny-bit. Rolls of cloth of many colours, net and lace curtains, toys, watches, a jig-saw of stalls crammed with everything you could want. The sky broken with cloud, small alleyways between very old houses, I arrive back in Broadgate. A stationary tram, a hundred gaily coloured blinds loom above the shops, the smell of leather from the shoe shop, a gaily coloured card shop, the smell of the bread shop that just wafts through the centre of the city, loaves of bread with poppy seeds, sesame seeds, 'oh my' a hot meat and onion pie for three-pence in a crumpled piece of wax paper. A huge bite and the juice runs down your chin, I eat as I walk.