Summer holidays on the farm
In the 6-week school holidays my mum used to take me out there on the bus – we never had a car. She used to stay with me overnight and then go back the next day and come and collect me 6 weeks later. There was no communication, no phones or anything – they used to entrust me to my auntie and uncle and I would work on the farm. I loved it because I had a foot in two worlds. I was brought up in the Black Country, living in back-to-back houses in a very industrial area, which was not particularly salubrious. But in holiday time I would go out to countryside on my uncle’s farm. Kidderminster was a million miles away from Birmingham in those days – it felt like the other side of the world. Every day I would feed the chickens, feed the pigs, feed the geese.
