09. THE INDELIBLE LESSON THAT THE WORD INDEED CONQUERS THE SWORD

At ten, I stepped into another world. My father, who was a brilliant but uneducated man, was his own teacher and before he actually met my mother, had learned to play classical music on the piano so it was no surprise when he entered a musical family.

Often my grandparents and parents played and sang together in the evenings, for we had a piano. They played popular music too and my father also mastered the banjo. We children were admitted naturally and sang the easy songs with relish, like "It's a long way to Tipperary", and the like.

My grandmother sang well and her favorite songs were "Only a bird in a Gilded Cage", which confirmed her suffragette stance and "Tell me pretty maiden," accompanied sometimes by tales of a soldier friend when she was young and pretty who sang it to her, with her reply.

Tell me pretty maiden,

Are there any more at home like you?

There are a few, kind sir,

But simple girls, and proper too.

Then tell me pretty maiden,

What these very simple girlies do.

Kind sir, their manners are perfection,

And the opposite of mine. . . .

For the first time my father irritated me for his insistence on singing what he called "thirds " and sometimes "seconds". I never was sure whether it was the sounds that I disliked or his pride and insistence.

Now of course I understand that he was having fun, for he had learned music himself without a tutor, by trial and error. Thirds is the most used harmonization, and when you harmonize a melody you have to know the key of the song and use diatonic thirds. It sounds weird and meant nothing to me then, but all else I seemed to understand.

Let’s suppose that you are singing a song in Bm key. The vocal melody would be composed of B minor (Aeolian) scale. (Bm – C# - D – E – F# - G – A). When the main voice sings B note, the second voice would harmonize it singing D note.

Then if the first voice sings the E note, the second voice would sing a G. If you don't understand, it doesn't matter.

Perhaps on reflection two things were happening, for it was the time. My father's place as leader was being questioned. The future king was getting ready to dethrone the father.

You have read about it in history and literature, but until later I did not understand its source and did not see the first symptoms.

We also played board games in the evenings, and ludo, which all joined in with glee, while snakes and ladders always took lower place. Winning was still not important for anyone.

The family was integrated completely and, at my grandmother's quiet persuasion, I learned how to help her roll balls of wool from skeins and then to knot and also crochet. I made several scarves, dropping stitches here and there, but she never minded.

In the kitchen I was also a helper, again at her subtle persuasion, and learned how to make scones and pies from the blackberries and raspberries that we picked every year and put into big wicker baskets. My grandmother was a trained farrier and so she had hands that could make or change any clothes to fit, for although my father made good money from fishing, he never actually used the money for anything except the simple family needs, though he did buy a car, a Sunbeam Talbot, to go on outings occasionally. How strange that I remember the number CJY 351. We also had a dog, an Airdale called Rex, who I never knew well, for he died of distemper.

We had, for some reason unknown to me at that time, changed houses, as my father had bought a two-storey duplex at Dunstone Road, Elburton and was content planting his vegetables and flowers and tending his chickens. They were Rhode Island Reds, which he kept in a large compound at the end of the garden. He used their excrement to fertilize the garden and the eggs for our consumption, as eggs, toast and bacon was our breakfast fare. My brother David and I had our own rooms and we each had a fireplace.

Many a night I played Subbuteo, a football game, with my brother in front of a roaring fire. These are fond memories. We had our favorite teams and mine was Dynamo of Moscow.

Anyhow this is the background to my change of school, a great change, a council school. The reason was that my father and mother wanted me to take the 11-plus scholarship. So every day I went to school on the school bus and encountered quite different friends.

The first day I remember well at Hoe council school, for in a recreation break in a tin shed at the back of the school I encountered the school bully. As a new boy I had to show my stuff, I suppose.

I had never at that point fought and never had even been embroiled in an important disagreement with anyone. Even with my brother, who was a mild sensitive fellow, we always played in peace without rivalry.

I didn't even consider fighting as an alternative, but it was also never in my mind to run, or to be a victim of a beating... So I talked.

What I said I had no idea, but something happened, for it was a new experience for the bully, and to the other children who had run up to see what was going on at the cry of "fight ... fight".

Anyway, after a few phrases without a reply, many took my side in the one-sided discussion while his belligerence and threatening continued.

Then the unseen happened. Another boy as big as the bully stepped in and there was a fight, but not with me, with the bully, who lost the fight with a bleeding nose before teachers came to the rescue.

It was strange how clear it was in my head that you don't have to fight and then that words can win out in the end, at least for me. I was an immediate hit with the girls of my age and began a friendship with two boys in particular, David Strange and Raymond Farnwell that year, and later in the grammar school which we all entered.

So well did my act of peace impress the girls that one day a while later I fell foul of the school bus conductor by insisting on breaking his rule that no boys could sit in the back of the bus.

He threw me off the bus and I had to walk home. To his great surprise, and he could not then back down, a small revolution occurred and most of the girls got off the bus and walked home with me.

Words conquer all. It was a lesson never forgotten. But now I know that words can also conquer peace.

That year was a year of preparation, for my father loved mathematics and had taught himself. I naturally had to be a whizz. I was not too keen on his method but it worked.

I had to ignore everything except the numbers and then had to run through the tables without stop as fast as possible.

This meant for example that the "three times" table had to be said as

1,3,3,2,3,6,3,3,9,4,3,12,5,3,15, etc up to twelve. I wasn't even allowed to say thirty six after three twelves. The reply had to be quicker as three six. If I was slow then a wooden ruler was slapped on the desk next to me until my speed was right... When I had it all done then began the real task. He would throw random numbers at me and the reply had to be immediate. It worked; there was no one better at maths.

He taught himself Celestial Navigation and passed his Captain's exam so it was not a question of just doing what he said; he set the example.

I was eleven and still at the end of the developing age where falling prey to greed can enter and make itself a part of character. I was fortunate, for greed had no place in our home and  my father, mother, grandmother and grandfather craved little, except to be united as a family. I thus had two fathers and two mothers and pay reverence now to all four. My brother at this point was nine and my sister Christine came into the world, but there was no change in my way of life.