Grandad

Chapter Seven – Grandad

"My grandfather always thought I should be a vicar.
I've often wondered why". 

In this chapter, Drew reflects on the life of Frederick Baxter: farmer, parish councillor, First World War survivor, whistler, snuff-taker and maker of lasting memories.

A story about family, community, kindness and the mysteries that remain long after those we love are gone.

Because sometimes the people who know us best see something in us long before we see it ourselves.

Transcript

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Hello and welcome. Each week I'll be sharing stories, stories drawn from real life, from people I've met and moments that I've witnessed, and sometimes they're remembered exactly as they were, and others softened by time, but always brought to you with kindness and care. Welcome to Big Skies and Small Ponds. Chapter 7. Grandad My grandfather always thought I should be a vicar. My father reminded me of this recently when I was talking about some of the funeral services I was preparing. It's a comment I'd heard him mention before, but undertaking this project and reflecting on my own life, well it made me want to take a little time to ponder that thought. Because my grandfather, Frederick Baxter, died long before I ever thought of pulling on my celebrant's garb, the scruffy blue suit, and standing in front of, well perhaps I should say standing at the side of people at some of the most important moments in their lives. He died in 1981, just a few years after I had donned the uniform of a police officer in Lincoln. And it was his own journey to Lincoln and the wearing of another uniform that gave him more experience of life than I would ever wish for. Frederick Baxter was born in 1892 into a small farming community, and community was something I always believed he understood and fostered in his own way. I saw that as a child experiencing village life, and I think back to how lucky I was. From our home, our small holding, you could walk across open fields to grandad's house. In fact, at one point both sets of grandparents lived as neighbours. Even though you could see the house, to get to Nana and Grandad Baxter's you couldn't take a direct line. Crows could. As you made the journey, the house would on occasion disappear behind the trees, which interrupted our view. If memory serves, the house was called Luttingut Lodge. But not only trees stood between us and our desired destination, there were ditches, dikes and drains, which formed barriers far too imposing for this soft hearted youth to leap across. So you'd meander through the fields, crossing the bridges that had been built to allow farmers to access their land, originally with horses and threshing machines, but now with tractors and combine harvesters. You'd walk quietly past the nesting swans, which we always believed had the power to break our arms with one furious beat of its snowy white wing. An old wife's tale? Perhaps, but we never dared test its authenticity. Yes. In hindsight, family and community were stitched into most every part of my young life, and the stories I could tell about Audrey in the post office, or visiting the local village shop and baker's, walking and biking the long straight roads that seemed to my young eyes to stretch on forever. I'll never regret being born when I was and into that world, a world where my granddad lived. He served as a parish councillor, and his name still appears on a plaque in the village hall that he helped to build. But like many men of his generation, he had seen things. I'm not sure how far he had travelled in his lifetime before the outbreak of the Great War, but he and others from his village and community answered the call to arms and joined the Lincolnshire Yeomanry. When I moved to live and work in Lincoln in nineteen seventy eight, I visited the barracks where he had been billeted. I stood where he had stood all those years before, and I was able to tell him that later. He was never a man to glory in his exploits, never one for grand words, but I think he was quietly proud. I have photographs of him taken in his uniform, something I suspect many young soldiers did before leaving the shores of the UK to face an uncertain future. My father has a framed copy of that photograph standing proudly on his bookcase. The photograph now faded by the sunlight that brightens the room. The photograph may well be faded, but I'm sure his memories of his father are not. It was he who many years ago told me about what happened to Grandad when he left these shores for Egypt. Frederick Baxter boarded the SS Mercian bound for Salonica, along with four hundred other soldiers. And at first all was well, but then in the middle of the afternoon, a shell came across the decks, fired by a German submarine. The ship was unarmed, unescorted. The captain tried to outrun it, zigzagging to throw off the aim of the gunners, but the third shell hit. And what followed? Well, one soldier later said, It's just not possible to describe the scenes of carnage. Bits and pieces of men, horses, and ship were everywhere. My grandfather survived. Others didn't. And I've often wondered, what does something like that do to a man? Do those moments stay with you? They surely must. Do they change the way you see the world and the people in it? The man I came to know was now in his eighth decade, and when I think back now, the things I recall most about Grandad are the way he walked with a slight shuffle, his hands often in his pockets, and the constant and somewhat reassuring sound of his whistling. Grandad whistled. He also took snuff. I have vague recollections of the smell and the colour, and I recall how it stained his jacket lapel when some of it went astray. I also remember how we'd sit in an armchair by the fire in that big farmhouse kitchen whilst Nana was busy cooking. She was kindness personified, wrapped in an apron. She deserves a chapter to herself one day. One of the things she would be cooking or baking, I should say, was Grandad Cake, a sort of cut and come again fruit cake that he seemed to survive on. When I think of Grandad, I think of his quietness and his kindness. I have no bad memories of this man. I find myself wishing I'd noticed more about him. I was working as an extra on a film set in the First World War. Blink and you'll miss me, but that day filming in Sheringham, wearing boots that were just a little too tight, and an old fashioned high collar with tie, I felt more than a little uncomfortable. Still I stood there in the sunshine, watching scenes from more than seventy years before being recreated. The men, the soldiers, enjoying a day at the Norfolk coast, uniform jackets off, laughing, free of care, before shipping out. A last taste of home, freedom, and normality. I remember thinking that what I was seeing was only a shadow of what Grandad must have seen with his own eyes. What was now depicted as history was part of his life. And then I found myself wondering again what those same eyes had seen in me. What had made him say he should be a vicar. Now I'm not a vicar. I'm not even someone who believes in God. I live my life guided by simple humanist principles. Though I did have a brief flirtation with organized religion, largely, I suspect, because I like the music, I joined the Salvation Army, played in the band. And to this day I'll admit, a good hymn and a brass band can still stir something magical. But as you might know if you listen to a previous chapter, that flirtation came to its natural end. But godliness? No, I don't think it was that. Cleanliness? Definitely not. I grew up on a farm. There was a lot of muck about. In fact, I remember once being knocked face first into well, let's just call it muck, by a farm cat called shrimp. Farm cats are a breed apart, not pets, some not even approachable. We were on occasion allowed to keep a kitten or two, but on the whole cats had a purpose, and that purpose was vermin control. Now Shrimp wasn't our cat, he belonged to my aunt and uncle, who had a dairy farm in the same village we lived in, well, adjacent. And Shrimp had this habit of sitting on the lintel above the milking parlour door, like a farmyard leopard, and as you pass through he'd drop his sizeable bulk onto your shoulders. Anyway, being face down on the ground in an area where cows had been is not pleasant. So I can't claim godliness nor cleanliness, which probably rules out sainthood altogether. I was polite, though. My parents made sure of that. We had that familiar warning before visiting relatives don't show us up or you'll be back in the car. As far as I recall, I was never sent back to the car. Though I did have a habit of ignoring instructions, particularly when it came to cakes and meringues at one particular house. That drive to East Deerham from our home in Gedney Hill took around ninety minutes, but every minute was filled with anticipation of the warmest of welcomes, a garden full of beautiful flowers, the company of dogs, and cake tins. Mr and Mrs. Secker. Oh how we loved those visits. But I've wandered off the path. Back to Grandad. So what did he see? I don't know, and I never will. Perhaps that's one of those things in life we don't get to find out. The way people see us, the judgments they make, the quiet conclusions they reach. And maybe that's just as well. Because I suspect most of us might not entirely enjoy hearing everyone's thoughts about us. But this much I do know. He saw something. And perhaps he wasn't entirely wrong. Because whilst I never became a vicar, I did find myself standing with people at moments that matter, helping them remember, helping them say goodbye, helping them make sense of a life in a short space of time. No sermon required, just a blue suit and a willingness to listen. I sometimes wonder what he'd make of that. I hope he'd smile, perhaps give a little whistle as he went on his way, quietly content that something he'd seen had found its way into being. It's been good thinking about him again. I was lucky to know him, lucky to be seen by him, even if I never quite understood what he saw. And now I'm a granddad, well, a campa, and I look at Polly and I wonder about her future. She tells me I'm an idiot because I make daft jokes and act a fool. Not a lot like grandad Fred really. But maybe who knows, in time. What she'll remember seeing in me is some of the kindness that I saw in my grandad. That's it for this week. I do hope you've enjoyed what you've heard, and if you have, then please feel free to like, share, and subscribe to the podcast. Big Skies and Small Ponds. I'll be back again soon with another chapter. But until then, you take care and enjoy writing and living your own story.