The Lonely Tumbling Waters

© 2011 by Ken Griffin. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 11/19/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4678-8692-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-8693-2 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

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Contents

Introduction

The Woodland Sprite

Life Changes

A Country School

The Long Barrow

The March Brown

The Hazel Bush

The Glens of Earlier Times

Ten and a Bit

The ‘Brickie’

Post-war Wanderings

The Iron Generation

A Rabbit Screams

Nature’s First Aid

Sunday Biscuits

A Wasp Byke

‘Other’ Senses

Red Heather and White Flags

The Happy Harvest Days

Days at the Walking

A Lesson Perhaps

Slow-worms and Adders

A Growing Philosophy

The South Side of Loch Ness

The Highland Warpipe—My Army Years

Applecross

A Return to Country Life

A Chain of Lochans

The Later Years

Window Ponderings

More From the Window

The Rolling Stone

Cultural Changes

And So, To the Original Reason for Writing This Book

Introduction

I never knew my grandparents because the First World War had taken its toll and they were long-gone before I was born. Perhaps some bruised memories were too raw for my parents to dwell upon so the subject of their immediate past was subconsciously buried. Very little, therefore, was ever said about my grandparents and I have only the sketchiest account of their existence.

John Fowler, my mother’s father, was from Kelty which was a mining community in Fife. He had joined his local regiment, the Black Watch, and died from the effects of mustard gas shortly after his return from the First World war.

My father’s father, and here I realise that I don’t even know his first name, was a second generation Irish-Australian who joined the Australian Army during the same war. He met and married an English girl whom he met whilst on detachment to London.

Her family were friends of his relations in Hendon which I am told was a village outside London in those days, and my father was born whilst grandfather was back with his regiment, ‘doing his bit’.

After the war ended he returned to England in order to rejoin his family, but it appears that he was something of a restless soul as he disappeared and the last traces of him ended in Cairo.

Thus my father was brought up by relations as his mother then decided to desert him and ironically, she married a judge and they went off to live in Australia.

I decided, therefore, that this trend should not continue on to the next generation. Times have been changing rapidly since I came into this world and it became obvious that the reality of my existence and that of my immediate elders would soon be lost and forgotten unless I did something about it.

When I mentioned my intention to a friend it was emphasised that I should go ahead with an account of those years, but that the story should also be published for the interest of others. Thus what you are about to read was, in the beginning, a form of story letter to my grandchildren so I make no apologies for my ramblings.

I have never been ambitious in the common sense of the word, and there are some things which I leave until the time ‘feels right’, then one day I will have picked up a tool and be engrossed in a project which will occupy my mind to the exception of other things. This is a form of laziness I suppose, and it includes a reluctance to push myself forward or strut into the limelight, but on the physical side I always seem to be busy.

I have, however, occasionally found myself, despite my instinctive desire to lead a peaceful life, engaged in ruffling the feathers of those, who for some reason, appoint themselves to order the lives of others, but youthful idealism has, with the passage of time, been moderated to a degree by a certain amount of mature caution although my idealistic and somewhat spiritual nature tends to prod me on.

I cannot claim to have sat on the crest of a wave or ridden a star, but it is however, necessary to re-explore parts of my life in order to explain the environment and those within it which influenced my earlier years amongst a Bygone culture before I entered an increasingly convoluted world.

Friends have encouraged me to relate some of my experiences, largely I suspect, as a result of being anaesthetised by my contributions to Stalking Magazine over the years. It is, however, because of their urgings that some insights from a past age might be recorded. I was singularly fortunate to have been introduced to a wide variety of practical skills throughout my young life, and none of these except common civility, good manners and honesty, were to do with social niceties. My dealings with animals however were mostly instinctive, and have taught me three essential facts. They either like you, are indifferent, or distrust you. They have little artifice or stratagem other than that of finding a warm place to shelter and enough food to eat in order to survive and procreate, and in retrospect, my life would have been a lot simpler if the human beings I moved amongst had all been so innocent in their requirements.

Of my friends, there are two who have a thorough professional insight into the wordsmithing world; Susie Wakeham Dawson—nee Gibbs, and Anita Mason. I am in their debt for scrutinising and picking up on occasional over-embellishment, punctuation and my clumsy finger-jabbing spelling mistakes. To my friend and wildlife artist, Andrew Warrington who has worked on depicting such a wonderful cover and sketches—I thank him. It is at this stage in life that I am aware that I walk amongst some extremely talented and truly kind people.

So, to my friends—who know who they are—and to the special people in my life who help prop my feet of clay, I proffer my thanks for patience and advice. To my wife, Gwendy, and daughters Kathleen, Ruth and Eilidh, I can only express a hope that our present loving friendship is some solace for the earlier years whilst I grew up, and to those who have continually encouraged me in recording these random thoughts and memories, my thanks and, may I say it at long last, my love.

To the well-behaved youngsters who work hard and have little,

but who contribute to the backbone of our future nation.

They are, sadly, seldom recognised or rewarded.

The Woodland Sprite

Two dog-like barks echoed through the gloom cast by the tall conifers, and the young boy stilled to watch and listen. He moved his head in order to locate the direction from which the sound came, and another two hoarse coughs broke the cathedral-like hush. They were nearer this time, but still eerily resonant in what felt to be a timeless silence. These startling interruptions to the needle-carpeted peace of the forest floor, previously unbroken except for the very occasional muted bird call, were closing in on the youngster’s position fairly quickly, and he felt excitement as he pictured the bounding animal leaping down through the Douglas fir towards the base of the glen. It was there by the river Endrick, in the subdued light afforded by the unbroken wall of conifers, that birch, hazel and alders cloaked the green river banks above the spate-washed boulders. The quiet air was heavy with the scent of earth and moss, and among the moss-draped rocks, wild flowers and delicate blades of grass gave the promise of another season, and a reason for buck fever.

It took but a few more deep breaths before the roebuck leapt into view and halted. He stood poised, a sprightly vision of russet-coated muscle, elfin-like in the rays of blue light which pierced the thick cover against the umber-hued backdrop of large fir trunks.

By the movement of his ears and fixed stare of searching eyes the buck probably sensed that he was not alone, but his mind was on other things besides a small boy in work-worn garments of drab grey, and with a bound he was off again, leaping high above the fallen underbrush, springing sideways and downwards in a seemingly timeless and careless fashion.

Infected by this show of uninhibited skill, the boy, excited and unwilling to relinquish this vision of unconscious freedom, turned to emulate the little buck as best he could. He was wistfully aware that he could not enjoy the companionship and trust of this woodland sprite, but for a short time they raced on a parallel course, gravity and taut fitness lending wings to the lad until the inevitable happened. His landing foot found a slimy root and he fell headlong amongst rasping dead boughs.

Winded and with eyes closed, there was a tentative mental examination of each limb and scratch, whilst the departing barks, now seemingly tinged with a mocking note, faded off into the distance.

This is but one small memory from a boyhood which I now view with some nostalgia, the atmosphere of which I would find difficult to pass onto my grandchildren because time and circumstances have changed so much in the intervening years that trying to convey the reality of my ‘then’ to a ‘now’, to minds conditioned by today’s technological age might be likened to an attempt at transposing feelings of real belly hunger to a person suffering from chronic overindulgence.

For me, such happenings were commonplace whilst scouting about, marking future hazel fishing rods, or casting with those same rods, my many knotted line between overhanging boughs.

In the sepia-hued afternoons of warm summer dog days, empty nymph cases of stone-flies clung to bleached rocks like miniature primeval creatures, and dancing clouds of sunlit sedge flies presented obstacles through which my line wafted in order to gain those hazel-shaded corners which would sometimes yield an eight inch trout.

Hunting by snare or trap was not a pastime, nor in our case a form of pest control but a necessity of survival, and because the properties of some plants were still common knowledge among country folk, a number were used for culinary or medicinal applications. Everyone sees through the same glass differently, and I recall the realities of life as I saw them, etched in varying hues by characters of a bygone age. After the naïve atmosphere of the remote Highland primary school in which I spent my first few years I found the world to be unhappily complex and it was therefore not until I approached middle age, that I became aware of the manner in which I had come to terms with my physical and mental outlook as I moved through my life’s experiences amongst nature.

Life Changes

During my school years a multitude of experiences were to pass my way, and like many a youngster, some of that time was spent in the freshness of discovery and dreaming. I sometimes looked westwards towards the dark loom of the great hills and passes which lay around Glen Affric, which because of their interconnected skyline profile were known locally as the sleeping warrior, and according to my father, cairngorm stones could be found there. This item of information added to my childish imagination as I surveyed the distant haze-veiled mountains where gemstones might be found and it lent a Tolkein air of mystery to a world full of wondrous things, thus adding to my preoccupation and somewhat solemn nature which prompted my father to nickname me ‘the minister’.

I was the eldest child, and although more wiry than muscular in build, I had been fashioned by my father in stamina and skill. I was also the least adept at ‘swinging the lead’, and being the eldest I was his partner and workhorse during weekend wood-cutting tasks when he was at home, but my quietness did not always sit well with my father who was more diverted by the unbridled roguishness shown by my younger brother who had a way of easing himself out of any task or situation which he deemed unsuitable.

Eighteen months after the cessation of the Second World War my father returned from Norway. He had been sent there before my mother realised that she was ‘with child’ and this belated meeting involved some radical changes in what had heretofore been a household dominated by females.

During 1944 my mother had left the ATS (the womens’ army service) and taken up lodgings in Chatham whilst my father was away. Owing to the circumstances it was impossible for her to remain on duty in that condition so she found lodgings and