Wild life | 12 March 2011

Indonesia

In a Jakarta traffic jam it hits me. After decades of frenetic travel, I have learnt less of the world than I might have, had I simply stayed on a farm in Devon. After my family’s land was expropriated in Tanzania in the 1960s, we lived for some years at Hill Farm near the village of Iddesleigh. Our neighbours knew us as ‘those Africans’. They hardly knew what Africa was, of course, since few had ventured beyond Hatherleigh on market day.

As he grew up, my eldest brother Richard sought wider horizons and went overseas. More than two years later, he returned and entered Iddesleigh’s pub, the Duke of York. ‘Hullo, Richard,’ said Bill, one of the regulars. ‘Where you been then?’ ‘I’ve been to Belize,’ said Richard. ‘That over abroad, is it, Richard?’ ‘Yes, it is.’ ‘I been over abroad once,’ said Bill. ‘Oh,’ said Richard. ‘Yurr,’ said the old regular. ‘1944. Some fugger shot me.’

Hill Farm looked out on a pagan landscape described by Ted Hughes, our neighbour, in his Moortown poems. His cattle broke into our fields. I shot his crows with my airgun. The brooks were full of crayfish; the meadows full of butterflies and flowers. Shoals of elvers migrated across fields on moonlit nights. Casting for sea trout with my father on summer evenings probably form my very happiest memories. Home was a Devon longhouse with thatch and very low ceilings and cob walls so old the builders, while opening a new door in the kitchen, found a hoarded James VI gold coin the size of a tin lid. Blackthorn hedgerows, huge granite gateposts and a great barn held up by huge oak timbers.

In the shadow of Dartmoor locals spoke with an accent as yet unpolluted by television.