It may seem strange to you from what you have already read that I was once a professional sportsman. Perhaps that is a distortion of the truth, poetic licence, but it is true that I was paid to do cross-country running rather than rugby while I was at school.
I never did like team sports, especially those which involved chasing spherical or near-spherical objects up a field, only to have to repeat the exercise in the opposite direction a few moment's later. the object being of course to keep the ball as far up one end of the field for forty-five minutes and then try and keep it at the other extremity for a further three-quarters of an hour. Neither did I gain any pleasure or sense of satisfaction from being placed in the centre of a scrum with the bony knees of another juvenile delinquent bent upon reshaping my nose and face. It was an action described to me by a Wiltshire man as being akin to a lot of chicken scratching for corn, 'backsides in air and heads to ground'. And of all God's creatures, I am convinced that he thought hens to be the lowest form.
So when in the fifth form we could choose to drop rugby and take up cross country running my mind was already made up. It was even more enjoyable because the course ran for some of its length alongside the very farm on which I worked evenings, weekends and any spare time I had.
Realising that I would be within viewing distance of his stock, Charles persuaded me to take a slightly longer route and check them for him. This allowed him on one day a week to save the time and petrol travelling from his home farm in Shoreham to the one in Worthing. For this service he rewarded me. It was not the money but the freedom that I enjoyed.
The possible irony is for some distance we ran along the track that divided farm from golf course. On the one side the desire of my heart and on the other the folly that I decried.
As I was fairly fast, I was able to lead the field to begin with, disappear from view and rejoin them later as a back marker. I was often advised by the masters to start a little slower so that I could conserve my energy for the later part of the course and not end up so near the back. If only they knew!