When I first saw Roger Peters he was walking as far as it is possible at the age of thirteen in a professional stride across the steepness of a field called the North Slope. He was accompanying Charles from west to east and presently they approached me as I stood by the corner of the corrugated iron milking shed.
Roger was about the same height as I, but had more meat on him. Pictures I saw later revealed that he had slimmed down from being quite a chubby child. I recollect that I had a certain disdain for this 'townie' who seemed to be invading my territory. (How early we come to think of the world as ours!) After we had been introduced and worked around the farm the work bonded us together as I have so frequently observe it do with others.
Together we learnt to lift milk churns filled with ten gallons weighing one hundred and forty pounds and sacks of barley and wheat that weighed up to two-and-a-half hundredweight or 125 kilos. We learnt the safe way to do this and the safe way to handle cattle, recognising their moods by the look in their eyes, the angle of their ears or the relative movement of their tails. Together we studied their physiology and diseases. We helped to deliver their calves. We helped the vet to perform operations. We became steeped in the knowledge held in the countryside, hidden from those who would use it as a pleasure ground but scorn the task of caring for the land and its inhabitants. The care of sheep and cattle became as routine to us as others' concern for their pets. But no matter how much we cared we learnt that farm stock are not there to provide company for humans but meat, milk, eggs or wool. Any emotional bond is soon discounted when you are rearing animals for work. We would fuss over Roger's dog and pet him, but not the calves or lambs for whose life we sometimes struggled until we were exhausted.
That is not to say that we did not have favourites, or that we did not pat them. But we might in later years whisper 'mint sauce' in a lamb's ears. As I pursued my career in farming I became very hard and showed no mercy to animals that tried my patience, but Roger always retained that more child-like respect for his charges. I saw them as an entity to exploit, he as creatures with whom we were obliged to work to provide for others.
In those years at the end of the 1950's food had only recently been taken off the rationing that had been introduced in the Second World War and was still in comparatively short supply. We still imported vast quantities of lamb and butter from Australia and New Zealand, cheese from Canada and bacon from Denmark. Gradually we turned farms into productive holdings as new techniques were introduced and food became plentiful and cheap. Many people now forget this as they condemn farmers for the way the countryside has changed. They forget the poor diets that we endured during and after that war; and they forget that the farming community tried to resolve that problem in the only way it knew. We now realise, with the benefits of hindsight, that in some areas we went too far. The warnings of Silent Spring and other books seemed excessive in their pessimism in those days.
We two were drawn into a recognition that our futures were tied to the land and neither of us found peace in our hearts until we finally took up full-time work on the land. Before that day we both tried other jobs. Roger worked in an architect's office while I worked in the Borough Surveyor's Office in Brighton where I faced the dilemma of having to build roads that tore out the heart of my beloved Downs. During this time we both continued to work on the farm part-time.
Our life during this time revolved around the usual pursuits of young men. We attended a church youth club, as much for the chance to meet girls as out of conviction of faith, although we both believed strongly in the version of God to whom we were introduced there. I continue in that faith and now proclaim the Gospel from the pulpit to which I have access as a Reader. It was there that I met most of my girl friends and my wife. At dances Roger was more lithe and graceful than I and he generally outplayed me in sport and games. He sang well and could play musical instruments, notably the trombone and the five-string banjo. When I tried these activities I tripped, went off key or broke the strings. Although I was envious I was not jealous because I was pleased for him in his successes.
From the relative security and comfort of our middle class homes we set off on the difficult path of becoming full-time farm workers. This was more difficult than I had expected. We only got our first jobs because we had already learnt much in our part-time capacities. From this time on our paths would separate, but we met often enough so that we could resume our conversation where we had left off.
Strangely, we swapped roles. While we were part-time I had preferred to work with machinery while Roger preferred the stock. In order to qualify to attend agricultural college we had to gain experience in a wide variety of farm work. Roger gained his on a cereal farm in Hampshire. Later he went to the vast fields of Lincolnshire where he drove the largest combine harvesters of the time. He also worked with sugar beet and peas nearly fulfilling the words of one of our favourite song-writers - Woody Guthry3.
I in the meantime went to a small dairy farm near Gloucester where one of my first jobs after leaving civil engineering was to lay the concrete yard on which new milking sheds would be situated. The farmer didn't like machinery so I did the small amount of field work that was required. My main tasks, though, were those associated with the cows - milking, feeding and mucking out. That farm provided me with a great influence the legacy of which I still enjoy. I shall return to this farm at a later stage in my story.
Roger went to Harper Adams Agricultural College in 1963, but having failed his first year exams did not return after the summer holidays in 1964. I applied in 1964 and was invited to attend an interview for the 1965 year at the end of August. After the interview I was invited to start there in the September of 1964 with less than a month's notice. thus we nearly attended the same college for a year together, but it was not to be. In the year after me another Shoreham lad attended.
The sequence of jobs he had is lost to me now. One day, thanks to the influence of my experiences with the fire brigade (I jest), he joined them on a part time basis and spent the balance of his time farming. He then became a full time fireman. As a result of an injury sustained in the fire brigade he received a pension and was able to spend more time building up his own farm.
While in Oxfordshire he lived on a medium sized mixed farm, and it was while he was there that he became engaged to his first fiancee but that was a short lived romance because she would have him wait to get married until she had qualified as a medical laboratory technician. Strangely enough that is the job my wife had. Later he would marry an East Preston girl. The occasion of their wedding was my first visit to the church in which I now perform the duties of a Reader.
Roger was the man with whom I spent my last hours as a bachelor. It was he who accompanied me into my destiny as the husband of Sue as he performed the duties of Best Man at our wedding in 1965.