The following is the notes to a talk I gave to the womens institute a couple of years ago. It has I think bearings on what Noserose was asking about ones roots.

WI Talk

In 1951 I started school at Welbeck road secondary school here in Bolsover. Part of our inception consisted of the usual pep talk by a member of the staff. Sat in a prefabricated classroom on a gloomy September day I can recall very little of what was said. However. I do remember the teacher saying that we could become whatever we wanted to become

This struck me as being the first big lie to be peddled in the new school. Having just been dubbed failures by the eleven plus selection system this idea rang particularly hollow.

To illustrate his point the teacher directed our attention to an old man working outside on the school field.

"Now for example, would any of you imagine that the man out there had written a book?"

No, we would not.

He was shabbily dressed and doing a labouring job.

We all knew that authors were posh and rich and certainly did not toil in the outdoors with wheelbarrow and spade.

It must have stuck in my mind though, for a year or two later I was talking with a girl when the topic came up. She claimed to have read the book and I asked her opinion of it.

"Boring." She said. And that was the end of that.

For one who usually pursues his own agenda, I must have been deeply petticoat smitten because it was to be over forty more years before I read that book and the others by that same author.

No doubt some of you are much more enlightened than I was and have read these books. For the others can I introduce you to a little of the life and works Of Bolsover’s own Bard Mr. Fred Kitchen.

Fred was born at around the turn of the century and his life spanned the two great disruptions of the two World Wars when political and social changes where whirling and swirling throughout the world. He makes very little mention of this however. As a farm worker he was in a way, insulated from such events.

This does not mean he was insulated from life though, far from it. Important though the Great War was, its impact on the population left at home was not so great as we at a distance might imagine.

In the era of proper horse power the combined efforts of man and beast were the means of feeding the nation. And labour shortages and relative prosperity were the main home consequences of that war.

It does mean though that his style of writing is by our present day standards, a little old fashioned.

This for me does not detract from what fred has to say but in fact gives a sense of time and place.

Here is an extract from his autobiography "Brother To The OX"

My parents were Methodists and we were brought with strict regard for the Sabbath. There was no Nonconformist place of worship nearer than two miles, so we usually went to the private chapel belonging to the House. But sometimes, as a special treat, an annivesary, or thanksgiving, dad and mother would take us to the village chapel. We were always dressed very respecable on Sundays. How mother did it on seventeen shillings a week is one of those mysteries that no mother can solve these days. She was one of the old school, whose life was a constant endeavour to make ends meet-ends that were too wide apart ever to make a straight and lasting joint. Gentle and devoted, she worshipped the virtue of respectabi1ity.Dad and mother walked in front, he carrying a walkingstick and wearing a well-brushed black coat with two large buttons shining in the rear. Mother wore a black bonnet, tied under her chin and all shiny beads nodding about on top. My three sisters and I walked respectfully behind, they With long pigtails hanging down, and I wearing a round pork-pie hat. It was a long two miles, with flowers all the way, which we could not gather on account of its being Sunday. Neither did we blackour boots before setting out; that was another sin action to perform on the Sabbath. It was my duty every Saturday morning, before going out to play to black six pairs of Sunday boots and put them away in the bottom cupboard. There was no skipping them, either; if they weren’t shiny enough they had to be cleaned over again.

On the Saturday before Christmas I used to go with mother to help carry home the Christmas beef. A fat beast was cut up in the coach-house down by the stables, and each workman and his wife were given two pounds of beef each, and every child was given one pound. In addition, loaves of bread were given out, and a merry Christmas it made in a large family. The stable-yard was a quiet sort of place as a rule, sacred to the hunters and their grooms. But on this day a lad might peep down the long line of stables without fear of the fat rosy-faced coachman ordering him off. The stable-yard was a big square place with stables and offices all round it. Over the Stables were the ‘bothies �?the coachman’s and grooms�?quarters. To reach these you climbed a winding stone stairway and went along side corridors where your boots echoed like a regiment of foot. The whole place seemed to me capable of housing a regiment of cavalry, horse and man. In my childish fancy I likened it to the courtyard at Torquilstone in Ivanhoe, with knights in armour clattering over the stone setts. Over all was the pleasant smell of dead horse-chestnut leaves and stable litter. I can smell it now as I write about it.

Here is world so near and yet so far from our own. A world where the ‘big house�?was pivotal to peoples fortunes and misfortunes. The beauty is that the mature Fred kitchen can transport us back to these days when as a boy he savoured the other delights of Christmas

While on about Christmas, I ought to mention Christmas Eve at the farm bailiff’s.We were; invited into the farm kitchen on Christmas eve to watch the mummers and the Derby tup. The mummers daubed their faces with lamp-black,red raddle, or chalk. They were dressed up to represent nothing on earth, which isn’t to say they looked heavenly. The more face-powder they had used the more inclined were they to kiss the maids under the mistletoe. Then the Derby tup came with one of the lads crouching under a sheep’s skin carrying an ugly staring sheep’s head. A play was enacted involving variou strange characters and finally the slaughter of the Tup They then sang a long rigmarole about this wonderful Tup beginning:

As I was going to Derby

All on a market day

I met the finest tup, sir,

That ever was fed on hay.

It went on for about a dozen verses, but singers, suffering from much refreshment take many calls, would get mixed up with the verses that the bailiff had to send for the jug to prevent them singing all night. After the tup had disappeared with his grisly head the grown-ups sat by the fire drinking and singing to the melodeon.

The women sipped cowslip wine in a sort of genteel way, but the men gulped down strong ale as though they meant it. We children joined in the songs. played snapdragon and bob-apple, until the party broke up at about ten o’clock with many exclamations on the lateness of the hour.

I will leave Fred’s autobiography with two more snippets. Here is the first�?/P>

Sometimes, during the winter, life would be brightened by a magic-lantern night. This was a great do and was held in the miller’s corn-chamber as our tiny schoolroom was not large enough for a crowd. This was a long chamber, hung with dusty cobwebs, and to reach it you climbed twelve worn Stone Steps. I know there were twelve because every one counted them, either aloud or mentally, when descending into the darkness. Then, after crossing the rickety footbridge over the beck, it was pretty good going all the way home.

By the one tragic event described here in his own words

Well, that was the shape of my life until I was eleven: secluded and highly respectable, and the same sort of life was known to every cottage on the estate. Every cottage had the stamp of respectability about it A church calendar and a case of Stuffed animals or birds were to be found in every household. I knew every house by its glasscasebetter than I knew the owner’s name. There was the Cottage with the fox over the dresser; the one with the brown owl over the chimney piece; another with an otter carrying a trout; the keepers lodge with the pheasant.

In fact every one seemed to have a stuffed specimen of some kind, and my soul revolted at the sight of them I might have grown up a prig or a Puritan if my father had not been taken bad with diabetes. Before I was twelve he died and with his passing went my chances of being 'put to something'. I was glad t take the first job that turned up, to help my mother in her struggle to keep the pot boiling.

When I studied history many ago I discovered that it has, in the past, always been the great and the good of the world who were literate and therefore left records of their opinions Because of this most of our history is of their doings and from their view of the word. All historians crave hearing the voices of the common man and this one book is a wonderful insight into a world that had disappeared even before my boredom in that classroom mentioned earlier.

Brother to the ox is not the only book written by Fred.

There are in Bolsover library, six of his works. All of these were published between 1940 and 1947 All carry the common theme of the countryside although from differing viewpoints. since starting on this project I have turned up evidence of two more. I went on the internet and to the website of an American second hand bookshop, typed Fred Kitchen into search and sure enough it yeilded results including copies of the two books i knew nothing about.

Fred was concious of his strengths and weaknesses as a writer and was careful to avoid the trap of stepping outside his knowledge.

Here is one of his poems where he makes just that point.

L’ENVOI

HE tipped his last barrow of muck

On the muck-hill beyond the door,

For he smelt in the wind, that his luck,

Blew from where it had not been before.

He wiped the last bit from his boots,

And his leggings he used for a mat,

He left the cow chewing her roots,

And went in for writing and that.

Editors came flocking around,

And he wrote like a poet inspired,

For such wisdom was not to be found

Since the day when Shakespeare retired.

But he found that his cows did possess

A subtle endearment of charm,

And his writings, to be a success

Must never go far from the farm.

So a trifle of soil on his boots

Still lingers to help him along,

And to watch a cow chewing her roots

Inspires him to break into song.

This is from a collection of verse and short essays with the title ‘Song of Sherwood. This is a late publication and to my ear has not quite the freshness of his earlier work. but please read it for yourself as there are some gems in there.