Introducing our correspondent
I am a Yorkshire man, have worked on many farms both home and abroad, and am now settled and scratching a living on a small farm in the Lakes. I am married with two daughters. Ted Hudson
Ted writes:
We have had a lot of good neighbours through the years.
One of them was Harry Park. He was a quietly-spoken man, famous locally for his wise counsel, banty hens and enormous nose. It was a nose that reared out of his thin face in a great hook. It ended in two stretched and veiny nostrils that channelled a continual stream of moisture.
The point was so far away from the rest of his body that it acted like a leaky tractor-radiator, condensing any moisture in the air around and dripping even on the balmiest of summer days. Unsurprisingly, he was known as ‘Nosey’. He was a church sides-man and would greet parishioners in the church porch with a lop-sided grin and a hymn book that more often than not had dark splashes on the cover.
With his wife Mary he farmed close to a hundred acres of inbye and had fell rights that took him well over the top into the next valley. When not on church duties he was only ever seen wearing overalls and cap and a pair of black rubber wellington boots with the tops folded down on the outside. When he and Mary had visitors, which wasn’t often, as they liked to keep themselves to themselves, Mary would use a code that told Harry that the dewdrop on the end of his extraordinary nose was about to plummet earthwards. “Parson’s at the door”, Mary would say in a quiet voice, and Harry would automatically reach into his overall pocket and extract a voluminous handkerchief which he would wrap around his nose and then wipe vigorously back and forth across his nostrils.
The handkerchief would then be plunged back into the overalls’ pocket, but even as it was tucked down and out of sight the next dewdrop would be gradually but relentlessly forming, and the parson would soon be visiting again.
What few knew about Harry was that in certain situations, his language could turn the air blue.
He had land that bordered on ours for about a half mile and would come to gather and look his half-bred sheep nearly always in the stillness that can accompany first light. As we sat at our breakfast table we would hear the shrill commands to his dog drifting through our open kitchen window.
Almost indistinguishable at first, as he came nearer his shouts became recognisable. Jesus was always mentioned quite a lot and we used to think it was his old dog’s name. But old Jesus died and Harry got a new one that he apparently christened with the same name. The kids used to mimic Phil Drabble from ‘One Man and his Dog’ – “And now coming to the post in this deciding run off, representing England, is Nosey Park and his dog JESUS CHRIST!”
When we heard him approaching, Mrs Ted would close the kitchen window saying, “Now then, that’s quite enough of that” and turn on the shipping forecast or the Archers or anything that blotted out the fast approaching torrent of profanity.
Harry’s repertoire was usually a fairly eclectic mix of intimate human body parts, private bodily functions, and a ‘who’s who’ of all the main Biblical characters. On particularly difficult days, Rolf Harris would get a mention, as Harry blamed him for the hike in vets’ fees that seemed to occur round about the time that Rolf presented the BBC’s ‘Animal Hospital’.
We would all nudge each other in church when Harry would read his favourite psalm and get to the bit about “he maketh me to lie down in green pastures”. We would all think of Jesus, and purse our lips to do the lie-down whistle, but Mrs Ted would turn her head along the pew, cough gently and give the look that even now quells any potential naughtiness.
We weren’t the only ones to be availed of his rich and ripe vocabulary. One Thursday at the local auction around dinner time, a string of expletives suddenly emanated from the gentlemen’s urinal.
The sale of suckler calves was brought to a halt as staff were redeployed to find out what on earth was going on. As they entered the basic, roofless building with its rusty metal trough down one side, they came upon Harry. He was rolling about on the concrete floor, cursing for all he was worth and apparently attempting to disembowel himself with his pocket knife. He was quickly disarmed and brought to his feet.
“Nay Harry, trade’s not as bad as all that, settle theeself.”
“Let go yer daft sods,” squawked Harry. “I came in here for a ******* pee and the ******* zip of me ******* overalls jammed under me ******* chin and I was trying to cut meself a ******* ******* ******* escape route!”
He’s gone now. Went to shut up his banty hens one night and never came back. Mary found him stone dead, slumped over the nest boxes, and realising that nothing could be done ‘til morning, dropped the bob-hole, had a little cry and went to bed.
I like to think of him ‘up there’ running his old dog and making the angels blush. And sometimes when the breeze is in the right direction we fancy we can still hear Harry’s indelicacies drifting through the early morning air.
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