Uncle Les

I found out my Uncle Les had carked it recently. To be honest I thought he’d already have been long gone. Must have been a good old age.

My Uncle Les was a sheep farmer out in the woolly wilds of Northumberland. He had a little wife who cooked for him, did his laundry and brought up their four daughters, who adored him.

Les had a Border Collie called Midge who spent most of her life working and the rest out in the barn, in pup.

I remember I was up at the farm one day, when the girls ran into the kitchen interrupting our tea and begged him to come and see the nest of new-born mice they had discovered near the whelping box where Midge was feeding her latest brood. I tagged along behind, struggling to keep up with his huge determined strides down the hill to the barn.

Les spoke briefly and gently to Midge, and then without breaking stride, walked over to the nest and stood on it, twisting down his size 12 through the hay until it reached the gravel. He scooped up the mess of shredded materials and bodies with his huge hands, tossed it into a broken trailer just outside the barn door and told the girls to get back in the house and finish their tea.

We sat down, in silence, still in shock, and waited for Les to carve the loaves into doorsteps for our jam and bead. It was difficult to tell what kind of a mood he was in because he wore a permanent scowl and his unkind, indecisive mouth was forever pursed against the world.

He’d had a hard life.

As he was carving the last couple of slices, the cat jumped up on the table. Les whacked it with the bread knife and (we found out later) broke its back.

Auntie Janet bustled us outside into the front yard with our bread and jam and we watched as Les strode down to the barn with a hessian sack and threw it into the broken trailer. He did not come back up to the house until after I had gone home.

True story.