The Fox
Created | Updated Jun 11, 2006
The Fox versus Goxhill Bobbie
By Tom the Pom
True story of life on a Lincolnshire Farm in the 1920’s
“Charles William Barker, having been found guilty to the demise of several cockroaches, a three legged rat, six field mice and a half a flock of pigeons on the wing, and taking into account that you did with malice aforethought squirt chewing tobacco onto your wife’s garden by mouth and so denuded said garden, and thus having caused baccie rash to be transmitted on the wing to half the beekeepers in Lincolnshire depriving them of a living, and causing hunger and deprivation due to the lack of honey money , and taking into account you also admit to having nicked several ounces of chewing terbaccy from the shop owned and run by a certain maiden lady I know as Mz Moaning Liza,
I sentence you to be well hung, drawn and quartered, do you have anything to say that will negate the sentence.
“T’wern’t me, yer ‘onour! ah wus at ‘ome wi’ me missus bathin’ ‘t cat” spat Chairlie as they led him away in chains to the dungeons.
Judge Jeffries, the well know and feared by most crims and known as the hanging Judge of the King’s Court mopped his pale pock marked face and banged the wooden mallet on the bench top killing a fly that had had the gall to settle on his Worships workbench.
The fly on observing the descending wooden mallet revved up his wings and pulled back on his joy stick but alas he had left it too late. There was a bang, a splat, then darkness, and Loui the Fly was history.
I woke up to find me Mam in the bedroom and she was ss shaaking mee e e awaake aand I must have been dreaming, because now I was no longer in that crowded court room where everyone wanting to string my Dad up by his utensils.
If you ever went to the movies and saw some of the re-runs of some 1930’s movies in black and white you may possibly have the re-runs but on observing one Slim Somerville and then looking at a photo of me Dad you would swear it was the same bloke.
Old Slim had a face that resembled a worn out sock hanging out of a worn out football boot.
A second opinion came up with an out of work blood hound wi’ blood shot eyes an’ a bent dip stick.
My Dad, The Right Hon Chas William Barker Esq could have had the same father as Old Slim, they were alike as two peas frum’ ‘t same pod.
Well, some pods do have fat and juicy happy peas in them due to having grown up in sunshine, fresh air, and rain, but then some has peas that are too miserable to grow and look like they have grown up in vinegar impregnated horse manure in a dark cellar, my Dad resembled the latter variety.
Some mob in Germany after WW1 advertised for someone really ugly to play Dracula when they were making the first silent Dracula films.
My Dad answered the advert and was indeed was interviewed for the job but they turned him down, they wanted to make money, not scare the crap out of everybody who wanted a quick thrill.
But one sympathetic bloke saw me Dad and sidled up to him and whispered he should get a job in a hospital, that way the Doctors did not have to operate on people who had intestinal blockages, they would just wheel me Dad in and repositories would be out of date and so would be most of the blockage.
Only trouble was what they saved in operation costs had to be spent on new front door glass because one look at me Dad and they left that hospital like a three pound shell leaving a howitzer field gun.
I’ve seen folk in a pub point, and one observer might lip read, “ Who’s that geezer talkin’ tu owd Fred ower theer?”
“Oh ‘im!!, nivver pick a fecht wi’ him owd mate, unless yo is sick o’ livin’ , that’s Charlie Barker” Then the bloke swallowed hard like a young rattler trying to get a gob full of full grown dead rat down and said, “Av’ ‘eerd o’ ‘im!” and the bloke downed his pint a bit sharpish and left.
Be that as may be, and having given the reader a mental picture of my Dad, one might guess at what I look like.
Lets just say that if you met me on a train you would probably scream and pull the chain, that is assuming you got to a toilet quick enough.
However on this particular afternoon Dad and I were wandering amicably up the lane, well I was amicable enough, but I think Dad was p----d off at something the Farmer had said to him.
Perchance it was to do with shooting pheasants out of season, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised, knowin’ me Dad.
I may have heard the tail end of the conversation ? “---and Goxhill Bobby will be on the look out for any miscreants Barker, you mark my words!!”
Dad took out a little book and wrote in it, cos he liked to remember little passages that sounded clever.
So having struggled with his half inch pencil butt he finally managed to write the date and wrote his version of the Farmer’s wisdom.
“Thee mark me wods”
Anyway here we were heading for home when Dad suddenly said, “ Did ah ever show yu ‘ow tu mek a noise like bods chirrupin?”
And I replied, “Onny when yu in a ‘urry an’ yer weerin’ cordiroy troosers”
Fountain of wisdom was my Dad, he once got into an argument about how nobody could live on the moon cos there weren’t any railway lines long enough to reach the moon to take supplies to them as lived there..
”Naw Dad, yu nivver did” I ventured
With that me Dad veered towards the hawthorn hedge and picked off a leaf then he stopped and very carefully tore the leaf in half in such a manner that the under skin of the leaf was on the half he was going to use.
Putting the glossy side of the leaf to the roof of his mouth with the thin bit pointing to the front he gripped it with his tongue then closed his mouth and forced air past the leaf.
I learned later the first time my Dad attempted this he changed the colour of his under pants from snow grey to mottled khaki with out removing his trousers.
A high-pitched whistle suddenly rent the air then to my amazement the song of a Skylark and the Thrush and Blackbird as though they were sitting in the hedge nearby as Dad’s lips fluttered like the wing of a bird.
Then Dad broke the spell because he suddenly roared with laughter and almost choked on the bit of leaf.
“If onny tha’ cud ‘ave seen thi face” he chortled.
We got home and I rattled on about how Dad could imitate birds until Mum got fed up with it and muttered “So I have noticed in the toilet.”
Dad came home the next night with a brace of pheasants strapped to his waist.
Dad got a long ladder and in the moonlight tied them up in the tall plum tree at the bottom of our back garden.
Well if he did it in daylight somebody a long way off could spot him, but if he did it at night by the light of the bright yellow moon no one could see him and he could see if a Bobby, (Policeman) was coming because of the light on the Bobby’s bike.
Next day Goxhill Bobby who was the resident Fuzz in the village of Goxhill about three miles away was spotted riding the 21 inch bike that most Fuzz favor because it makes then look bigger than they actually are.
Dad spotted the Bobby alongside the railings of the Railway Station.
Since he was moving in the direction of the farm Dad assumed that the stalwart arm of the Law would call at all the houses between the railway station and the village that was a mile away.
Luck was with Dad because the Fuzz decided to report in and the only place he could do that was in the Office of the Railway Station.
So while he is on the phone rabbitin’ on about the shooting he heard late last night in a field not far away, me Dad was doing the one-minute mile up to our house.
Of course when the Fuzz called and me Mum opened the door to the knock knock of the Copper, the first thing the Copper spots is me Dad snoring his head off on the sofa.
“ Uh hu, sorry missus” mumbled the Fuzz, and Dad’s Oscar winning ,” Zzzzzagh???? wassup?? wasamarra??? Aw it’s you? “Wassup? some bugger up an’ deed?” appearing bleary eyed me Dad did really look concerned.
“ Naw Charlie” said the Fuzz bloke, “ Ah eerd a couple o’ shots last neet tha’ sounded like a 12 gauge, an’ ah thowt tha’s gor a 12 guage ent thee Charlie?”
Dad straighten up and looked down at the Copper and said soberly “Aye, ave gor a bloody fower ten an’ all
d’yu wan’ tu check em tu see if’n they wus fired las’ neet”
“Aw naw Charlie, tha’s not necessary” warbled the Fuzz bloke remembering that he was here alone and the nearest Cop Shop was about six miles away in Barton Town by muddy road and on a bike.
“But d’yu mind if ah just hev a quick look round, ah meen ah hev tu say ah actually looked rahnd in me report y’naw!” mumbled the Constable.
With a deep sigh of resignation Dad began the guided tour.
“ ‘eres ‘t pantry” growled Dad leading the way and opening the pantry door to let the Fuzz see all the shelves stacked with glass bottles and jars with jams, brawns, pickled eggs, preserved fruits from the garden, including pears in syrup, dried apple rings, you name it , if it grew in Lincolnshire it was in our pantry.
Walking into our pantry was like descending into some fantasy in ancient Rome.
Up top it resembled Lyon’s café in London, below it looked like all the bodies of countless pigs encased in pillow cases packed with salt and they were going to sit there patiently till the world ended
Also on raised cold paving slabs and covered in salt were sides of bacon and hams most small stores would have given their eye teeth for.
“ Tha’ll not go ‘ungry t’neet Charlie lad” said the Fuzz,. “ Nah wot about yon barn ah seed as ah wus cummin’ in, an ah noticed tha ‘es it locked?”
“Aye that’s tu keep nosey buggers oot” grinned me Dad
“Ah didn’t think as Gypos wud bother thee Charlie?” pondered the Plodder.
“Well them as naws me ez more sense, an’ them as don’t soon bloody find oot”
Armed with the barn key they both walked round to the barn and I could see by the look on the Cops face as Dad put the key in the lock that he knew he was wasting his time.
A quick look round so he could honestly report he had in inspected the property, and his mouth watered as he saw the big pats of butter sitting under the muslin cloths.
He also noticed the fox pelts and rabbit hides curing on the walls of the barn and the huge cross cut saw hanging on a rusty nail.
They came out of the barn and Dad relocked it and let the Fuzz choose which way he wanted to go back to the house, and the Fuzz chose the orchard way, the way they had come to the barn.
The Fuzz looked up at the nearest apple tree then looked down again because the sun was so bright all he could make out now were black spots before his eyes.
“Am off Charlie”, suddenly chirruped the Cop.
The smug look on Dad’s face suddenly changed as Mum stuck her head out of the back door and cried,” “I have just made you a cup of tea Constable, surely you are not in that big a hurry”
I sat there and I could almost hear my Dad’s brain ticking over, “ App’n ah should offer ‘im me bluddy dark glesses an’ sit ‘im in me barra’ ‘an weel ‘im tu bottom o’ the soddin’ plum tree an’ tell ‘im tu luk up
As soon as Dad could observe the back end of the Fuzz well on to the road to Goxhill he intended to fetch the two pheasants down out of the tree and hang them in the pantry where it was nice and cool.
But Nature intervened in the shape of Reynard.
There were a lot of Reynards about in Lincolnshire, and it so happened that one of them was on the look out to further the population of Foxes in Lincolnshire and just happened to be passing our back garden, mind you he was about a mile away, but the breeze was right, and it was now late afternoon, and the Fox was hungry when suddenly the Fox caught the scent of Pheasant up wind.
The signals suddenly changed in the Fox’s brain and now instead of having three pounds of fat where it was no longer needed the urge to mate was replaced by the urge to eat.
Like a half p----d motorist on a foggy night following the white line on the black tarmac road the Fox followed his nose through the matted grass and tall nettles then through the hedge that bordered Chairlie Barker’s farm cottage till he got to the high plum tree.
There the scent ended.
But Foxes are intelligent creatures and figure out that if it’s not here then it has to be somewhere else.
They have a quick dig into the ground and sniff and the brain says, “ Cold dummy”
So the Fox looks up and the brain says, “Now yo is cookin’ bro”
And lo and behold there they are, two pheasants sitting together like two lovebirds.
Course the Fox don’t know they has snuffed it and he takes all the necessary steps to creep up on them with a view to getting one at the least.
So after all the sneaky creeping up the branches bit that takes best part of half an hour he is viewing the backs of these two sleeping beauties and springs on one expecting a sudden squark of alarm struggle.
But in his amazement they don’t panic then crap and fly off.
They both just sort of keel over and dive head first into the ground where there is a double type thud and they just lay there wi’ wavey lines rising from the feathers.
The Fox is down the tree like a shot ‘cos he has visions of them coming round, revving their engines and taking off
I did say Fox’s are not daft, well you’d better believe it, because this Fox grabs one bird and takes it to a clump of bushes about a hundred yards into the back field and hides it, then he comes back for the other and takes it to another clump of bushes and where he don’t muck about wi’ white napkins and knifes and forks and just gets stuck in.
My thoughts on this jaunt were, that since the pheasants were fully grown and heavy for a Fox to carry that is, good luck to the Fox because he either had a friend or he had had to make two journeys to secure the two birds. Which ever angle one views it from every one won, the Cop got a cup of tea, me Dad didn’t get nikked , I learned to whistle like a bloody cuckoo, and the Fox was so stuffed he couldn’t move.
He now knew what a pheasant plucker felt like to be full to bursting wi’ four drumstick, two whole breasts of pheasant and jiblins, the parson noses he spat out cos he was full, and they tasted a bit on the nose anyway.
Tom the Pom. :0) December 2005
By Tom the Pom
True story of life on a Lincolnshire Farm in the 1920’s
“Charles William Barker, having been found guilty to the demise of several cockroaches, a three legged rat, six field mice and a half a flock of pigeons on the wing, and taking into account that you did with malice aforethought squirt chewing tobacco onto your wife’s garden by mouth and so denuded said garden, and thus having caused baccie rash to be transmitted on the wing to half the beekeepers in Lincolnshire depriving them of a living, and causing hunger and deprivation due to the lack of honey money , and taking into account you also admit to having nicked several ounces of chewing terbaccy from the shop owned and run by a certain maiden lady I know as Mz Moaning Liza,
I sentence you to be well hung, drawn and quartered, do you have anything to say that will negate the sentence.
“T’wern’t me, yer ‘onour! ah wus at ‘ome wi’ me missus bathin’ ‘t cat” spat Chairlie as they led him away in chains to the dungeons.
Judge Jeffries, the well know and feared by most crims and known as the hanging Judge of the King’s Court mopped his pale pock marked face and banged the wooden mallet on the bench top killing a fly that had had the gall to settle on his Worships workbench.
The fly on observing the descending wooden mallet revved up his wings and pulled back on his joy stick but alas he had left it too late. There was a bang, a splat, then darkness, and Loui the Fly was history.
I woke up to find me Mam in the bedroom and she was ss shaaking mee e e awaake aand I must have been dreaming, because now I was no longer in that crowded court room where everyone wanting to string my Dad up by his utensils.
If you ever went to the movies and saw some of the re-runs of some 1930’s movies in black and white you may possibly have the re-runs but on observing one Slim Somerville and then looking at a photo of me Dad you would swear it was the same bloke.
Old Slim had a face that resembled a worn out sock hanging out of a worn out football boot.
A second opinion came up with an out of work blood hound wi’ blood shot eyes an’ a bent dip stick.
My Dad, The Right Hon Chas William Barker Esq could have had the same father as Old Slim, they were alike as two peas frum’ ‘t same pod.
Well, some pods do have fat and juicy happy peas in them due to having grown up in sunshine, fresh air, and rain, but then some has peas that are too miserable to grow and look like they have grown up in vinegar impregnated horse manure in a dark cellar, my Dad resembled the latter variety.
Some mob in Germany after WW1 advertised for someone really ugly to play Dracula when they were making the first silent Dracula films.
My Dad answered the advert and was indeed was interviewed for the job but they turned him down, they wanted to make money, not scare the crap out of everybody who wanted a quick thrill.
But one sympathetic bloke saw me Dad and sidled up to him and whispered he should get a job in a hospital, that way the Doctors did not have to operate on people who had intestinal blockages, they would just wheel me Dad in and repositories would be out of date and so would be most of the blockage.
Only trouble was what they saved in operation costs had to be spent on new front door glass because one look at me Dad and they left that hospital like a three pound shell leaving a howitzer field gun.
I’ve seen folk in a pub point, and one observer might lip read, “ Who’s that geezer talkin’ tu owd Fred ower theer?”
“Oh ‘im!!, nivver pick a fecht wi’ him owd mate, unless yo is sick o’ livin’ , that’s Charlie Barker” Then the bloke swallowed hard like a young rattler trying to get a gob full of full grown dead rat down and said, “Av’ ‘eerd o’ ‘im!” and the bloke downed his pint a bit sharpish and left.
Be that as may be, and having given the reader a mental picture of my Dad, one might guess at what I look like.
Lets just say that if you met me on a train you would probably scream and pull the chain, that is assuming you got to a toilet quick enough.
However on this particular afternoon Dad and I were wandering amicably up the lane, well I was amicable enough, but I think Dad was p----d off at something the Farmer had said to him.
Perchance it was to do with shooting pheasants out of season, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised, knowin’ me Dad.
I may have heard the tail end of the conversation ? “---and Goxhill Bobby will be on the look out for any miscreants Barker, you mark my words!!”
Dad took out a little book and wrote in it, cos he liked to remember little passages that sounded clever.
So having struggled with his half inch pencil butt he finally managed to write the date and wrote his version of the Farmer’s wisdom.
“Thee mark me wods”
Anyway here we were heading for home when Dad suddenly said, “ Did ah ever show yu ‘ow tu mek a noise like bods chirrupin?”
And I replied, “Onny when yu in a ‘urry an’ yer weerin’ cordiroy troosers”
Fountain of wisdom was my Dad, he once got into an argument about how nobody could live on the moon cos there weren’t any railway lines long enough to reach the moon to take supplies to them as lived there..
”Naw Dad, yu nivver did” I ventured
With that me Dad veered towards the hawthorn hedge and picked off a leaf then he stopped and very carefully tore the leaf in half in such a manner that the under skin of the leaf was on the half he was going to use.
Putting the glossy side of the leaf to the roof of his mouth with the thin bit pointing to the front he gripped it with his tongue then closed his mouth and forced air past the leaf.
I learned later the first time my Dad attempted this he changed the colour of his under pants from snow grey to mottled khaki with out removing his trousers.
A high-pitched whistle suddenly rent the air then to my amazement the song of a Skylark and the Thrush and Blackbird as though they were sitting in the hedge nearby as Dad’s lips fluttered like the wing of a bird.
Then Dad broke the spell because he suddenly roared with laughter and almost choked on the bit of leaf.
“If onny tha’ cud ‘ave seen thi face” he chortled.
We got home and I rattled on about how Dad could imitate birds until Mum got fed up with it and muttered “So I have noticed in the toilet.”
Dad came home the next night with a brace of pheasants strapped to his waist.
Dad got a long ladder and in the moonlight tied them up in the tall plum tree at the bottom of our back garden.
Well if he did it in daylight somebody a long way off could spot him, but if he did it at night by the light of the bright yellow moon no one could see him and he could see if a Bobby, (Policeman) was coming because of the light on the Bobby’s bike.
Next day Goxhill Bobby who was the resident Fuzz in the village of Goxhill about three miles away was spotted riding the 21 inch bike that most Fuzz favor because it makes then look bigger than they actually are.
Dad spotted the Bobby alongside the railings of the Railway Station.
Since he was moving in the direction of the farm Dad assumed that the stalwart arm of the Law would call at all the houses between the railway station and the village that was a mile away.
Luck was with Dad because the Fuzz decided to report in and the only place he could do that was in the Office of the Railway Station.
So while he is on the phone rabbitin’ on about the shooting he heard late last night in a field not far away, me Dad was doing the one-minute mile up to our house.
Of course when the Fuzz called and me Mum opened the door to the knock knock of the Copper, the first thing the Copper spots is me Dad snoring his head off on the sofa.
“ Uh hu, sorry missus” mumbled the Fuzz, and Dad’s Oscar winning ,” Zzzzzagh???? wassup?? wasamarra??? Aw it’s you? “Wassup? some bugger up an’ deed?” appearing bleary eyed me Dad did really look concerned.
“ Naw Charlie” said the Fuzz bloke, “ Ah eerd a couple o’ shots last neet tha’ sounded like a 12 gauge, an’ ah thowt tha’s gor a 12 guage ent thee Charlie?”
Dad straighten up and looked down at the Copper and said soberly “Aye, ave gor a bloody fower ten an’ all
d’yu wan’ tu check em tu see if’n they wus fired las’ neet”
“Aw naw Charlie, tha’s not necessary” warbled the Fuzz bloke remembering that he was here alone and the nearest Cop Shop was about six miles away in Barton Town by muddy road and on a bike.
“But d’yu mind if ah just hev a quick look round, ah meen ah hev tu say ah actually looked rahnd in me report y’naw!” mumbled the Constable.
With a deep sigh of resignation Dad began the guided tour.
“ ‘eres ‘t pantry” growled Dad leading the way and opening the pantry door to let the Fuzz see all the shelves stacked with glass bottles and jars with jams, brawns, pickled eggs, preserved fruits from the garden, including pears in syrup, dried apple rings, you name it , if it grew in Lincolnshire it was in our pantry.
Walking into our pantry was like descending into some fantasy in ancient Rome.
Up top it resembled Lyon’s café in London, below it looked like all the bodies of countless pigs encased in pillow cases packed with salt and they were going to sit there patiently till the world ended
Also on raised cold paving slabs and covered in salt were sides of bacon and hams most small stores would have given their eye teeth for.
“ Tha’ll not go ‘ungry t’neet Charlie lad” said the Fuzz,. “ Nah wot about yon barn ah seed as ah wus cummin’ in, an ah noticed tha ‘es it locked?”
“Aye that’s tu keep nosey buggers oot” grinned me Dad
“Ah didn’t think as Gypos wud bother thee Charlie?” pondered the Plodder.
“Well them as naws me ez more sense, an’ them as don’t soon bloody find oot”
Armed with the barn key they both walked round to the barn and I could see by the look on the Cops face as Dad put the key in the lock that he knew he was wasting his time.
A quick look round so he could honestly report he had in inspected the property, and his mouth watered as he saw the big pats of butter sitting under the muslin cloths.
He also noticed the fox pelts and rabbit hides curing on the walls of the barn and the huge cross cut saw hanging on a rusty nail.
They came out of the barn and Dad relocked it and let the Fuzz choose which way he wanted to go back to the house, and the Fuzz chose the orchard way, the way they had come to the barn.
The Fuzz looked up at the nearest apple tree then looked down again because the sun was so bright all he could make out now were black spots before his eyes.
“Am off Charlie”, suddenly chirruped the Cop.
The smug look on Dad’s face suddenly changed as Mum stuck her head out of the back door and cried,” “I have just made you a cup of tea Constable, surely you are not in that big a hurry”
I sat there and I could almost hear my Dad’s brain ticking over, “ App’n ah should offer ‘im me bluddy dark glesses an’ sit ‘im in me barra’ ‘an weel ‘im tu bottom o’ the soddin’ plum tree an’ tell ‘im tu luk up
As soon as Dad could observe the back end of the Fuzz well on to the road to Goxhill he intended to fetch the two pheasants down out of the tree and hang them in the pantry where it was nice and cool.
But Nature intervened in the shape of Reynard.
There were a lot of Reynards about in Lincolnshire, and it so happened that one of them was on the look out to further the population of Foxes in Lincolnshire and just happened to be passing our back garden, mind you he was about a mile away, but the breeze was right, and it was now late afternoon, and the Fox was hungry when suddenly the Fox caught the scent of Pheasant up wind.
The signals suddenly changed in the Fox’s brain and now instead of having three pounds of fat where it was no longer needed the urge to mate was replaced by the urge to eat.
Like a half p----d motorist on a foggy night following the white line on the black tarmac road the Fox followed his nose through the matted grass and tall nettles then through the hedge that bordered Chairlie Barker’s farm cottage till he got to the high plum tree.
There the scent ended.
But Foxes are intelligent creatures and figure out that if it’s not here then it has to be somewhere else.
They have a quick dig into the ground and sniff and the brain says, “ Cold dummy”
So the Fox looks up and the brain says, “Now yo is cookin’ bro”
And lo and behold there they are, two pheasants sitting together like two lovebirds.
Course the Fox don’t know they has snuffed it and he takes all the necessary steps to creep up on them with a view to getting one at the least.
So after all the sneaky creeping up the branches bit that takes best part of half an hour he is viewing the backs of these two sleeping beauties and springs on one expecting a sudden squark of alarm struggle.
But in his amazement they don’t panic then crap and fly off.
They both just sort of keel over and dive head first into the ground where there is a double type thud and they just lay there wi’ wavey lines rising from the feathers.
The Fox is down the tree like a shot ‘cos he has visions of them coming round, revving their engines and taking off
I did say Fox’s are not daft, well you’d better believe it, because this Fox grabs one bird and takes it to a clump of bushes about a hundred yards into the back field and hides it, then he comes back for the other and takes it to another clump of bushes and where he don’t muck about wi’ white napkins and knifes and forks and just gets stuck in.
My thoughts on this jaunt were, that since the pheasants were fully grown and heavy for a Fox to carry that is, good luck to the Fox because he either had a friend or he had had to make two journeys to secure the two birds. Which ever angle one views it from every one won, the Cop got a cup of tea, me Dad didn’t get nikked , I learned to whistle like a bloody cuckoo, and the Fox was so stuffed he couldn’t move.
He now knew what a pheasant plucker felt like to be full to bursting wi’ four drumstick, two whole breasts of pheasant and jiblins, the parson noses he spat out cos he was full, and they tasted a bit on the nose anyway.
Tom the Pom. :0) December 2005
