The Mays at Trewethart
Dennis: Graham May he lived up Trewethert and Margaret Beare, who married Terry Harris, they was going home from school one day and I don’t know, they had bin hoeing bleddy mangels and ones was falling off the cart, and Graham said something to her and she picked up a bleddy mangel and hit ‘en right across the bleddy head nearly knocked ‘en out, (Laughter) . He went school with a bleddy great lump on his head next day.
Janet: Oh God that was a boy who never knew how to play.
Dennis: Who? Graham.
Janet: Ya. My earliest memory of Graham was up in the yard, up Wethert with a wheelbarrow and Uncle Mark had set him a task to shift a pile of gravel. Never saw Graham play, he was one of the most serious children I had ever know.
Dennis: I used to go up there, he had a pony and trap, a little diddy cart. Not a proper horse cart but sort of half way between the two. He said ‘I got some trouble with this damned old ‘oss he won’t stop’, and see what they used to do, they would go in the bleddy dung heap, in the yard. They’d heave the dung up in the cart then jump on the front of the cart and go out across the field and the cart would have a little pin in it, you see, and you’d tip the thing back and then there would be a dump of manure in the middle of the field in rows
and then you had to scoot it by hand there was no such thing as a dung spreader, all by hand shake it all out. So anyway this is what Graham was going to do. Course Graham would get out and go back around to put the tail board back on the cart and before he could get back in the horse was bleddy gone. Course the damn horse didn’t know the width of the gate see and of course he’d hit the gate with the wheel. Anyway, I said alright I’ll come up, so I went up Saturdays you see. So I went up there 3 or 4 Saturdays always in the Farmhouse for lunch, bleddy great meal.
Janet: She (Graham’s mother) used to make nice yeast buns.
Dennis: Ya, anyway, all sat down, back out again with this horse and cart in the afternoon. Anyway after about 2 or 3 weeks, Mark said ‘you milk cow boy?’. Well I said ‘I had a little go up Sam Blake’s’ well he said ‘I’ll give he a cow to milk’ he said ‘now there’s a bucket, stainles steel bucket, stool, cow, go for it’.
Well I’m there and after about ten or fifteen minutes cow was getting fed up, bleddy tits was sore I expect with me bleddy pulling and dragging.
Anyway, this poor old cow, anyway down come Mark’s Mrs, ‘Mark’, ‘ya what he want’, ‘what did you give that boy that cow for’. He give me the cow with the smallest tits in the bleddy herd, course I couldn’t get anything out of the damn thing. She did it with her finger and thumb.
Course I had bits of grass in the bucket, cows legs coming forward, you’d grab the bucket put it back well I don’t know. Poor old Mark he had bleddy hell from his Mrs ‘cos ‘e give me the cow with the small tits.