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• Trevor Bartlett MBE.
Ref: 07-05-9893SH |
Sad farewell to ‘our’ Trevor
I write this week’s column with great pride but with great sadness. Pride that I’ve been writing it each week for the past 25 years. Sadness that this is my last Country Diary. I’ve decided that this is a good time and a good stop to get off the bus – sort of go into hibernation.
This is the end of an era for me in more ways than one. My mother, who I was devoted to, sadly passed away on March 13, at the age of 99; she was only eight weeks off of her 100th birthday. For that reason I would like to dedicate this last Diary to her memory.
As a child Mum gave me the inspiration and love of wildlife that’s stayed with me throughout my whole life. I remember as a child she would sit me on the windowsill and name all the birds in the garden. In those early days there was no way I could understand why there was a difference between a blue tit and a great tit – all birds were blackbirds! We didn’t have a car, and we would go for long country walks, mostly up onto the commons, although back in those days a lot of the common was closed off – it was Dalditch Camp. I remember very well the night that she walked me up the St John’s Road and down to what is now the Bystock Ponds reservoir to listen to a nightingale.
I was about five or six years of age at the time – the only time in my life that I’ve heard a nightingale. I always had something in a jam-jar on the kitchen windowsill – tadpoles changing into frogs, caterpillars changing into pupa. I would catch mice and keep them in a cage – all too often they would escape, my father going frantic to try to locate them somewhere in the house. I still have, to this day, my first bird book that my mother gave me – The Observer Book of Birds. I was about seven when she bought it and the price is still on it, one shilling and three pence!
Twenty-five years! It seems quite unbelievable – where have those 25 years gone? I remember very well the day it all started, it was Saturday - March 19, 1983. I was having a quiet lunchtime drink in what was Leonard’s Bar, now The Clipper on the Strand in Exmouth. The place was comparatively empty other than a few customers seated with their Saturday shopping piled beside them. A short stocky gentleman stood at the end of the bar peering somewhat expressionlessly into his gin and tonic. Having decided that it was time to make my exit, I drained my glass and prepared to go, whereupon the barman placed another pint in front of me, indicating it was from the gentleman at the end of the bar.
I acknowledged my thanks to him with a nod, wondering what exceptional deed I had done that a complete stranger should buy me a drink. Picking up his glass he moved down to join me, extending a hand and introducing himself as Jim Hall, then proprietor of the Sidmouth Herald and the newly published Exmouth Herald – the late Jim Hall.
At that time the Exmouth Herald was in its infancy, there already being a well established Exmouth Journal produced in the town that had provided Exmouth with its weekly news for well over 100 years. Needless to say there was great rivalry between the two newspapers and some bitter hostility.
I had written the odd wildlife article for the Journal over the years but nothing regular. Jim explained that he wanted his paper to be truly local and thought that I may be able to contribute to that cause by reporting on the local wildlife issues. I thought ‘no way’, but this chap had bought me a pint. I agreed to write one article for the following Friday’s edition. I went home and wondered what on earth I could write about.
With it being the end of March, with the countryside springing back into life after its winter rest, I decided on that topic. This is where disaster struck when I inadvertently stated that the brimstone was one of the first butterflies to emerge from the chrysalis in the spring, when in fact it spends the winter in the adult stage in hibernation. Monday morning the telephone rang, it was Jim, asking if I could possibly write another for the following Friday. Reluctantly I felt I had to, if only to make a correction about the brimstone.
Little did I realise in March 1983 that I would still be writing this column, which is now for the Journal, in March 2008!
In those early days the Herald was produced in a back room in Hayne House in the Lower Parade, now the Powder Monkey, and was not at all like the high tech set up of today at the Archant offices at Exeter Airport.
My first efforts were written freehand then typed up by Jim. After a year I decided that I needed to get into the world of modern technology and bought myself a portable typewriter. I couldn’t type but set about teaching myself. I now have one finger shorter than the other and have spent a fortune on Tipp-Ex correcting fluid. Sandra subsequently bought me an electric typewriter - space age technology! I ruined it in no time by hitting the keys too hard; you only needed to touch them.
Then the time came when I considered the world was leaving me behind – I needed a computer. I went all the way to Bristol to get it. Way back then there was nowhere in Exmouth where you could buy one, and only one shop in Exeter. Having got it home I didn’t have a clue how the thing worked – I still don’t! I played around with it, went to some classes for five weeks and, hey presto, I was using a word processor. Back then I used to take my copy into the office each Wednesday morning, then came the fax, and now it’s all done by e-mail.
Over the twenty-five years there’s been some amusing incidents and some sad ones. I think the one instance that will always stick in my mind is the day a dead whale was washed up in the Otter Estuary.
Kelvin Boot, who was then curator of natural history at Exeter Museum, wanted the skeleton. Kelvin, myself and a few friends decided that the only way we would be able to get the meat off this thing was to get it ashore as there was no way we could work on it on the mud of the estuary. We enlisted the help of the Royal Marines who, at high water, towed this creature with a small raiding craft to the Mamhead Slipway in Exmouth. With the aid of a breakdown vehicle we hauled it up the slipway ready to be put on a low loader for its trip to the knackers yard at Newton Abbot, where we would dissect it. The stench from this rotting creature was unbelievable but a good crowd of onlookers assembled – together with Jim Hall armed with his camera.
On a garden wall of a house opposite the slipway was a cat. Jim hurriedly came up to me telling me to catch the cat and sit it on the back of this big fish while he took a picture. You could guess the headline the following week – Pussy gets its dinner. I spent the next hour trying to explain to him that this was no fish but a mammal.
Writing for a local paper for 25 years you become something of a marked man. However, there are times you are not recognised like the time I was walking up the River Otter and saw a lady watching something in the water. As I got to her she eagerly grabbed my arm to point out a mink on the far bank. Declaring she was going to phone Trevor Bartlett to tell him about it. I didn’t have the nerve to say who I was but a short while later my mobile rang. It was a lady who had just seen a mink on the River Otter!
Over the years I have received many thousands of phone calls from readers on a wide range of subjects and sightings. The most unusual must be the one telling me there were lobsters running around Woodbury Common. It was perfectly true. Someone had caught these lobsters but, owing to the fact they were in berry (with eggs), could not sell them – they dumped them still alive on the Common.
I’ve enjoyed writing this column each week over the past twenty-five years. I know from the vast amount of mail and calls I receive that it’s also been enjoyed by the readership. I’ve made many friends as a result of it, and a few enemies, over my love of squirrels and what a lot of people wrongly believe my hatred of seagulls – it’s not the seagulls I hate but the people who feed them.
I’m not walking away from wildlife or the countryside that I love. At the moment I’m involved in a filming project that will cover the things that I’ve written about over the years. To that end, if you have any sightings or unusual stories I would love to hear from you. The telephone number is (01395) 265288, e-mail as below. With that I say my final goodbye and God bless.
• Email Trevor Bartlett, at: Trevor.rescue@tesco.net |