Reflections – Charlierobinsonbooks

Where It All Began 26

Our new home was a field. It was an apple farm after all. We were the first to arrive, and the boss told us it would be few days before we would start work. Funds were low, so we had jam sandwiches for lunch and salad every day for dinner. Luckily the blackberries were ripe so a late summer evening walk provided us with a pudding. Eventually the field filled with prospective apple pickers and we started work. He paid £40 for every crate you filled and I was managing four per day. Sadly it started to rain on the first day and continued for over three weeks, the cheap Argos tent leaked and we had to put the duvet in the hop house to dry each day.

There was a great mixture of people, Scots, English, and an Italian lad. When you pick an apple you can’t dig your fingers in, you must use the palm of your and gently twist it off. When you drop the apples into the crate it has to be done gently. These are key rules to prevent bruising. Everyday an inspector picks three apples from your crate, ripens them overnight and if you have bruised apples three days on the trot you’re fired. The young Italian sang. He sang all day as he tugged the fruit from the tree and slammed it into the crates. The inspector returned every morning and gave him a warning. As entertaining as it was, I tried to tell my Italian friend, but in return he would say. “Va tutto bene, è tutto bellissimo,” and smile. They fired him on the third day. Because of the continuing damp weather Sally’s asthma got worse and she became quite ill. I looked in the local paper and found a proper tent for £30. I picked it up and erected it the same night. It was larger and older than I had anticipated and the next day the farmer enquired as to who had built a house in his field.

At least Sally was dry and she took a few days off. The two Scottish lads were the next to be fired. On their last night they told me they had sneaked into the barn and urinated on the crates in retaliation. I’ve never eaten a Cox’s Pippin since.😂 The apples you pick in September are stored and go on sale the following year, just in case you wonder why fresh apples go off so quickly. By the end of September there were only two of us left. It rained on our final morning as we attacked the last remaing trees. The farmer paid us and we retired to the pub for a hearty meal. I’d made just short of £700, but it had rained everyday. We sat by the fire and chatted as we ate. As the sweet arrived the sun broke out across the countryside. 😂

It was time to say goodbye. I had an idea to drive down to Greece and pick oranges, but the winter harvest was in full swing from November to January and offered the highest number of available jobs. What to do until November? I knew something would pop up. After all it always did, didn’t it?

Happy Trails, Folks x

Where It All Began 24

The wind whistled through the narrow arrow slits, and the crows cawed as they circled above. My eyes are locked upon the empty space between the inner and outer walls below, where men must have bled out in battle centuries ago. I was deep in thought when she slapped a hand on my shoulder. “There you are! I was looking everywhere!” To say I was startled is a huge understatement, but she thought it was funny. Carcassone 1992.

After Paris I decided to head south. Fruit picking seemed the obvious choice for work, after all I was an accomplished grape harvester, and I figured there’d be more work in the south. We visited Carcassonne because it’s a famous castle, and it was used for the movie Robin Hood Prince of Thieves. We all like a bit of Costner don’t we? And who can forget Alan Rickman?

But it was time to make some money. Now, at the time my French was pretty good, at least speaking it was. We camped in a field owned by Fred and Elsie, they might have been called Raphaël and Geneviève, but I thought Fred and Elsie suited them far better. They told me to go to the market at 5am and speak to les producteurs. For those of you who aren’t fluent in the language these are the producters 😂 In other words Growers. Upon arrival I headed directly for the cafe and asked the owner, in my best French, where I could find les producters . He kinda shouted about three sentences. This was my first inkling that speaking French and understanding French are actually two different things. I gave him a smile, in truth I probably looked ‘gaumless’ and left. We asked a few producters if they had any work but to no avail. A few days later I called in on a farm, the farmers wife leaned from the window and I asked if there was any work. She spoke for about five minutes, as I listened attentively. I thanked her and returned to the van. Sally asked me what she had said. I looked at her and said. “I haven’t the faintest idea.” 😂 Without labouring the story this was the overriding theme for the next four months.

One day we had a crash. Who puts traffic lights behind a tree? Later, after we had swopped details, I realised my insurance had run out. Luckily I had a friend back in England who could be described as ‘Shonky’ Liz Makenzie describes the word very well on her blog Mywordshare. He sent me a backdated insurance certificate three days later. Shortly after that the van was broken into, strangely all they stole was my income tax documents which I had intended to complete, en route. I’m not sure if that would make my tax debt null and void, but at least I had a witness in Sally. 😉

After four months it began to dawn on me that this wasn’t Gran Canaria, we couldn’t go fishing, and Sally wasn’t Peter, although she was having fun (stop it! we’ll keep this a family show 😂) she was getting a little fed up. Decent amenities were rare, plus we were running out of money. So my offer to return to England was well recieved. But I couldn’t go back to where I’d come from. I looked at a map and decided that Torquay, Devon had a certain attraction. After all, in 1815 Napoleon Bonarparte gazed from HMS Bellerphon at the Torbay coastline and said “Quel bon pays,” comparing it to Porto Ferrajo on the island of Elba. Hence the term, The English Riviera. If It was good enough for the little corporal, it was good enough for me. I was sure some form of adventure could be extracted from the place. 😉

Happy Trails, Folks x

Malham Tarn

Malham Tarn hike is quite lovely, probably lovlier when the sun is shining. But we decided to go on the first rainy day of the summer. These hikes have taken a different turn these days. Now I see them as potential TikTok posts, apparently I am an influencer 😂 My last Godfather post on TikTok\Instagram recieved 5,000 views, not as many as Lady GaGa yet but I’ve noticed that in the six months I’ve been doing it I’ve sold 2-3 books a month. Not a lot but 2-300% more than previously 😂 Anyaways I digress. Just over 4miles it was an interesting walk. Apparently Malham Tarn was formed 10,000 years ago.

As you hike futher on you get a good view of the cliffs opposite the Tarn with a pleasant hike up onto the moor, and some visible wildlife but they were quite still😉

There were some eerie looking houses on the way. With, I figured, a certain Miss Haversham interior as they looked deserted.

Places like this are great for pondering, and I do like a good ponder. In fact if I wrote as much as I pondered I’d probabably have ten books finished by now 😂 Once we got up onto the top I was surprised to find a smelt mill. Built in 1815 by Lord Ribbelsdale to process lead, copper and zinc.

Even with the inclement weather it was a good day out. With ice cream at the end. The scenery fit with our current viewing as we are watching the final season of Outlander. If you’re familiar with it the heroine passes backwards and forwards through time by pacing her hands on the “Stones” I gave it a try but as Gillian remarked. “Oh! you’re still here!”

Happy Trails, Folks x

Where It All Began 22

The next three years I spent building my boss’s disco business. We had a major recession which started in 1989. I pointed out that in Chinese, crisis can mean opportunity. I embarked upon a major sales campaign, visiting every hotel in the area, taking coffee with hotel banqueting manageress’. They had resident disco’s but these guys could be a little unreliable, so I gave them a backup option. To be honest that wasn’t really work 😂By 1991 the recession lifted a little and the seeds I had sown matured, we had gone from 10 disco units to 30, and had claimed 20 hotel residencies. The concept was, we installed the units, paid a DJ for the gig and collected the units afterwards. Plus we’d employed someone to help with installations and collections. By this time we were the largest operators in the north of England. I had a few relationships, but girls generally want someone who isn’t out most nights until the early hours, so they didn’t last long. One pleasure I took was that I had no T.V for four years.

I was still running and I’d done the York and several other Half Marathons in 90mins. I was a DJ in demand myself by now. Mainly because I played music from the 50’s to the 90’s I also used Barn Dancing as an icebreaker, and had a collection of ballroom LPs. I prefered the upmarket marquee gigs which usually finished at 5am. I could also be a bit cheeky, but one evening my mouth got me into a little trouble. I was doing a private girls school dance for the 6th formers and they’d asked for some Barn dances. I announced a dance called Strip The Willow. Before my brain engaged my mouth, I asked “And who wants to be Willow?” The principle wasn’t over joyed.

But, as always I had the wandering bear someway deep, down inside. I decided it was time to travel. I informed my employers I would be leaving a year later. This may sound like a long notice period but by now I was running everything, they were lovely people, I needed time to plan, and I didn’t want all my hard work to go to rack and ruin. A year soon passes, we had found someone to take over, he was one of the more mature DJ’s, and seemed very keen. I had decided I was going to go wherever my fancy took me, first stop would be France. I had bought a Volkswagon Camper. And I was finalsing my plans when I met Sally (real name but she won’t mind) We hit it off from the word go, and when she informed me she had always wanted to travel it seemed I had a travelling companion.

Not a very exciting post this week, but there’s a change coming 😂

Happy Trails, Folks x

Where It All Began 21

So here I was in 1985, a farmworker for my sister on £10 a week. My nephew and I worked from 5:30am until around 9:30pm Monday to Friday that summer. It was a cattle farm with a few milking cows. We bought stirks. A stirk is either male or female, and we bought them between 6 months old and 18 months old, fattened them up and sold them at market. Life was simple, and I managed to fly my eldest son over for all the school holidays, the youngest was not allowed. On Saturdays and Sundays we showed cattle at Country Shows. That year we won nineteen Championships. Many years later, in the nineties, his son, my great nephew carried on the tradition from an early age.

I did this for two years, believing I had found a vocation. I was still running, often rising at 4am to get a long run in. But there was a bear in me somewhere, and restlessness began to eat away. Saturday nights we always went out, roaming from one country inn to another, there were a few scrapes😂But, there were also mobile DJ’s operating in some of them. Yup, you know what’s coming! My brother-in-law borrowed £800 for me and I purchased an old van, some disco gear, and Dial A Disco was born. By driving around the area touting for work I got two regular gigs a week, a heavy rock night for bikers on Thursdays and a dance night every Friday. It involved two types of dress code. The landlady on Friday’s nicknamed me Miami Vice 😂

My sisters husband was now working on the farm, finances had improved and I wasn’t in as much demand. I took a flat in York and went to work for an agency, Nightowls, who gave me as many gigs as I wanted. Their dress code was a little different to what I was used to.

I remember one particular night I was doing the after party for Bramham Horse Trials in a huge marquee. Late in the evening, on a packed dance floor people began to run, there was screaming. The crowd parted to reveal a young man with a chainsaw attacking the centre post. He had been refused entry, gone home got his chainsaw, and climbed under the tent to wreak his revenge. Such is country life 😂 He was talked down eventually and the marquee remained standing. Six months later the couple who owned the Disco Agency offered me a full time job as manager. It looked like life was about to take yet another turn.

Happy Trails, Folks x

Don’t Let The Old Man In

Okay, I stole the title from Clint Eastwood. I doubt he’ll sue me, he’s not aware of my existence. It’s something he said when asked why he was still actively working. I think they meant active or even possibly alive.

But he does have a point, and if he hadn’t said it I probably would have. I’m often asked. “How old are you!!!?” Not because someone is enquiring about my age, but because of something I’ve done or said. I remember when I was fifty five and decided to retrain as a carpentry lecturer (ooops spoiler for Where It All Began number 35 😂) My neighbour asked me, “Don’t you think you’re too old?”

Really? Who decides these things? Obviously health plays a big part in that, and I am blessed that I can still function. But it is possible to “Think yourself old” That’s why I refuse to give in. Recently I’ve been inundated with injury after injury, and had to cancel three races. I guess that’s what 50 years of running does to you. But I do the physiotherapy (and trust me I hate physiotherapy😂) And this latest calf injury is starting to repair. So, I’ve entered the Yorkshire Three Peaks Race, Jersey Marathon and the Dalby Forest Marathon. I blame the films I watched as a kid Monte Carlo or Bust, Genevieve, and Lassie. They never gave up 😂

Recently we got in touch with one of my old flames and she asked my wife, “How is the old nutter?” I have no idea what she means. 😂

Happy Trails, Folks x

Where It All Began 20

A Struggling Farm and Homeward Bound

I have to admit I kinda had my tail between my legs after the Legion failure. But as Peter had told me years before “There’s only one person at a pity party!” I had mixed emotions too. I really needed to contact my wife, I had an idea to go to America and my sister was really struggling on the farm. There was a lot of work to do, no money to pay staff, and constant begging letters to the bank so they didn’t foreclose. After a week of 5am starts and 10pm finishes, my sister told me to phone my wife. To cut a long story short I was back in Jersey the week later.

Over the next year I did two stints at two garages as a mechanic La Motte Motors and then for John De La Haye. One day Peter walked into the garage and offered me a job as a shuttering carpenter. It was on the Jersey Hospital car park at £90 per day, big money back in 1985. That’s when I bought my Estwing hammer that I still have. It was hard work, and we had a young labourer working for us. It didn’t take homelife long to deteriorate, and once again I was out on my ear. No one could say we hadn’t tried. Once again it looked like I’d have to leave the island.

The young labourer asked where I was going? Peter and I told him the shuttering game was a front, and we were actually drug dealers. I was going to Columbia to take over from Kenny who was coming home after years of service over there. Our young friend was captivated 😂 Peter threw a leaving party for me and we invited him, telling him it was also a coming home party for Kenny. All our associates would be there including the Godfather.

When the night came our diving buddies excelled. One of them was older than the rest and turned up as the Godfather. Dressed in a smart suit, his glamorous wife by his side, and wearing his huge sovereign ring, which we all kissed while on one knee. He’d even stuffed cotton wool in his cheeks. 😂 Kenny (who was a good looking guy and always tanned) appeared wearing a white linen suit. He recieved cheers and slaps on the back because of his service in Columbia. He had a briefcase with him which we had previously stuffed with flour wrapped in plastic bags.

Peter and I took Kenny into the kitchen along with our young friend. Peter opened the brief case, slit a bag, poked his finger in, raised it to lips and smiled. “Almost pure,” he said. Rather than use a £20 note, Peter’s girlfriend had provided a cuticle pusher with an ivory handle. We gave it to the boy with some flour (cocaine) on a small wooden bread board and told him go and offer it around. I was amazed how many people were willing to shove Self Raising Flour up their noses 😂 When he reached the “Godfather” I had to nip over and whisper in his ear. “Kneel and kiss the ring.” The Godfather patted his head, but refused to sniff the substance, saying he never sampled his own goods.

Back in the kitchen, Kenny informed us he thought he’d been tailed by the police, and we all looked at our new apprentice dealer. “What?” he said, his eyes wide open. We told him he had to leave now with the drugs. He was the only one who wouldn’t be suspected. To keep the case under his bed, tell no one and return with the case the next day. We called him a taxi.

He returned the next morning, told us he hadn’t been able to sleep, and had been expecting the door to be smashed in at any time. Peter slit each bag open in turn and washed it all down the sink. The poor lad looked aghast. We sat him down and explained it was a life lesson. Don’t believe everything people tell you. If it sounds too good or to bad to be true then it probably is. He seemed to get it, I just hope 40 years later he’s not still traumatised 😂

Now it was time for me to take my leave. There was another discussion with my wife, who was now seeing someone else, and she was OK with the fact I would be staying on the farm for the near future. I left for another 3 days of travel by ferry and hichhiking.

Happy Trails, Folks x

Me and me ‘ammer’

I’m not an emotional person, so they tell me. But I do miss being on a construction site. And my ‘ammer’ is 43 years old. So, when I get permission I’ll tackle a bit of carpentry. You know that feeling? When one day you look at something and think, how on earth did it get like that? 😂

Ripping it all out is not a pleasant task. There were wild sapplings behind there, and Ivy that had been growing for twenty years. Plus there is a metal fence behind my fence, protecting them. This was gardening (I’m not a gardener) I persevered and after ripping various parts of skin from my forearms. I won… yeah I know a small victory when it’s only a plant! But that was nothing compared to digging the post holes. Why do builders, on a construction site, bury all their rubble in the garden? I was a carpenter so not guilty your Honour. SDS Hammer Drill down 400mm before I got to soil.

Have you priced timber up lately? The big merchants wanted £5 per length, and I needed 125 lengths. Luckily there is a a wonderful lady called Lisa who owns Belle’s Timber yard and she wanted £2 a length… Go figure.

So, my literary friends, probably not my most erudite, amusing, controversial post, but I wanted to let you know I don’t just run and write 😂 Anyaways here’s the finished product. Now my sciatica is playing up and my thumb joints are siezed after knocking in 1000 nails in, but I do love me ‘ammer’ 😂

Happy Trails, Folks x

Where It All Began 19

The Finale

We were in our ninth week and getting increasingly frustrated. According to an older guy, who seemed knowledgeable. The three of us Pieter, Otto and myself represented a kind of threat to disicpline. The legion considered us as Anglo-Saxons, aggressive, tight-knit, and capable of causing violence inside the unit. He said they would be running endless checks, and maybe we should keep away from each other. I didn’t think so. There was a lot of aggression in the camp and the three of us made a good team.

But I’d forgotten Corporal Yarring’s warning😂

A few days later Otto got into a fight in the shower with some Belgian guys. We intervened and we did well. “An Anglo-Saxon victory over the Franks,” as Otto put it. The next morning we were enjoying our breakfast when a corporal told us to stay where we were until everyone else had left. I thought at last we were going to be shipped out to basic training. Later we marched to a broom cupboard (literally 😂) It was cramped and there were some other new recruits with us. We waited there for two hours. “We are going to be kicked out!” Pieter said. The atmosphere was pretty gloomy. The new recuits said they had a bad ‘Gestapo’ interview, and were fed up anyway. So what was I doing in here?

Otto confessed he’d stabbed a Turkish bloke in a Berlin street fight, and maybe they had found out. Pieter related a couple of tales from his Rhodesia days, which I’ll never repeat, and if he returned to what was now Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe he’d be killed. He presumed this was the reason he was being kicked out. But I reflected on what the older bloke had told us. If a fight broke out involving Brits/Rhodesians and Germans against another group, the staff wouldn’t care who started it they would see a dangerous, cross-national brawl that threatened camp discipline. I recalled Corporal Yarring’s words!

Eventually we were marched past a hatch in a corridor. A soldier asked our name, showed us the five year contract we’d signed, tore it up, and told us not to come back. Pieter, the new recruits, and I had signed up in Paris so we were taken to the rail station and given a ticket back there. Otto? They just showed him the gate.

We went for our first beer in 10 weeks. Propped at the bar, we had all our gear stashed on the floor by our feet, and stood chatting… where to next, who was going where, suddenly one of the new recruits asked me where my mate was. Pieter’s gear had been at the side of mine and he’d been stood at the side of me. But now? He’d gone, it was as though he’d vanished. We puzzled about how he’d got his gear and walked away without us noticing, looked around the bar, and outside in the station, but he’d gone. Someone joked about The Ghost of Aubagne Station. It was strange, and I often wonder what became of him. I caught the train back to Paris, and from there hitched to Calais, at Dover I hitched back up north and decided to visit my eldest sister on the farm for a while. I had a plan.

Happy Trails, folks x.

Where It All Began 17

Légion Étrangère 2 Paris to Marseille

We were back at Fort de Nogent for ten o’clock and met by Corporal Yarring. He showed us inside and took all our belongings. He told us to forget everything we had read about the Foreign Legion, especially in newspapers such as The Sun. They didn’t break limbs and bury people up to their neck in the sand. It was an army and they wanted to get the best from you. Then we were stripped and given some greens to wear (a bit like a uniform, they were ex-US Army) We spent the next few days putting white rocks around various places.

In between time we were transported to various locations for tests, prodded, poked and various samples removed. One day Ken didn’t come back. This happened frequently (not to Ken, but various people) There was a rumour we were eating them, but it was three years before Silence of the Lambs, so I dismissed it. On one trip to yet another medical centre I made an enquiry to our debonair escort Sergeant. “Pardon, où est mon ami Ken ?” He scowled at me and said something in French. Now, this has always been my problem with languages I can quite often string a sentence together, but I have no idea what they are saying back. He recognised my blank expression and spoke again. “Gone! You wish to go with him?” I smiled and told him I was fine. By this time I was beginning to realise that this was quite a serious place. Some of us spent free time in the library reading up on the history of the legion, and it was pretty grim. Their code is to never surrender and the Battle of Camerone in Mexico is where 65 legionnaires fought to the death against 2,000 mexicans.

I decided not to dwell on this, and that night we were going to have our hair cut ready to be shipped to Aubagne in Marseille. On our way to the barber (a room with a lino floor, and a legionnaire with clippers) I was chatting and our jolly sergeant, pulled me to one side by my hair. “No talking! Island boy. Long hair, sitting under palm tree playing with girlfriends eh? Well, no more!” Gave me a slap and pushed me back in line. I wasn’t convinced he liked me. We waited in turn while we all got our head shaved. There was a Greek chap there with a mass of curly black hair. Just as the clippers were about to reach his skull he pulled off a wig, revealing a completely bald head, even the sergeant laughed!

After two weeks our remaining group were summoned to an office where an important looking fella explained what we were getting into, briefly… he didn’t mention the possibility of massacre 😂. Gave us papers to sign and told us it was a five year contract. Afterwards I spoke to Corporal Yarring (he did like me, he was a runner) He said we’d do two years active duty, Djbouti if I was lucky enough to join the 13e Demi-Brigade. Followed by six months posting in Tahiti, two more years in Djbouti and six months back at Aubagne for administrative processing. Then go home or sign up again.

The next day our favourite Corporal gathered us together and informed us we were going by train to Aubange, Selection Camp at Marseille that very night. We were given our civvies and belongings back for the journey. He said under no circumstances get into cliques, keep ourselves to ourselves. There would be five hundred men there, only a few would be selected, it would be for about three weeks, and it was easy to get into trouble. Tensions would be high. The legion looked for aggresion but not at selection!…save it for Castelnaudary, and the sixteen week traing course.

Sometimes people give you sound advice, my advice? Listen to them.

Happy Trails, Folks x