Frank and Peggy.

I'm always amazed when I hear people recalling their youth, in detail. I wonder how much is fact and how much is optimistic fiction. I try sometimes really hard to envisage how it was back then, before about age sixteen when everything seems just a blur, some moments stand out, but there are never any real details, just fleeting visions,my mind as it is now, interpreting the few memories I still have.
Sometimes the memory gets jogged, it can be a certain smell, a song, a random moment when I get thrown back to some distant past .
So it was this afternoon,I was gardening, a pastime I really love, even more so now in the age of constant deadlines and things not to miss, hypes, social media updates and two hundred mile an hour lifestyles. A garden, however small, is a retreat a place where we can regain some sense of being human, nature will not be rushed. So there I was, doing some weeding, a bit of trimming and replanting some plants that didn't seem 'happy' in the place I'd given them, it's not work but  therapy, there is no timetable or stopwatch saying when the work has to be done- I find it relaxing.
Out of nowhere I suddenly got some really clear memories of My Uncle Frank and his wife Aunty Peggy, both long gone, but a very important part of my young life. 
Aunty Peggy was my Fathers sister, one of his sisters, the other one being Aunty Freda, we hardly ever saw her, she had 'married money' and was living the other side of England in Leigh on Sea near Southend. Aunty Peggy and Uncle Frank lived in Oldbury -on Severn, near Thornbury, South Gloucester. They lived on the small farm that my Granddad had, my Fathers Father. It was paradise for me, Oldbury was a small village on the banks of the river Severn. Granddads place wasn't a real farm, but to me it was, I'd never seen his wife-my Grandmother- she'd died young. Aunty Peggy and Uncle Frank lived in with Granddad to take care of him, Granddad was well known and well liked in the village- for years he had been the postman there, delivering the mail on his bicycle rain ,snow or high water, even more remarkable because of his 'club feet' he could hardly walk  and needed two sticks,but he got around ok on his bicycle. On his 'small holding' granddad had a few hundred chickens, some geese , ducks, turkeys and an orchard where cider apples grew, and he had a huge garden. 
Keeping the place up and running was hard work, Uncle Frank had a daytime job in the local Power Station at Berkley, he was a cleaner, but would never admit it and always wore the safety boots that builders would wear. Uncle Frank was a brute, probably over compensating for the fact that he didn't get called up and enlisted in the army for the war, I seem to recall people saying it was because he had flat feet, but I can't confirm that.
Not being a war veteran and now being a cleaner, Frank had lost his pride and manhood and was determined to be 'the man of the house',  Aunty Peggy would cower in fear when he sat at the table for his evening meal, if he didn't like it he would shout abuse at her and use it as an excuse to storm off to the pub for a 'belly full of Cider', returning only long after Aunty Peggy was asleep.
I spent a lot of time between about age 8 and 14 at Granddads place, weekends and summer holidays. there were two reasons for me to be sent there, one was the fact that our house on the council estate in Patchway was too small for us all- there was a lot of us- more about that later, the second reason was that Aunty Peggy and Uncle Frank needed a helping hand looking after the garden, the orchards and the poultry, and everybody seemed to agree that "it would do Nigel good to learn what it was like to work for a living". Me? I loved it, getting away from the council estate was pure luxury, work or no work. When the work was done I could walk around the village, or go for long walks along the country lanes, I'd found an old Trilby hat of Granddads, so I used to wear that and always have a stick with me, walking around pretending I was a farmer, or a soldier guarding the village against an invisible enemy who were trying to take it over. Great times, I'd go fishing with the local farmers kids, catching eels. We used to hang around on the village green on the sunday afternoon when most of the grown ups were at one of the two local pubs. On the village green was a signpost it being a crossroads, people from nearby towns would slow their cars down to look at the sign for directions to the river Severn. By constantly pushing and pulling at the sign we had managed to loosen it, so we could turn it and send the cars the wrong way, a few times we had to run when irate drivers would return and chase us. Great times!
The work I had to do was sometimes backbreaking, I was usually on wheelbarrow duty , wheeling barrow loads of potatoes or apples to the store rooms, or cleaning up the chicken mess from the outhouse they were kept in. Sometimes I had to help catch and bag chickens, it meant locking ourselves in the outhouse with sacks, chasing the chickens and putting them in the sacks until we had the right amount the local butcher had ordered. Uncle Frank would then take the chickens one by one out of the sack, tie their legs up ,hang them on a sort of washing line and then one for one cut their throats and let them bleed to death, according to him this led to better meat. The chickens would flap around ,blood flying everywhere, when they were finally dead me and Aunty Peggy had to cut them down and pluck them. They tried to teach me how to gut them, but I wasn't up to it, they laughed at me because of it. 
The work in the garden was really hard at times, I remember how my back used to ache and that I was really thirsty, but the work had to be done before dark and uncle Frank was a slave driver. Sometimes he would sit in a chair at the side of the garden and tell me what to do, although he taught me a lot about gardening I used to hate him for it, a few times I had wished him dead. He would sit in his chair criticizing my work, while rolling a cigarette and drinking from his flagon of homemade cider, scrumpy as we call it. Aunty Peggy would stick up for me, but she wasn't allowed to help me, Frank said she was 'too soft' on me and that I had to be 'hardened up'. It was during those years at Oldbury that I learnt how to work and also how to hate, the way Frank treated Aunty Peggy was horrendous and I hated him for it, I sometimes took revenge by hiding his tobacco pouch or cigarette papers after he returned drunk from the pub. But I did learn how to work, and work on despite pain or humiliation. Later in life, a (few years ago now) it helped me get through my operations having prosthetic hip and knee, it helped me when I was working the conveyor belt in factories, it even helped me doing comedy, never (or hardly ever) canceling a gig due to illness or personal stress. Every time I have a weak moment there is Frank,in my minds eye, sitting on his chair in that garden, drinking ,smoking and telling me to 'put some back into it' and 'get on with it' and I would otherwise he would scowl and take it out on Aunty Peggy, and now as then I grin and bear it, whistle and laugh (which used to annoy him more) and pretend I was loving every minute of it. So here's to you Frank Olive, you drunken fart, cleaner and flat footed reject! Thanks for giving me that edge, thanks for giving me grit and stamina and a healthy loathing for Cider. 
I lost contact with Peggy and Frank when I stopped visiting after granddad died at age 92, I started work when I was 16, and never heard much more of them. When I was 18 I heard that Frank had died from 'liver problems' surprise sur-friggin' -prise. aunty Peggy I only ever saw a few times just before my Father died, I'd visit her when I returned to the UK to see my Dad, I'd go to her bungalow and there she was, same as ever, baking cakes and making tea, she was old, I offered to tidy up her garden for her, she said no, and gave me that look "you just sit down and have a cup of tea, you've done enough gardening" and she'd wink. Here's to you too Aunty Peggy, stalwart, champion cake and tea maker, thanks for the sense of humor and the 'grin and bear it' spirit.