The Flat-Cart

Allonby - a Cottage by the Sea. 4

The Flat-Cart

‘I’m going down to Edderside with the flat-cart.’ Mrs. Tomlinson shouted. ‘You kids want to come along?’

Mrs. Tomlinson was a Londoner who spent her summers at Allonby helping out at the riding school, booking and saddling up and taking the rides. I never once saw her wearing anything other than her rust-coloured jodhpurs, green tweed riding jacket and black velveteen riding hat. We marvelled at her exotic London accent. ‘Eow, come on,’ she’d yell when we moaned about the rain ‘It’s only gonna be a sheower’ (We imitated those London vowels gleefully.) She was always accompanied by her dog, Pindy, a black Scottie who usually rode in the basket of his owner’s ‘sit-up-and-beg’ bicycle

A ride on the flat-cart! The others were not to be told twice. My sister ran to the cottage and informed our mother that we were going. I, as ever, had doubts. The flat-cart was another danger to me. It was indeed flat, but it sloped downwards front to back. It had no sides, and there was nothing for passengers to hold on to. I had ridden on it once of twice before, but just for short distances, and I had felt very insecure. It seemed to me that one stayed on the thing by some strange form of gravity which I did not trust.

But I was swept along by the enthusiasm of the others - they couldn’t wait. Mrs. Tomlinson patted Jimmy Mac, the trotter (he could trot very fast without breaking into a canter) and threw her dog, Pindy, onto the cart where he settled down happily. We all scrambled aboard. Mrs. Tomlinson took the reins, her legs dangling over the side. A couple of the others sat along the sides legs dangling in imitation. I sat as near to the middle of the cart as I could, crouching with my legs tucked under me, trying to find a fingerhold, but found I had to real purchase anywhere.

Mrs. T. shook the reins and clucked at Jimmy Mac who set off, soon breaking into his customary trot.

We were on the road now, and Jimmy Mac’s hooves sound sharp and staccato , like bullet shots. The others chatted excitedly. We were soon clear of the village, and the safety of home was receding fast. Edderside was only about 3 miles out of the village, but everything familiar had been left behind and the countryside was alien.

Every so often the cart would lurch a little and I would feel myself slipping towards the back. I clung on, praying we would get there. Eventually we reached the farmhouse, where Mrs. T. went about her business (I don’t remember what it was). The others were fired up with the joy of their adventure, laughing and shouting. My throat was dry, but I pretended to join in. Then, as Mrs. T. reappeared I realised my torment was to begin again.

Once again I clung on. The dusk was gathering now, the blue-grey sky cool and threatening. I crouched and dug my nails into one of the gaps between the slats of the cart, picking up a splinter or two. I hoped fervently that I would get back alive. Didn’t the others appreciate the danger? Didn't they realise that we could slither off this swaying fairground-ride and dash our skulls to pieces on the tarmac? They were still prattling on merrily, completely unconcerned , legs swinging nonchalantly and arms waving excitedly. But I was in a state of fear, slipping a milimeter further towards the edge at every trotting step.. I could see the road flashing by through the cracks between the slats. I slid a little further down the cart. I could see how the back dipped with the weight of us all and almost scraped the ground . Just get me home, I prayed , Get me home

Of course, we all got back to the village safely. And I see myself on this photograph, kneeling happily on the flat-cart, looking blissfully confident. Nobody knew how filled with a myriad of fears I was - fear of the horses, fear of riding, fear of being too far from home, fear of falling off the flat-cart…

But there I am - grinning happily. If they only knew.

Jimmy Mac and the Flat-Cart.

Back row, l to r: Me, sister Pat, Dot with 'Pindy'
Front row: Elaine with 'Chummy', Jackie, Isa

'The Girlhood of Anno Domini'

A Cottage by the Sea. 3 - 'The Girlhood of Anno Domini'


Mr. Parsons was a grey-bearded dignified, but vague-looking ex-teacher. Nobody really knew him well. This was less than ten years after the war, and it was rumoured that he was ‘shell-shocked‘. We gathered that that meant mad - or 'screwy' as we would have said then.

He lived alone in a bungalow at the southern end of the village. Mr. Parsons was a driver of sorts; the extensive greens that ran the length of Allonby - and beyond - provided him with a road-free route into the centre. His pre-war Austin bounced over the springy rough grass from his home all the way to the square, and the handful of shops. He had ‘L’ plates on the whole time; and so, for his whole life, all his shopping and any social life he had, were carried out without the need for him to suffer the trauma of a driving-test.

One day, we met him as he was sitting in the shelter, a strange (usually deserted) open-sided building in the middle of the green. He started to talk to us about the tides, and how they were pulled by the moon. (This was real proof to us that Mr. Parsons was indeed mad) He gestured extravagantly as we gathered round him, in a scene reminiscent of the ‘The Boyhood of Raleigh’.

Uneasy about this wild talk, we escaped as soon as we decently could.

We went home and told Mum about the weird things Mr. Parsons had told us.
‘Oh yes, that's true,' said Mum, sweeping sand from the paving into a neat pile. 'that's absolutely true; the sea is pulled by the moon's gravity' . We were flabbergasted.

But we had a new respect for Mr. Parsons.

'The Boyhood of Raleigh' Millais

A Dog's Life

A Cottage by the Sea - 2. 'A dog's life'

We are cycling hell-for-leather down a country road. Energetically. Not the usual slow meander. But as though our lives depended on it. My mother, my sister, a couple of our friends and me. We don’t speak. Our heads are down. We grip the handlebars tightly with grim determination.

We do not notice the scenery. But we are aware we are riding along strange roads which we have never seen before. Alien villages are passed through without us even noting their names. The buildings look different, almost sinister; the road cold and hostile. The sky is overcast, although it is quite warm. Subdued. To match our mood.

Bru and me

Bruno (also known as Bru or Bruey) was our only pet dog. Afterwards we had a string of border collies, but they were working dogs. (although they inevitably came to be treated as members of the household) But Bru was our childhood pet - our very own. Bru was a little character. My mother would open the door for him in the morning and he would scamper out to visit the neighbours (we were allowed to let dogs off the lead then). And so Bru would have several extra snacks a day. When he had distemper, my mother sewed him into an old ‘liberty bodice’ and he trotted around happily, unaware of the mirth he provoked in onlookers.

He was part of the regular decampment to Allonby. And that summer as usual he ‘ran wild’ around the village.

One day as we were eating our lunch, the window suddenly darkened and the rangy shape of Old Joe from next door blocked the light. He was knocking at the window and mouthing something. ‘It’s Bruno. Bruno.‘ Mum jumped up, ready to fend off the impending bad news. ‘Oh dear,‘ she said. She opened the door. ‘Bruno’s been run over’ said Joe, gesturing towards the road. ‘He was chasing a cat,‘ he said ‘ran straight over the bridge and into the road looking neither right nor left'

Mum tried to prevent us from hearing this, or from seeing anything, but it was too late. ‘What’s happened to Bru?‘ We peered out of the window, then ran to the door just in time to see Lenny Jackson, the idolised riding instructor pick our little Bru up by the tail - a shocking and undignified sight - and place him in a sack.

After lunch, my mother took us all on our strenuous, supposedly diverting cycle ride.
And later that afternoon, Lenny buried Bru in the sand behind The Hill.

The village seemed to be a foreign place that day as we struggled to come to terms with the first bereavement we had encountered. The world would never again be a wholly pleasant place.

Mum and Bru at Allonby

A Cottage by the Sea

A Cottage by the Sea. 1. '3 The Hill'

Some time in the late 1940s my Grandfather bought a small cottage at the seaside. It was in a long, straggling, faded village called Allonby on the Solway coast. The village had been a popular bathing resort in the Victorian era and still had some elegant building, one known as The Baths, and a Reading Room donated by the local Quakers.

Charles Dickens and his friend Wilkie Collins visited the village in the1850s when they were touring, ostensibly researching for their joint story ‘The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices’ (which eventually appeared in 5 parts in Household Words in 1857)
Their characters arrive at the village:

' 'A watering-place,' retorted Thomas Idle, with the pardonable sharpness of an invalid, 'can't be five gentlemen in straw hats, on a form on one side of a door, and four ladies in hats and falls, on a form on another side of a door, and three geese in a dirty little brook before them, and a boy's legs hanging over a bridge (with a boy's body I suppose on the other side of the parapet), and a donkey running away. What are you talking about?'

'Allonby, gentlemen,' said the most comfortable of landladies as she opened one door of the carriage;

'Allonby, gentlemen,' said the most attentive of landlords, as he opened the other. '

The cottage’s address was 3 The Hill - but if it was indeed a hill it must have been only 2 or 3 inches above the surrounding terrain. This was no picture-postcard 'second-home', more a ramshackle make-do-and-mend sort of place.

We were part of a higgledy-piggledy block of back-to-back houses in the middle of a grassy area only a matter of yards from the beach. (the small white block on the left at the top of the picture, between the beck and the beach) They were literally ‘back-to-back’ as number 3 had neither windows nor a door at the rear. We faced onto the green where the Beck ran the length of the village crossed by several white-painted bridges.

On the corner of the block was the Riding School (presided over by Lenny - the heart-throb of many a small girl) - a hanging-out spot for my sister and most of the other visiting children. (I was reluctant as I was afraid of horses!)

The layout of our little house was difficult; the second bedroom led off the first. The ‘bathroom’ had no bath, just a kitchen-style deep enamel sink together with a loo behind a partition. In a recess in the wall was a pile of ancient ‘Tit-Bits’ magazines (left behind by the previous owner) the like of which we had never seen before , and which we children found very amusing. The kitchen was no more than an under-stairs cupboard which had two electric rings on a shelf.

In spite of these limitations we happily spent many weekends, Easter fortnights and long, lazy summer holidays there for several years.

The Idle Apprentices again:

‘The brook crawled or stopped between the houses and the sea, and the donkey was always running away, and when he got into the brook he was pelted out with stones, which never hit him, and which always hit some of the children who were upside down on the public buildings, and made their lamentations louder. This donkey was the public excitement of Allonby, and was probably supported at the public expense. ‘

Old postcard. The Hill is on the far left

'There were fine sunsets at Allonby when the low flat beach, with its pools of water and its dry patches, changed into long bars of silver and gold in various states of burnishing, and there were fine views - on fine days - of the Scottish coast. But, when it rained at Allonby, Allonby thrown back upon its ragged self, became a kind of place which the donkey seemed to have found out, and to have his highly sagacious reasons for wishing to bolt from…’