Friends and Neighbours - Tapa dura

"Friends and Neighbours" is a delightful memoir of growing up on a farm in Monmouthshire between the wars. In those days children walked to school - and mucked out the stables before they set off. Amusements were home-made and life revolved around the farming calendar. There was haytime and harvest, making cheese and cider, and the annual pig-killing where nothing was wasted. Farmers helped each other out - they were friends as well as neighbours - although there was fierce rivalry in all the categories of the annual show. Then there were the extra special days: the Sunday school outing to the seaside, the school trip to awe-inspiring Wookey Hole - not to mention the day the bull got loose but met his match when he attacked the beehives in the orchard. Tom Kingscote-Davies brings his early days vividly back to life, entertainingly describing a vanished way of life and the splendid characters who enlivened those rural backwaters. This is a book for those who remember those far-off times, and for those who wished they had experienced them.

Tom Kingscote-Davies (a pen name) grew up in rural Monmouthshire between the wars and attended school in Abergavenny. He later gained a BSc and became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. After working in research for the Coal Board, he spent 27 years in the film industry. He was also a member of Berkhamsted Welsh Choir. Now in retirement, he lives in Bromsgrove.