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Real people share real stories of their dialogue with Nature. Hear how it feels to talk with animals, birds and landscape. Share the magic of cross species communication.
Created by award winning Nature writer and poet Estelle Phillips.
Instagram @estelle_writer44
TikTok @EstellePhillips
In this podcast, we hear from Ron as he describes how he felt when German bombers flew overhead. And we hear more about his postwar childhood, including the time he was locked in a bell tower and how he got his revenge with ginger beer.
Ron Ives:I was born in during the war, and mother used to say, if there's ever any aeroplanes coming over, any nine of aeroplanes, get underneath the table, go and hide under the stairs. And I remember, two years old, mother that's what you've got to do in case we were bombed. And it's a strange thing that many years after, Father was in the Air Force. And he said, well, that time when you can remember, they were actually coming across the Germans to Cardiff, to South Wales, following the ports. But at the time, I must have been only two years old.
Estelle Phillips:Good lord.
Ron Ives:And I can remember as if it was five minutes ago, planes coming over. They weren't English planes, they were in formation and they were going directly across the Bristol Channel to Newport and Cardiff. It's just one experience in life and I think I can remember back to I was two years old.
Estelle Phillips:Can you remember anything else from then?
Ron Ives:Well, that was a major thing. I was amazed a few years later when we had six foot of snow in '19 what was it? 1947, somewhere around that.
Estelle Phillips:How much snow?
Ron Ives:Six foot of snow.
Estelle Phillips:Six foot snow.
Ron Ives:Going in drifts.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah.
Ron Ives:But I remember my mother saying to me, she said, before I went to school, I know that, before I started school, whatever you do, don't open the front door, she said. I said, why? She said, just don't open the front door, make sure you don't open the front door. Oh, me being allowed, I opened the front door. And the snow went way, way above my head, nearly to the top of the door.
Ron Ives:But as I say, as many years ago, and I can just remember that, I can remember putting my hand on the doorknob and opening the door. I did get towed off by my mother, so it might be the reason I remember that.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah, maybe. That's funny.
Ron Ives:But over a period of years, I've stored up a lot of stories like this, my memories. They say as you get older, you remember things of the past, but you can't remember yesterday. In some ways, I do get that now. As you get older, you say one thing, thousands of people say it, I remember when. It's a common thing that people do.
Ron Ives:I remember the nineteen forties when food and things was in ration, going to a shop and getting some sweets, but I had to take the coupons to get them.
Estelle Phillips:What sweets did you get?
Ron Ives:Fruit fruit pastures, fruit gums.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah.
Ron Ives:It was usually soft, chilly sweets. Local shop in the village where I lived, there's only one shop. And that was another place that I used to go. In fact, that shop was owned by the man that was driving the it was a band. The shop was a post office, village shop, and a bakery.
Ron Ives:And the owner used to break all the bread for the whole of the village in a couple of villages around, deliver every day in his van. In that time we went to Stonehenge, he took us there.
Estelle Phillips:Really?
Ron Ives:His son was a very good friend of mine, and we always had to sit in the back on some hessian bags and pattering the owner of the van who was in Troy in Troy Troyton. It's memories of the past. I probably got more memories of when I was born till I was 10 years old than I have for the rest of my life.
Estelle Phillips:That's absolutely amazing, Ron. What's your what's your favorite childhood memory? The thing that gives you most pleasure to think about.
Ron Ives:I've been the best, the better of one of my brothers. I had three brothers, four sisters. I was the youngest and I had to do whatever I was told, whether it was by mother, father, brothers, sisters, whatever they said I had to do. One occasion, we were in the local church and we went up the tower, me brother locked me in, door at the bottom of the steps going up, he locked me in the church and he went home. I had access to the tower of the church.
Ron Ives:I went up on the tower and I was shouting for help with no one around. Luckily there was a foreign opposite and eventually someone come and he said, what's the matter, what's the problem? I'm locked in the church and they said, well what are you doing there? I said, my brother had locked me in the church and gone home. And eventually when I got home, he said, Where have you been to?
Ron Ives:I said, You know very well where I've been to, you locked me in the church. Did I? He said. And at that time I thought I'm going to get revenge on him. And it was ten years later I did.
Estelle Phillips:How?
Ron Ives:He was a person that made ginger beer, fizzy ginger beer. When he made it, he put the bottles up in the loft for some insurance for fermentation. Is it? Fermentation. Fermentation.
Ron Ives:And I used to secretly get finer steps, go up in the loft, have a drink out of these bowls, and top them up with water. That was my revenge for him locking me up the church tower. And from that day to the day he died, I never told him. But he did get he did query sometimes, the ginger beer is getting weak, it's getting watered down, it's it's not spicy, it's not what it's supposed to be. And that was because I kept drinking it and topping it up with water.
Ron Ives:Just one of the things I do remember and I'll never forget.
Estelle Phillips:Wow. Ron and I had a wonderful conversation about his time at Stonehenge. I can't wait to release that podcast. Subscribe to know when that happens, and follow me on Instagram at Estelle underscore writer forty four, and TikTok at Estelle Phillips. Bye.