It must be obvious that I am pleased to be a countryman, but I am especially privileged to be a "Yellow-belly," which is a title bestowed upon anyone born in Lincolnshire.  I have always lived in the Lincolnshire wolds, which is an area officially designated, "An area of outstanding natural scenic beauty." When people describe Lincolnshire as flat, they are describing the Coastal Marshlands, the Fens or the Isle of Axholme, but as Lincolnshire is the second biggest county in England, that leaves an enormous area of wild and beautiful, wooded, rolling hills and valleys. The only way to see many of these areas is to leave your car and walk, so even most Lincolnshire people have never seen them. This area has been described as one of England's best-kept secrets.

My maternal grandmother was born in 1875 and my grandfather earlier still.  I knew them both very well, as I now know my four granddaughters very well.  My granddaughters could reasonably be expected to be alive in the year 2075 so I will have known, very well, people who lived over 200 years apart, which I find staggering.

200 years before I was born, Bonnie Prince Charlie was a 15-year-old Italian schoolboy whose granddad, James the Second, had been thrashed by the Dutch.  A bit like the Scottish football team, which recently lost five-nil to the house of orange, and witchcraft was still a crime.  Rob Roy MacGregor stopped robbing the rich to fill his own pockets and died last year, whilst Captain Cook was a seven year old, sailing rubber ducks in his bath.  Napoleon, Wellington and Nelson had not yet been born.

My father was born in 1903 at Long Riston in East Yorkshire and my mother was born, with her twin sister, in 1908 at Saxby all Saints in north Lincolnshire.  Her father was the village blacksmith.  He later became a butcher and later still a farmer.  His name was Birkett, and Birkett's the butcher’s shop still survives in Grimsby.  His father, my great grandfather, had been the village blacksmith at Binbrook, so I come from a long line of blacksmiths.  When I told my friend Bill and his wife that I could not understand why, because of my background, I did not have more muscles, Bill's wife kindly said that my muscles were in my head.  Bill instantly retorted, "Everyone tells me that my head is solid muscle."

When my mother and her twin sister were very young, round about the year 1916, they both had their tonsils removed on the kitchen table by the local doctor.
When my grandfather farmed the High Arbour farm outside Market Rasen, they were both below the age of eleven and had to walk a round trip of over five and a half miles every day to school along farm tracks and country lanes.

I was born on the 6th of January 1935, which was the twelfth day of Christmas or Epiphany.  It was the year of the Silver jubilee of the reign of King George the Fifth.  A public seat, called the jubilee seat, was erected in Melton Ross by the side of the main road.  We sat on the seat at the weekends and waved to the hundreds of buses taking holidaymakers to the seaside at Cleethorpes.

I was baptised at Bigby parish church and at a very early age was entered in a healthy baby competition.  I won first prize, but when the judge, a doctor, discovered that I had neither been vaccinated nor immunised, he took the prize away from me and gave it to another baby. The child with the most holes in it won the prize.

One of my first memories is very hazy.  I was probably about two or three years old and in a farmyard, when I saw a herd of cattle coming towards me, which I found very frightening.  A large sheepdog was sitting near me with its back towards the cattle.  I ran to the dog, stood between its front legs and hung onto it until the cattle had passed.  When I was very young I fell into the moat surrounding the farmhouse, was pulled out, resuscitated and was lucky to survive. [Continued]