Old Tractor Magazine - 'A Ploughman's Life at Stocks Farm'

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Family Reunion in Stockbridge and Holiday in the South of France July 2022

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 In July 2022 the family gathered from Sydney, New York and Hamburg in Hampshire and in France arriving on 1st and leaving on 25th July. It was a marvellous time, punctuated only by some illness (Marika and Astra), and repeated cancellations of our flights with Thomas, who kindly took on group booking duties, making over 280 phone calls to BA alone. Indeed, a claim of EUR was made to BA for all our extra travel costs including car hire. The main events, the Reunion in Stockbridge and the holiday in Cap Benat passed off beautifully. 50 people attended the Reunion at the Greyhound and it was a joy to see so many old friends and their children (and in some cases, grandchildren) meeting up again, 13 years after the last such gathering in 2008 . Many photos were taken as well as the group photo below,  The full list of those attending is here . Herry addressing the crowd The 14th July Gathering We arrived at Villa Portofino, Cap Benat, on 16th July from various directions and hav...
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The Scuplting of My Bust

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My desire for a bust of myself arises from the fact that I very much miss not being able to see my father .  We were always very close, and he was unfailingly kind to me and altogether a perfect parent.  Of course I have many photos of my father, but no really good portraits (I take a lots of photos but rarely good portraits). Nor do I have a painting of him. But as I grow older, I would love to see him in the corner of the room, smiling kindly at the world as he invariably did. I reasoned that one day perhaps my children would have similar feelings about not being able to see me (particularly as three of them have lived abroad since 1983). A painting would have been easier to do, and perhaps less costly, but I knew no really good portrait painter since Theo Ramos, and my mother's goddaughter, Madeleine Rampling, who is a wonderful portrait artis t, lives abroad. In any event, only in a 3D sculpture can the highest degree of realism be achieved. It's no surprise that sculpture...
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Obituary - John Spreadbury 1931 - 2022

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  John Spreadbury  John Spreadbury was born in Droxford on 13th July 1931.  His mother was called Annie and his stepfather was William Spreadbury, a local farmer who happens to be buried in Meonstoke. His mother died when he was young and is buried in Bolney churchyard. John was schooled at Stoneham in Eastleigh. He had no siblings.  John’s early experience of work was riding cart horses to the farriers for shoeing, but when he left school at 15, as was usual in those days, he got his first job with Austen Moulden at Preshaw. He then moved to Western Farms at Petersfield and it was from there that he won his first ploughing match, at Rogate, aged 17. And it was there he saw my father’s advertisement for a tractor driver at Stocks just as we moved in in 1950. Rita says that when he mentioned the wage he expected, my father replied, ‘That’s a man’s wage and you’re a boy’, but he was persuaded to move not by the wage, but by the fact that my father offered him a new...
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