Footwho?

Footsfitter was the usual handle locals used when explaining to someone who I was..............."you know whats-is-name, Foots-Fitter" hence the name stuck and when the need for a username arose on the Internet it was there ready to be used!

Born locally in Basingstoke on the 24/02/1958 the youngest of 3 boys and a girl, all children of a local fishmonger.

I was at first raised in the town attending Oakridge infants school but towards the end of my time at Southview junior school my family having lost our father moved with our eldest brother to Popley Fields Farm and a cottage that came with his new employment. Technically just inside the village of Sherborne st John the Todd family had returned home.

The next school for one year only was Charles Chute secondary still in the town until the opening of The John Hunt of Everest secondary school, a brand new development just a stones throw from the farm, here I was in the top year (2nd) and proceeded to move up each year as the school grew, very civilised!

During the final 2 years I was able to attend the towns Technical college one morning each week to study Motor Vehicle Technology and Welding whilst studying Physics, Technical Drawing, Woodwork, Metalwork, Car maintence, and the usual more boring academic studies. I managed to be the only student who wangled riding a moped to school and even had the honour to be one of the few woodwork students to bring in the family's Homelite chainsaw to use in class to rough out a fellow students wooden carving!! no health & safety then. Meanwhile with the impending development at Popley Field Farm we moved again this time right back into the village to The Mill Cottage, Bobs Farm, Sherborne St John.

In approx 1974 I followed my older brother into an apprenticeship with Rocon Plant Hire, attending Eastleigh Technical College to study Construction Plant and Welding which resulted in City & Guilds certificates of Distinction and Credit. This was an enjoyable time, passing my driving test meant being cast out in a 1962 LWB landrover into the deep end with my meager toolbox & socket set at the ready. The best grounding ever. Working very often on my own from concrete mixers right up to Caterpillar D8 bulldozers was manna from heaven.......and I got paid!!.

Things began to settle down in 1980 with my marriage to the lovely herdsman's daughter who lived at the top of our lane. For a short time we lived with Helens parents before the chance to rent the cottage back a Popley Fields farm meant that our first married home would be the cottage next door to where both our families had once lived!

Within a year of getting married I took a big career change by being employed by the big farm up the road as we then knew G B Foot Ltd. Being from outside the industry I was given an interview purely because I was local, which Richard Foot always later referred to as their happy accident! After a six month trial period we were able to move to a company tied cottage rented as part of Manor Farm Monk Sherborne from the Queens College, Oxford. For 3-4 years things flew by as what started out as a Farm mechanic evolved into a position where whatever it was that required repairing I had a go at. I was left to my own devices & just had to work flat out to try & keep up.

Winter time was the "quietist" doing as much vehicle servicing and MoT-ing as possible before the rush for potato planting, lettuce planting and spring drilling started, this went on with drilling vining peas, potato & lettuce irrigation, combine & dryer maintenance, an early summer holiday, pea harvest running into cereal harvest, then potato harvest and autumn drilling while still lettuce harvesting!!

Around 1983 our daughter was born and our son followed I think in 1985, but no problem remembering both were born in the autumn during potato harvest which I always considered to be the busiest period. Around this time the farm "diversified" into running its own lorry's which made an opening to raise the matter of the local HGV licensing office threatening to refuse my next provisional renewal as 6 years without a test was deemed too much. To their credit the farm stumped up for a weeks lorry course with a class 1 license at the end!

Things progressed with different diversifications along the way, by now the farm mechanic was trying to understand depreciation & cash flows at office meeting, along with a developing interest in computers. We had expanded in the workshop to the point of taking on my old foreman from my apprenticeship (I had given him a couple of months work while he found a new job) & a young lad/apprentice. The CV was now so long that it became easier to quote what wasn't on the list.

But like all marriages there was the odd sour note, the most notable needing a lot of soul searching to carry on rather than have the satisfaction of quitting, mind you the satisfaction of whistling & making loud noises at 6am while opening the workshop up not too many yards from the bosses bedroom window was a great way of dealing with it!

Towards the end of the 90s things in farming were changing & we had to adapt to much tightening of the belt so I gradually returned to working alone again now that we had downsized after shedding all the now unprofitable business.

The new millennium started well but both farming and the boss were ill, diagnosed with mild Diabetes, Richard succumbed to unexpected heart trouble as fast as farming was going down hill as well. Major changes occurred with redundancy's & the end of potato growing. We were all trying to survive when in the autumn of 2001 Richard Foot passed away.

Soon after the farm had moved on, a chance came to realise a dream till now always out of reach, with much valued assistance from the farm & Richards widow Jennie we were able to look towards the future and escape the tied cottage for a house of our own, albeit a town house within spitting distance of what remains of Popley Fields Farm!!

Today the children have grown up but I'm still there working at the same place as I have for the last 25 years, still finding it different every day, season & year.

What a damn bit of luck getting that interview and a once in a lifetime job!