INTERVIEW
“I was fined £30 – nearly 10 weeks wages - and put on probation,
which meant I had a criminal record."
As a youngster he worked evenings and
weekends on a local farm, before the family
moved to Bromley. So it naturally came
as something of a surprise to his careers
master in a London suburb school when
Howard announced he wanted to be a
farmer. He had already acquired his love of
farming, and at just 15 took up a farming
apprenticeship in the Kent countryside
in an environment he described as like
‘Darling Buds of May’.
“I lived in, earning £3-5shillings a week
for working 47 and a half hours, and often
overtime with no extra money, but it was
a wonderful life. I enjoyed it so much,
especially when the hop pickers came down
from London, and the evenings were spent
playing guitars and eyeing up the girls.”
Then, with a wry smile, he admitted: “I
blotted my copy book a couple of times
during my three-year apprenticeship. I got
to know a young girl, who was at a nearby
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borstal school for young offenders next to
the farm. She did a bit of work there, and
we gradually took a shine to each other.”
In fact he and ‘Agnes’ became close
friends, so much so that in the dead of
night he helped her escape from borstal,
dressing her up in the farmer’s wife’s clothes
and hiding her in a chicken house, before
loading her into a lorry full of strawberries.
But the lorry was stopped on the way to
London and Agnes was caught. Howard
never was, even though he was prime
suspect!
Then on New Year’s Eve 1958 Howard
decided to take his boss’s truck for a spin
without permission. At the end of the road
he piled it through a hedge and demolished
a 20ft greenhouse before escaping with only
shock. “It meant a trip to court, but my
boss came along and spoke up for me, and
said he wanted me to stay on. That is hard
to believe after doing such a terrible thing.
“I was fined £30 – nearly 10 weeks wages and put on probation, which meant I had a
criminal record. So a few years later when I
decided I wanted to go to Australia on what
was then the £10 travel scheme, I was told I