Island Life Magazine Ltd October/November 2010 | Page 53

Island Life - October/November 2010

interview

Ron’s s father bought in New Forest ponies, and the boys
used to break them in. Ron smiled: “He would throw us boys
on them until they couldn’t throw us off any more. It was
such good fun.
I was about nine or 10, and by the time I was 14 I was an
accomplished rider. But my father was very crafty .When
someone came to buy a pony, he would say ‘look, even these
little boys can ride this pony and they are absolutely useless
riders - that is how quiet this pony is’.
“We had to take this nonsense, and really we could ride
anything. But on the back of that he would sell these
half-broken ponies to affluent customers, and within a couple
of months a lot would come back because they couldn’t ride
them.
“Father would have originally bought the colt for about
£12, and then sell them 18 months later for £40. But many
would be brought back, and because they were older and
more valuable, he would take them back for £20 and sell
another one for £40. So this would go round in circles, and
be a good way of making money.”
Ron and his brothers were accomplished horsemen at an
early age, so much so that they could mount a horse at full
gallop, a move he describes as being far easier than it looks.
But he recalls how they used to practice on one old horse so
much, that when his father tried to get on , the horse shot
off, with him hanging on for dear life as it disappeared out of
the yard!
“He went mad, and needless to say we didn’t hang around
to tell him what we had done,” smiled Ron, who said the
farm was his whole life, with no holidays, and work 365 days
a year, apart from the hunting jaunts.
However, when he was 19 he realised there was perhaps
more to life than the farm, and he went to Seale-Hayne
College in Devon for three years, achieving a National
Diploma in Agriculture and College Diploma in Farm
Management.
Instead of returning to his father’s farm, Ron and two
college mates set off in search of adventure in the United
States .They delivered cars around the whole country from
east coast to west, stopping off occasionally for other work
that included orange picking in the Orlando area where
Disney World now stands.
“We also mowed lawns, and because a lot of the Americans
had never seen English people – only politicians on television
– they took us to their heart, and let us stay as guests,” he
recalls. “We spent a lot of time in the Everglades, and then
went across the States, into Mexico. We were delivering cars
basically.
“But it wasn’t so easy on the West Coast, so we had to
hitch lifts all the way up through California, and on into
Canada. Before that we helped paint a house in Malibu that
stood on stilts by the beach.
“It is the only time I have ever taken drugs in my life. They
had a barbecue, and afterwards I realised they had put
some in the burgers. When we gave some to a dog , it went
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