Grounded Conversations

John Hiles

Great Malvern

I got very close to leaving Malvern at one stage when I fell out with the old man. It got very close to me going to Australia. It was a £10 assisted passage. I was what, 17, 18? It was just other family ties that kept me here. If it hadn’t been for the other family ties I should have been gone and that’s how close it got.

But Malvern always seemed to draw me back. When we were stationed in various places, I’ve been stationed in some beautiful places out in North Africa. It’s like Malvern, on the top of the mountain then all the way down to sea level. It’s a beautiful place you can live there and peanuts. But it’s going back into the dark ages. But Malvern always drew me back. It’s home and that’s it.

I don’t think Malvern and the area have changed for the better. There’s no history attached to it. It’s all changed. New houses, new estates, everything’s been built up, commercialised. Malvern as a town, the actual town centre, doesn’t exist anymore. It used to be main shops were actually uptown, and it was in the middle of Malvern. Now, well, we’ve got more in Barnes Green, I think, than they’ve got uptown. It’s all down the retail park. Everything’s got commercialised. There’s no history of the quarries, none at all. That’s what I would have liked to have seen. Very little history of the hospitals, the military hospitals.

The Camp is the one thing that is still pretty well as it was, as I can remember it, at five, six, seven, eight years old. The woods haven’t changed. The hills themselves haven’t changed, apart from the fact there are signs up everywhere and footpaths that didn’t used to exist. It used to be grazed. It’s beginning to get grazed again now, but the cattle never used to up the camp. The sheep were always up there. The only bit is the far end, the eastern end that is still original.

But very little of the hills are natural. It all seems to have been messed about with. It’ll go full circle I suppose with a row of windmills from one end to the other in 100 years time. In 100 years time there’ll be a row of windmills from one end to the other.

For about 30-odd years I was a tree surgeon and during that time I looked after a fair size patch for Ledbury Council. I planted a lot of stuff. Now tree surgeon gets accused of taking trees down all the time. I think we’ve planted probably more than we’ve taken down. There are trees all over that I’ve planted which are now decent in size.

I used to do a bit of chainsaw racing. Going back 40, 30, 40 years I set the British record 30-odd years ago and it’ll never be beat and it hasn’t been beat. If anybody can beat it I’d like to see it. Well I started off in the building trade, which was a mistake really. I followed my father into the building trade. That didn’t work, we never got on. It’s one of those things that you don’t work for your father if you don’t get on. Me and the old man we could never get on.

I was more mechanically minded and my second choice was going into the garage doing a mechanic’s apprenticeship then in the army. I did run a garage for a while. I’ve got this mechanical background. When we go back to the tree surgery, 40 odd years ago we took a job on which we couldn’t do because I couldn’t get access to do it. So we had to improvise and I wanted a miniature stump grinder to throw tree stumps out. There wasn’t one, you couldn’t buy one so I made one. And not having any financial backing or any ideas of doing a patent, I never did the bloody thing. It’s down the bottom of the garden now. It was the first little stump grinder ever built. Probably three, four, five years later it was copied and now you can buy one. They are about five grand now but I made the first one out of necessity and it was made out of second-hand bits. That was one achievement.

I got very close to leaving Malvern at one stage when I fell out with the old man. It got very close to me going to Australia. It was a £10 assisted passage. I was what, 17, 18? It was just other family ties that kept me here. If it hadn’t been for the other family ties I should have been gone and that’s how close it got.

But Malvern always seemed to draw me back. When we were stationed in various places, I’ve been stationed in some beautiful places out in North Africa. It’s like Malvern, on the top of the mountain then all the way down to sea level. It’s a beautiful place you can live there and peanuts. But it’s going back into
the dark ages. But Malvern always drew me back. I don’t know, it’s just one of those things. It’s home and that’s it.

Well for the Malverns, well there’s too many bloody folks here already. People come to Malvern to die and then they don’t. There are that many outsiders. Now that’s the word I do use. They come into Malvern, maybe 50, 60, 70 years old, and they think they own the bloody place. They do. They come here and they try and change everything. And quite honestly, I wish they didn’t.

If you want to come here for a week or a weekend, yeah, it’s a marvellous place if the weather’s right. You’ve got the show, you’ve got everything’s on at Three Counties. You know, rallies and what have you. For the holiday period and the Christmas period, it’s a marvellous place. But not to come here and to live if you’re an outsider.