Friends have asked me to write about some ‘special people’ I knew. I am indebted to Hugh Mason who finally pushed me over the cliff. I hope to encourage you to find your Magic People – those who made a lasting impression. Humans have the privilege of memory and the sensitivity of love. As we ask if these will survive, we should record some of them.
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Dick Sompolensky was a Polish soldier who had been slightly wounded in WWII. Britain offered him a home for the duration of hostilities. I met him as a farmhand on my Aunt Gerda’s Cornish farm in 1942. I was ten. He was a butcher so he understood livestock. When my Aunt wanted her helpers to have more than the official rations, he butchered a pig. Dick shared a room with me at the farm. To be ready for the next day’s work he didn’t undress at night. In fact, he also kept his farm boots on, to save time.
Dick taught me about purpose. His version was “The Tree on the other side of the Field”. The analogy of a field as your life and a tree as your purpose will never leave me. If I ask a question when I die it may be “Where is my Tree?” Or “Where is Dick Sompolensky?”
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Anne Galloway died before I met her. She was the 18-year-old daughter of Captain & Mrs Galloway, who sold their house to my father after her death. When I sat in the empty stable at the end of the garden I could hear the stamp of her pony’s foot on the cobbled ground. I never saw a picture of her but her presence was vivid in a comforting way. I sensed I loved her. She is buried in the tiny Eype churchyard near Bridport.
A lonely child, I would sometimes go to the churchyard to put a flower on her grave and read the sundial they placed on the top of it. I have no theories about spirits and I never sensed Anne’s. But when I was nineteen and had to decide what to do after my farming career was finished I found myself watching the sunset from beside her grave. I said out loud – to nobody there – “If I can’t be a country boy I will become a city boy”. And I did.
***
Charlie Waterfall was a young, energetic farmhand working on the Colfox estate at Symondsbury. He married one of the most beautiful girls in Dorset and they had a brood of children. Charlie chose to study the farming of pigs, intelligent animals that know when they are being well looked after. He made a great contribution to improved livestock management.
Once we had to move a restless and dangerous bull from farm to a distant stockyard. There were no roads so we took the animal over the fields. So tricky was he that we all had loaded guns in case he ran amok. Many of us were frightened by the mission. Charlie led the way with calmness that visibly made the bull more compliant. He talked to the animal kindly.
Charlie was the only member of the group who refused to carry a gun. His bullets were his words, his calmness was his authority. That’s why I remember him.
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Miss Whitwell taught the newcomers at my prep school, St Richard’s, Little Malvern. I met her when I was seven. War had been declared, my father had married my stepmother and I was sent to a boarding school in the back of beyond. I cried for a week. Miss Whitwell comforted me by teaching me to colour pictures on a piece of paper. From my big and gauche strokes she taught me that smaller brushstrokes made better images.
As I got older I saw the wisdom of it. I will always be grateful to Miss Whitwell for one of the first lessons I learnt that really paid off.
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People are the only things that matter to me. They are so beautiful.
If you’d like more about Magic People please tick the bit below.
Thank you.
Good morning
John Bittleston
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[_] About relationships?
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Please be kind and email the answers to [email protected].
27 September 2025
