A Child's Point Of View

A Memory of Ruan Minor.

I was born in Ruan Minor in 1939 and my father was the village 'Smithy'. The blacksmith shop was my playground while my mother and siblings worked the farm. I was given a box of horseshoe nails and a hammer and spent hours making 'patterns' in the dirt floor.

I would make my 'Naily' patterns,
On a blackened, firm, dirt floor
And recall the singeing hoof hair
While my dad worked near the door.
One day, while he was shoeing,
('Fore I was even there,)
A horse of poor demeanour
Threw my father in the air.
A slightly shaken Blacksmith,
His 'Smithy apron torn,
Wasn't badly damaged,
'Cause much later, I was born.

Jillian Bennett
(nee Barber)