Richard Muirhead is an old friend of the CFZ. I have been friends with him for 40 years now, since we were kids together in Hong Kong. He is undoubtedly one of the two best researchers I have ever met; he and Nigel Wright both have what Charlie Fort would have no doubt called a wild talent; a talent for going into a library, unearthing a stack of old newspapers, and coming back with some hitherto overlooked gem of arcane knowledge. Twice a week he wanders into the Macclesfield Public Library and comes out with enough material for a blog post.. Dear folks,
It`s time for my update from the improbable world of Richard Muirhead. This evening I am giving the Macclesfield Courier a brief skip (we will resume with it after Easter) and turning to a letter I written on May 7th 1997 when I was living as a student in Oxford. (Not at Oxford University I hasten to add, but at Oxford Brookes University where I was doing my MA) I also publish for the first time a very brief and absolutely genuine letter to me about newts from Ken Livingstone M.P. as he then was in response to mine to him asking-was the “effet” a newt, or not?
Dear Mr Muirhead
By luck I saw your letter about tortoises in the wild in a recent issue of the Cambridge Evening News. I hope the following information helps you.
Between 1959 and 1964 my uncle kept a caravan for weekend and holiday use at Great Gibcracks Farm,near Chelmsford in Essex.The farm was about half a mile from the road, up a long and rutted drive. It was an extraordinary place, an Edwardian model farm built by an eccentric who placed busts of Dante and other poets in copses,had a swimming pool dug and planted exotic trees and shrubs.By the 1960s it was falling to pieces about the current owner.
Beyond the farm were two cottages and then woodland.The nearest houses to the farm,apart from the cottages,were almost a mile away.
In late May or early June 1964 my younger brother,Nigel,and I found a tortoise moving along a furrow in a ploughed field immediately alongside the farm.(The field had been ploughed at Easter then left.) I can`t be more precise about the date; I do know that I`d been given a weekend away from preparing for the O levels looming over me.
The tortoise just fitted on my palm so would have been almost 6” long. We had kept several tortoises as pets in the past;this one had a darker shell than I could recall seeing before and yellow mottling between the eyes.It appeared to be a spur thighed tortoise.
We went to the farm,the cottages and then to the houses nearest the field but no one knew anything about the tortoise.Using the local bush telegraph we let people living farther away know but the tortoise was never claimed and became our pet,with the name Shostakovich-why that name was selected I can`t remember.Shostakovich was found dead in summer,1967.
In 1980 Nigel mentioned he had talked with a man who lived in a village called Bicknacre in the 1950s and 1960s;Bicknacre is not far from Gt.Gibcracks and we sometimes walked there through the woods.The man said that he twice found tortoises in the fields but had never traced their owners.Sadly,Nigel died in 1990 and I remember no details,like the man`s name.
I hope that your research is fruitful;the adjustment of animals to British conditions has always interested me.I have wondered if the Surrey puma and Exmoor beast are abandoned pets that are now acclimatized.I am sure you know about the scorpions that colonized the railways station at Ongar in Essex.
It would be more interesting though to discover native tortoises and native pumas. I hope one day to read about your research.
Yours sincerely.
Dear Mr Muirhead
By luck I saw your letter about tortoises in the wild in a recent issue of the Cambridge Evening News. I hope the following information helps you.
Between 1959 and 1964 my uncle kept a caravan for weekend and holiday use at Great Gibcracks Farm,near Chelmsford in Essex.The farm was about half a mile from the road, up a long and rutted drive. It was an extraordinary place, an Edwardian model farm built by an eccentric who placed busts of Dante and other poets in copses,had a swimming pool dug and planted exotic trees and shrubs.By the 1960s it was falling to pieces about the current owner.
Beyond the farm were two cottages and then woodland.The nearest houses to the farm,apart from the cottages,were almost a mile away.
In late May or early June 1964 my younger brother,Nigel,and I found a tortoise moving along a furrow in a ploughed field immediately alongside the farm.(The field had been ploughed at Easter then left.) I can`t be more precise about the date; I do know that I`d been given a weekend away from preparing for the O levels looming over me.
The tortoise just fitted on my palm so would have been almost 6” long. We had kept several tortoises as pets in the past;this one had a darker shell than I could recall seeing before and yellow mottling between the eyes.It appeared to be a spur thighed tortoise.
We went to the farm,the cottages and then to the houses nearest the field but no one knew anything about the tortoise.Using the local bush telegraph we let people living farther away know but the tortoise was never claimed and became our pet,with the name Shostakovich-why that name was selected I can`t remember.Shostakovich was found dead in summer,1967.
In 1980 Nigel mentioned he had talked with a man who lived in a village called Bicknacre in the 1950s and 1960s;Bicknacre is not far from Gt.Gibcracks and we sometimes walked there through the woods.The man said that he twice found tortoises in the fields but had never traced their owners.Sadly,Nigel died in 1990 and I remember no details,like the man`s name.
I hope that your research is fruitful;the adjustment of animals to British conditions has always interested me.I have wondered if the Surrey puma and Exmoor beast are abandoned pets that are now acclimatized.I am sure you know about the scorpions that colonized the railways station at Ongar in Essex.
It would be more interesting though to discover native tortoises and native pumas. I hope one day to read about your research.
Yours sincerely.
J.S. Holford-Miettinen
I rang a Cambridge number about 2 months ago to try and find out more about the tortoises but got no reply. Now for “Red Ken`s” letter, it is very brief:
April 22nd 1996
“Dear Richard Muirhead Thank you for your letter of 15 April about the terms eft or evvet. They were just other names for newts-not crocodiles or anything else.
Yours sincerely,Ken Livingstone.
I have a lot of respect for a person as busy as he must have been to reply like this, albeit briefly. After Easter I will continue with the Macclesfield Courier and octopus invasions of the south coast of Britain,an historical approach. Bye for now and Happy Easter! Rich.
I rang a Cambridge number about 2 months ago to try and find out more about the tortoises but got no reply. Now for “Red Ken`s” letter, it is very brief:
April 22nd 1996
“Dear Richard Muirhead Thank you for your letter of 15 April about the terms eft or evvet. They were just other names for newts-not crocodiles or anything else.
Yours sincerely,Ken Livingstone.
I have a lot of respect for a person as busy as he must have been to reply like this, albeit briefly. After Easter I will continue with the Macclesfield Courier and octopus invasions of the south coast of Britain,an historical approach. Bye for now and Happy Easter! Rich.
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