Johnny Kingdom.

Sunrise this morning as I was on my way to school for a whole day teaching the reception class. In school today we had the interviews for the teacher who will be starting in January to teach the children that start then, I didn't take much note of the candidates as they were scattered about the school doing demo lessons, but the girl who got the job remembers me (in a good sense ) from a previous school where I was teaching. As I tried to recall the candidates faces and see who I failed to recognise I had this sudden thought, is she perhaps an ex-pupil ? I've been teaching here for 12 years so it is possible. Last week I had a lad on work experience helping in my class and he was in my class 9 years ago. Amazingly I did recognise his name.

Last night was a WI group meeting, 5 local groups together. As our speaker we had local character/naturalist/film maker Johnny Kingdom. He is a larger than life Exmoor character who despite being nearly 70 was out on the moor at 6.00 in the morning filming rutting stags. He was so funny to listen to and his film clips with extra commentary had everyone roaring with laughter. I had watched a tv series that he made last year and had intended to buy the dvd as a memory of Exmoor, its wildlife and people, so I was very pleased to be able to buy it and have him sign it as well.

He specialises in filming deer and here he was showing us the different types of antlers that the stags cast and telling us about the deers' lives.

He told us about his life, grave digging by hand starting at age at 12 with his father, poaching for the pot, earning the money for his first pair of boots by selling mole skins. Having never travelled more than 15 miles from his home he went into the army and ended up as an MP in Hong Kong, later went into the timber felling trade where 28 years ago he was hauling trees and the tractor chain broke, whipped round and smashed the side of his face in. As part of his recuperation he was lent a video camera and on his first filming foray he spotted a herd of deer, stalked them through field, river and bog, got some great shots and when he got home he found he had the camera on when he thought it was off and vice versa so all he had were shots of gorse, grass and river. Since then he has made many films and a tv series, all about Exmoor wildlife and written several books.

I've had to include links rather than youtube clips direct because the BBC won't let you. There are plenty more clips available to see.

The first is a part of a programme about stoats. Johnny told us that when he first went there he spent the whole day only seeing only one stoat. So he decided to leave the camera all set up for the farmer to just press the button when the stoats appeared. He did warn the farmer that sounds would be recorded as well and when he collected the camera he jokingly said that he hoped there wasn't any swearing. "Oh no, no " assured the farmer and his wife. But when he viewed the film the first part it was all excitement and "Blimey , here he is the bugger, quick get him now, bloody hell" etc. Not fit for the BBC.

Swimming stoats - http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=C860DZpKTX0


Johnny's 3- legged deer Bambi - http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1SfMt7WhvCQ

Johnny speaks with a true North Devon accent which I hear at my WI and local country events but not much in the towns.