Outdoor Focus Summer 2017 | Page 15

WORDSMITH

Kev Reynolds, the Man with the World’ s Best Job www. kevreynolds. co. uk

ONE MAN’ S INSPIRATION

As an end-piece to his wonderful children’ s story, Danny, the Champion of the World( Jonathan Cape, 1975), Roald Dahl wrote:‘ When you grow up and have children of your own do please remember something important, a stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is SPARKY.’

I’ d also add‘ teacher’, for a sparky teacher can inspire a whole generation of children. An inspirational teacher can unlock the door to a world full of wonders outside the standard curriculum. One of my teachers did just that, and his impact remains with me sixty years after I left his classroom.

‘ Skip’ Seymour was his name, and he was headmaster of the small village Junior School located just round the corner from where I grew up. He’ d been a pilot in two World Wars, flying delicate fighter aircraft with the newly-formed Royal Flying Corps during the first, and as a squadron leader with No 4 Bomber Command in the second, after which he returned to the Essex school where he’ d been inspiring children since 1926. He knew everyone in the village and everyone knew and respected him. He’ d taught my father, my uncles and my brother before me, so there were no family skeletons left to rattle in our cupboards by the time I entered his classroom in the early 1950s.

Having survived two major wars, Skip found solace in the fields, meadows and woodlands that spread for miles around the village. To say he had a passion for nature would be an understatement, for his school was full of nature and its study intruded into every lesson he taught. His classroom was an extension of the countryside; it was adorned with glass cases containing a stuffed barn owl, a stoat, a red squirrel and one displaying a tatty-looking fox with a single glass eye. A flight of mallard and teal had been painted onto plywood, then cut out with a fretsaw as a stand-up reminder of lessons past. We made nesting boxes out of lengths of silver birch, and learned to recognise the songs of robin, wren, thrush and blackbird before we were old enough to wear long trousers.

Skip’ s enthusiasm for nature percolated through every lesson he taught, and any child who responded to that enthusiasm( and I was one) would be treated to nature walks at weekends and during school holidays.

With Skip we explored streams, ponds and ancient woodlands

Outside the school gates he would walk for hours with a brisk, regular pace, eyes constantly alert for signs of life in field and hedgerow, and I recall the naturalist’ s patience that enhanced his powers of observation when he’ d suddenly stop to focus on something far off. Without saying so, he taught us to be observant too. And to use all of our senses.

He would encourage the chewing of hedgerow leaves and gather half a dozen different grasses for us to identify by taste. He would send us up trees to study a deserted nest, then describe it – not just the way it was formed and from what it was made, but what it smelled like!‘ Go on, boy, stick your nose in it and sniff!’

With Skip we explored streams, ponds and ancient woodlands. He knew all the hedges, spinneys and ditches, not just as farmland boundaries, but as hunting grounds of fox and badger; they also housed hedgehog, rabbit and deer. He taught us how and where to look for owl pellets, then with barely contained excitement would carefully unpick the black, furry covering to discover the skulls or teeth of field-mouse or vole on which the owl had fed and then regurgitated.

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Skip directed operations as we tried to unravel the mysteries of tracks pressed into the mud beside reedy pools where dragonflies zipped to and fro, and he’ d interpret the song of a nightingale as though life could never be quite the same without that knowledge. What’ s more, nature walks in his company transformed the gentle Essex countryside into a world as exciting and mysterious as the Amazon rain forest.

In his passion for the natural world, he not only brought nature into the classroom but took the classroom into nature’ s back yard. For three and a half decades Skip Seymour inspired others and spread a gentle man’ s wisdom in his own inimitable style, both in school and out. He taught with discipline measured with kindness, and his love and respect for life in all its forms was beyond question. A man with an enviable knack of transmitting his own deeprooted beliefs and enthusiasms, it was only natural that his advice would often be sought by grown men who had once been tousle-headed boys dreaming( like me) in his classroom.

Failing the eleven-plus, I left his school an incurable dreamer and an academic failure. But what I won from him was the knowledge that success is not to be measured by status or the size of one’ s bank balance, but by the number of days well spent doing something you believe in. So I celebrate academic failure and retain a childlike sense of wonder for the world around me.

It’ s possible, of course, that my own passion for the countryside would have developed without my coming under his spell, but my sense is that he pushed open a door and said:‘ Go explore!’ I’ ve been doing that ever since. I greet each day as the gift it is, and whenever I hear a woodpecker drumming on a distant tree, I think of him and offer a silent word of thanks for that one man’ s inspiration.

summer 2017 | Outdoor focus