Good news from the Gosport Ferry: how it all began

I was waiting for the Gosport Ferry on a hot Thursday afternoon in May when I got the email.

“Hi Paul. You enquired a little while ago about working with us. Are you still interested?”

The man who replied to my enquiry about delivery driving was Graham Colett, the manager and co-director of Westlands Farm. Needless to say I confirmed and now, five months on, I’m still working at his strawberry and raspberry farm near Wickham, albeit not as a driver.

Before I start writing about my adventures in strawberry farming, let me tell you how I came to swap a desk at the Farnham Herald for the polytunnels and greenhouses of south Hampshire.

It was down to Covid, of course.

The months before lockdown and the emergence of Coronavirus were among the happiest of my working life. After 15-odd years of being a news journalist, I swapped positions in August 2019 to become Arts & Features editor at the Farnham Herald and Petersfield Post. Don’t get me wrong, I love news journalism and plenty of my stories have made national and international headlines, but the chance to write about music, theatre and the arts on a daily basis was too good to resist. In one February fortnight I interviewed Clive Anderson and Stephen K. Amos, met Sir Trevor McDonald and chatted with a former Strictly dancer about his show.

I was naïve in thinking I would be fine but when businesses started pulling their advertising left, right and centre in panic, the writing was on the wall. Within 24 hours of insisting to my amazing other half that everything would be fine, I and four other freelance journalists at the Herald were let go.

Paying bills was the immediate concern so I enquired with several firms I had helped out with advertising about possible employment. Perhaps unsurprisingly I heard nothing from some but Westlands, being valued and consistent advertisers with the Meon Valley News, kept in touch.

A month filled with cycling and DIY work passed before Graham replied on that sunny afternoon in May. I was asked whether I fancied a trial day on Bank Holiday Monday and I wasn’t going to turn down a chance to get back into work and some hard, physical graft.

I took this picture from the Gosport Ferry minutes after getting the email from the boss of Westlands Farm. Never has the thin sliver of water between the town and Portsmouth seemed so glorious.