My name is Michael Curtis

Childhood
I was born 13 November 1950 in London, England.
When I was about three years old we moved to France Lynch, a small, picturesque village in Gloucestershire.
I remember little about that house except that it was a small cottage, but after about two years we moved to the other side of the village into Highfield Farm.
It was a poultry farm with about 4,000 chickens (2000 battery hens, 1000  ‘deep litter’ where the chickens could run around in a shed, and about 1000 chicks).
My Dad used to grind the chicken feed and the hens in the battery houses were played  ‘The BBC Light Program’. Despite what everybody says about battery chickens they seemed happy enough and chirped away in the way that contented chickens do.
It was an easy, carefree life. Myself and my sister could play where we wanted. I had a peddle trike that I rode around the farm. I can remember walking down through the woods to Chalford Recreation Ground and playing around the canal. Not many children get that sort of opportunity nowadays.
I remember we had a goat, although I didn’t think much of goat’s milk (although, now as an adult, I love goat’s cheese).
My father would grind the feed for the chickens himself and I remember the sweet smell of the freshly milled cord as it came from the mill.
The waste from the chickens in the battery cages fell onto a kind of paper conveyor belt which removed it to the back of the battery houses. As it fell out of a slot at the back of the shed it formed a deep tank (well, it seemed deep to me at the time), as a smelly black slurry that had a layer of grass on the top making it difficult to locate. I was at prep school at the time (Stouts Hill School, in Dursley) and I used to invite friends home at the weekend ‘On Invite’. I remember one friend, David Ireland (Hi David if you are reading this!), who fell into the tank. My Mum washed him and his clothes although he was very smelly – I wonder if he remembers the incident