The tortoise in the sun

Jess grew up in Arundel and remembers the family tortoise which had a hole in its shell, from which it was tied with a string. One hot day, she got caught around a bean plant and couldn’t escape the sun, perishing in the heat.

“I’m Jess. I grew up near Arundel and we had, it was my brother’s tortoise and it was back in the days when you used to still drill a hole through their shell and tie them up with string, a long piece of string, which is what Blue Peter told you you had to do. She would then trundle where ever she wanted but she didn’t escape the garden so it was a good thing with your tortoise. My brother used to tie all his dinky toys onto the back of her string so she’d trundle across the garden with sort of thirty dinky toys trundling after her. But, this day, she didn’t have the dinky toys she was just on her string, attached to her post, where ever it was, and plenty of shade options to get to but she got round, my parents grew all our vegetables and she got her string caught round about a six inch bean plant but it was really short and she got her string caught round it and she got hot and she got too hot and she couldn’t pull it off and she got baked in the sun. And this was the 1976 drought, in Sussex. And I do remember the whole garden being just brown, much to my father’s distress and he wasn’t allowed to water it.”