Helens in Lancashire and when I was 21 I had to go and do my national service in the RAF, and I ended up in a RAF camp in Doncaster. When I came out I stayed there, I met a Doncaster girl, and I stayed there.” “I got a job selling vacuum cleaners door to door and the firm opened a branch in Chesterfield. Because I'd got no ties I went to Chesterfield. On my first day I got in a van and they dropped me off outside a housing estate in Bolsover and I sold them all a washing machine.” “I went down this street and everybody ended up with a washing machine, so I thought 'I think I might stay in Derbyshire, and I did'. I put down roots here. We raised a family here, yer mam might remember a joke shop we had on Knifesmith Gate? and eventually bought a derelict farm in Barlow, that was thirty five years ago. It's a beautiful part of the world, absolutely love it, even though I'm a Lancastrian at heart, nevertheless I'm more of a dyed in the wall Derbyshire person now. I'm a very lucky boy, living where I live.” He now lives quite happily in an old cottage on a farm in Barlow. "I went flying last night, tripped over the cat." Bernie jokes "Not really, I went flying last night, I have a trusty microlite and fly an aeroplane as well, did you know that? I went out about half past eight last night, went for a little buzz around Barlow, which is brilliant. Lucky boy.”
The farm does have one problem, the amount of mice swarming around, but Bernie’s come up with a rather interesting way of dealing with them. “You know the first thing I do at night and the first thing I do in the morning is put the mice out that I've trapped. We've got these humane mouse traps, because I can't kill anything. We've got mice all over the place, and I know they're there, and I now lock everything up, if it's not locked up they'll have it. And one of thems eating a hole in the bottom of a door that leads Into my utility room and every morning I come out and I can see these little wood shavings it's trying to get in or get out.”
I've attached a large box to the trap so the mouse goes in and has a nice big space which we fill with chocolates, and put a little loo in the corner and a jacuzzi so it has a nice little night on its own before I release it out into the wild unscathed.” “However, the instructions also say you must release the mouse at least a quarter of a mile away. Well I'm not doing that at eleven o'clock at night or seven in the morning so I just take it down the bottom of the garden, they're probably back in the house before I am. I could take them in my microlite and drop them out, parachuting mice, just get a parachute out of a hankie and just take them up to fifteen hundred feet and say 'there you go'.” “The first modified mouse house we made we called the departure lounge, but the mouse went in, ate all the food, had a poo and then ate its way out the cardboard, so we've modified it again, this one we've called Shawshank Mickey. At the moment we've got the trap stuck into a cardboard box. The first thing I do in the morning is come out the bedroom and there's one of the traps on the landing, usually containing a mouse going 'hello', he goes out and I go downstairs and there's another one. I think I could do a great song about Shawshank Mickey.”
“So I've bought these two humane traps, they're anout about six inches long and about two inches square, and the mouse goes in and as it goes in, it hits a flap and the flap comes down behind it and it can't get out.”
Bernie can be seen at the Spa Theatre, Scarborough until 30 August and his CD 'The Voice of Bernie' is available from his website www.bernieclifton.co.uk.
“But the instructions say not to leave the mouse in for more than four hours or it will become traumatised and shocked, so I come up with a way to make it more comfortable.
Like what Bernie has to say? The text shown has been edited down, please visit www.s40local.co.uk for the full unedited Bernie interview.
Please mention S40 Local · Page 7