Pulling Mussels

Eric Pounsett was a remarkable and unique man for so many different reasons. He was born illegitimately to a poor servant girl in an age where both mother and son would normally end up in the workhouse. Yet both were helped and protected by one of the wealthiest families in England. At five years old he met and shook hands with the first man to fly the English Channel and by 1970 was the only person alive to tell of such an experience. At 12 years old, during World War One, he was used as "ballast" in a Royal Flying Corps test flight of a new biplane. From the age of 13 he chain-smoked 60 cigarettes a day and somehow managed to wheeze himself to the age of 75. He left school at 14 and by his own admission was uneducated, yet became a published poet with many of his rhymes printed in newspapers and read out on national radio. He helped create a multi-national refrigeration business, resigned his directorship after an argument, then returned six years later to see the company become a world-famous brand. He was christened Mr Shoreham after his adopted home-town of Shoreham by Sea, by famous BBC broadcaster Charlie Chester. He made and lost several small fortunes, once owned three shops, and died almost penniless in a West Sussex psychiatric hospital. But much more than all of that he was a loving husband and father to four children... and he was my grandfather. This book has been more than 40 years in the making and I am truly sorry that it wasn't written or published while all of Eric's children were still alive. This is his story, plus a selection of some of his quirky poetry.