Mouseman: Why those famous mice represent all that is good in the world - Christa Ackroyd

In fact I look at them and smile every day. Obviously they are not real mice or I may not be so welcoming.

In this week’s Magazine my lovely colleague ventured for the first time to the home of the Yorkshire mouse. Not surprisingly she loved it.

It is part of our heritage and it’s story has always fascinated me ever since I was a little girl.

So much so that it has become part of my story. I first came across the mouse as a youngster on our annual holiday to stay with Great Uncle Lance and Aunty Nellie in a picture perfect village nestling in the heart of the North York Moors.

It was always an idyllic reminder of why we came to be known as God’s Own County.

If you were to write them into an episode of All Creatures Great and Small, Uncle Lance and Aunty Nellie would appear as themselves.

The most welcoming of couples, he was granny’s youngest brother from a family of 11 children.

With a ruddy complexion and cheery manner he farmed sheep on the moorland above Lastingham with his trusted sheepdog Nobby.

Aunty Nellie was the perfect farmer’s wife. Round and jolly and always with a pinny on and flour on her hands and face, she was the best baker (apart from mum) I had ever met.

Every day we would leave them to their chores and set off on a picnic, our Tupperware boxes laden with Aunty’s baking and our sandwiches made with the kind of homemade bread that was just as good without any filling slathered with a generous helping of salted butter.

It was on one of these picnics I first discovered the mouse. That little mouse has graced the finest of homes. It is now collected the world over.

It has made an appearance in Cathedrals and wealthy private schools but it remains for me fitting that I should first find it in the simplest of churches on the simplest of days.

St Chad’s in Hutton Le Hole is one such church, or chapel as mum and her family always called them.

Every year we would sit beside the river eating our ‘lowance’ as Uncle Lance called anything eaten outside, short for allowance which was the food provided to farm workers in busy season such as lambing or harvest.

Once we had eaten more than our fill we would be allowed to jump the stepping stones across the shallow river. And usually fell in, or at least I did.

This year we remained dry and so dad suggested a visit to see the inside of the chapel. He told us the story of the mouse and asked us to find him.

Without a clue as to what we were looking for as my parents perused the temporary peace of the chapel we searched for the mouse until we could search no more.

It was then dad led us to the alter rail and pointed out the little carved mouse almost hidden in its simplicity.

Over the years searching for that mouse became an annual pastime. Robert ‘Mouseman’ Thompson became a hero of ours.

Part of my childhood, part of the history of my beloved North Yorkshire but also part of our folklore.

Funnily enough we never visited the workshop in Kilburn where his ancestors kept his traditions alive. I often did later.

We were hardly as poor as a church mouse which is why ‘Mousey’ Thompson first carved him, but perhaps they always believed he was the preserve of that beautifully crafted simple oak furniture that adorned so many places of worship in the villages around his place of work. I felt differently.

One year when asked what I wanted for my birthday I asked for a little mouse of my own. And so I went to that same workshop to choose him.

He was the fattest I could find and crafted into a simple serviette ring. And looking at that serviette ring even today I can see the value and the history and also the complexity of the craft.

Every year for the next five years mum and dad bought me a serviette ring. Later on significant birthdays my family clubbed together to add the cheese board.

Later came the bread board. And the book ends. And then the three legged stool. Each one cherished and looked after from then until now.

In a world of throwaway fashion, and that includes furniture, they have travelled with me and always will.

They represent all that is good in life. Those little mice are dotted about my little house until there is virtually one in every room.

The napkins are colourful french linen and displayed within their individual mouse in a basket in my kitchen.

The bookends are on the landing displaying my most treasured books. And each week when my grandchildren visit the little stool becomes a makeshift table to take it in turns to do their homework on.

In turn they know each one, they each have their favourites and so like me will always remember the story of how they came to meet him.

That little mouse to me represents the past, the present and the future. I would never have expected in my wildest dreams as a youngster that he would play such a part in my life.

That every time I see him in all his glory, and I come across him so so often in the most unexpected places, vivid memories of childhood and hunting for him would come flooding back. But there he is still going strong.

And somehow we keep meeting. When I visited Marco Pierre White’s pub in the wood near Bath he was in every room on every table and in every piece of bedroom furniture as one of the biggest collectors.

And when my daughter asked me to look around an intriguing yet rather dilapidated house she was interested in, we both knew she absolutely had to have it when unexpectedly we came across one of the rooms entirely panelled by the Mouseman himself complete with eight hidden mice on the beams, the doors and the fireplace which we then set about finding instantly, bringing back memories of hunting for that first mouse with my dad all those years ago.

That mouse has been with me almost all of my life in stories, in adventures and in my home, through all the ups and downs.

Robbie Burns once wrote ‘the best made plans of mice and men often go awry’ but that’s why I love my little carved mice so much.

I have six serviette rings – one for each of my grandchildren and one spare.

Maybe, just maybe he might travel with me from this life into the next, until then mice in my house are a symbol of all I have treasured and learned along the way, of continuity and happy times, much of it like my mice carved out in the countryside of Yorkshire, strong solid and always dependable.

And lucky, so lucky in all the memories we have made together.