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| Holy Trinity Church in the heart of the village. It's where I was christened. |
Mrs Rosling ran the post office on the corner of South Street and West Street. Mr Peers was the proprietor of the grocer's shop. Mr and Mrs Ward ran "The Hare and Hounds" public house. Joe Grubham was the village street cleaner and the vicar at Holy Trinity Church was The Reverend Staveley. Dr Baker presided over the village surgery. Mrs Austwick owned the sweet shop which of course was one of my favourite places.
By 1964 the village was already growing with private housing estates beginning to occupy what had once been open fields belonging to local farmers. Today the village has a population of 2,500.
One of those villagers is still my younger brother Simon. He is a single man who rents a little cottage opposite the village school, less than fifty yards from the front school house bedroom in which we were both born. At sixty three he is still working in the water services industry though he had several other jobs before that one - including hotel maintenance, gravel dredging in The North Sea, gas servicing and caravan repairs. In terms of work, he has had to be pretty adaptable.
That village with its associated childhood memories is ingrained in my psychology. I only have to close my eyes and I can walk those streets again or cycle out to surrounding farms or walk by the old canal all the way to The River Hull. It's all still there in my head.
And I can still see the people I knew back then as if it was yesterday. The other village lads with whom I played endless games of football. P.C. Pepys who lived in the old police house on High Stile and the newcomers who arrived with the new houses - like Paul and Ron and Roland and Ann-Marie Burns from Westlands Way who I pined for like a lost puppy when I was in my early teens. Later her pretty face was ravaged by acne.
I think it was good to grow up in a village like that. It was safe and certain and at least in the early years of life, every face was familiar. There was a world out there beyond the village boundaries but it didn't seem to impinge very significantly upon our lives.
Milk was delivered to our doorstep. The fishmonger's van came round on Fridays and the Law's pop (American: soda) wagon came every fortnight. There was a village bonfire every Guy Fawkes Night and every summer a village garden fete and a village show that was held in the old Recreation Hall. I won the first prize for children's arts and crafts twice.
That simple village life was all I really knew and for that I am grateful. You might say it has been the solid foundation from which the rest of my life has evolved. A community in which we all knew each other, knew about our individual ups and downs and generally supported one another. After all, we breathed the same air in the same square mile of this vast planet. We had much in common.
What a very solid and safe foundation upon which to build a life. One of my mothering theories is that if you give your babies all of the safety and comfort and attention and love they need when they are young, they will not be afraid to take steps away, knowing that they are loved. Those steps eventually lead to them taking wing. I think you had that sort of experience in your village.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to the village, I grew up in a loving family - something I took for granted. Now looking back I realise how fortunate I was.
DeleteGreat post that I have a kindred feeling. We were in the country and had far less people to interact with. I often thing back to those days and they are always sunny.
ReplyDeleteIn my memory it always sunny in my home village - though in reality of course - it wasn't.
DeleteYou are being very pensive of late, Yorkie...and it is understandable. Cherished memories flood one's mind at certain times in one's life.
ReplyDeleteThe village you grew up in, was not far removed...I'm not talking geographically, of course...than the one in which I spent my childhood. The similarities are many...and many of the memories are fondly remembered.
I am sure that there will be some less pensive posts coming up soon Lee. Thanks for dropping by once again.
DeleteVillages like yours (L--?) were very special places to grow up. My mum and her relatives spoke in the same fond ways of theirs. They also had that typically unforgiving sense of humour that probably originates in the banter between people working together in the fields. You had to understand it wasn't nasty or critical, even if it sounded like it. My uncle (mum's brother-in-law) who was from different village - an East Riding one - once said of my mum's West Riding village "If t’Blue Line bus ‘adn’t started comin’ thro’ t’village, th’d ‘ave all bin imbecil’s ‘cos o’ t’inbreedin’".
ReplyDeleteYou guessed right Sir Tasker. Love your tale about t'Blue Line buses. You can't beat dry, understated Yorkshire humour. It's just one of the things that makes Yorkshire great - along with parkin, Dickie Bird and patties.
DeleteSo my misspent youth hitch hiking to Hornsea and back on summer weekends wasn't turns out not to have been all that misspent at all.
Deletedelete "wasn't". Recognised the church.
DeleteI think I saw you hitching at White Cross once. My mother said, "We're not picking that scruffy sod up!"
DeleteVillage life is good for children. It teaches them that the world around them has a structure, everything and everyone has its place and purpose. Some would fear it narrows their minds, and of course it can do that if no outside influences are allowed or possible, such as if one grows up as a girl in a poor, strictly religious village in, say, Africa or Afghanistan and is never allowed to learn to read or write and discover the world outside.
ReplyDeleteBut in general, that structure learned early provides stability and security which can last long, even when as adults we learn that our lives and the world around us can be anything but stable and secure.
You appear to have entirely grasped the main positives and negatives connected with growing up in a village. Did OK grow up in the village he lives in now?
DeleteYes, he did, and so did his mother. His father comes from a nearby village and was considered an "outsider" when he moved there over 50 years ago.
DeleteLovely meditation on your home village, YP. I grew up in an even smaller village but it had its special places and I can still picture it - and often do - in my mind's eye, as you do yours. I wonder what it's like to have a very different childhood and have THAT in your mind's eye your entire life. It's a sobering thought. We who have good and peaceful memories of our childhood years are very, very lucky and quite often don't realize it.
ReplyDeleteYou are so right about that Jenny. I think of a child who has developed in poverty and uncertainty - perhaps with elements of abuse present too. That's all stuff you have to carry through life even though you might want to leave it behind.
DeleteAn interesting vignette of a village upbringing. Different from my southern suburban childhood. However, when I was about 10 years old, when I probably had previously been no further north than Ponders End, I had a memorable 2 weeks in nearby Driffield (The Capital of the Wolds!) staying with a Yorkshire boy and his family who I had befriended. In the chip shop (6d worth of chips, with scraps please) I heard an elderly lady say something like: “yer canna drive twer ‘orses weh yar string”. This was in 1969.
ReplyDeleteThis was the beginning of your cultural enlightenment Philip!
DeleteI think Lee has had a good go at hitting the nail on the head. Many of your recent posts have been very introspective and almost maudlin. Many of us, and I suspect that you are in this situation, have little to worry about in terms of physical and mental well-being. How we deal with life is often in our own gift and we can decide to be happy and positive or sad and negative. I wish you a happy heart.
ReplyDeleteI very much disagree that we can "decide" to be happy and positive or sad and negative Graham. If that were the case, everybody would be living the first option. Just as an example, I don't think my post titled "Sheldon" was in the least bit "maudlin"
DeleteI wasn't suggesting that all your posts were maudlin just that there seemed to be an air about some recently. I do think that we have a choice although I concede that our basic nature may be hard to overcome. I know people who revel in being negative and unhappy - it is what gets them the attention they seek and, in a way, that gives them what they need. I also know people who, despite illness and great personal adversity are always positive and that brings them happiness. Obviously what I have said is a generalisation. Clinical depression, for example, is not something that can just be thought away by trying to be positive.
DeleteThanks for the clarification Graham.
DeleteI can draw parallels with my own childhood in a small town in Florida. I think children benefit from living in a stable environment where they grow over a period of years and learn to adapt to changes in themselves and others. In my case, the stability helped me become self-contained and adaptable later in life, I think.
ReplyDeleteThere's also a danger, though, in seeing things too nostalgically. Small communities can be nurturing, but in many ways they can be stifling, too. I have never regretted leaving my childhood community.
I needed to fly away too...and it's not proper regret but sometimes I wish I could have some of that simplicity back.
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