And so I went to see Richard and Jackie again this afternoon before picking Phoebe up from school. Our conversation lasted for two hours today - before I put my coat on and marched off to the school gates. Again the talk was easy and comfortable and I plan to see them again next week.
If you have not been following this blog story, let me just say that Richard's surname is Hines and his brother was Barry Hines - the famed author of "Kes". It was Richard who trained the kestrel in the first place.
Both of Richard's published books have been memoirs. Linked to that, I thought I might try a small experiment here in this blog where I pick up on some aspect of my own early life and craft it as though producing an excerpt from a larger memoir.
Obviously, there are lots of times I could choose from even though recollections of those days become dimmer with each passing year. For the purposes of this experiment, I have picked village life and a small selection of things I remember from the village where I was born and raised on The Plain of Holderness, twelve miles north of the East Yorkshire city of Kingston-upon-Hull...
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Beyond the village, low-lying farmland stretched all the way to The River Hull. Historically, it had been marshy "carr" land but centuries earlier drains had been dug across the landscape to take excess waters away. Running straight they gurgled, connecting with each other like veins.
The loamy soil was rich and fertile and there were remote arable farms out there - Linley Hill, Aikedale, Low Baswick and Baswick Steer but the one I knew best was Hall Garth Farm, the home of the Watson family. I pedalled there many times to play with my primary school friend Les Watson.
We did not need a commercial soft play area or an urban playground because Hall Garth's farm buildings provided all the opportunity we needed. There were barns filled with bales of hay and straw and we tunnelled into them making caves and once we cornered a rat with potato forks. Trapped in a bricked up corner it has nowhere to run at first. In my memory it is corralled there for eternity though I admit that in reality it was certainly just a few seconds.
Very close to Hall Garth Farm was St Faith's churchyard. The last of the sandstone gravestones that stood there were carved in the middle of the nineteenth century which was the very time that my village, in agreement with The Church of England, decided to build a brand new church a mile east of there in the heart of what had become the new village - on slightly higher ground. St Faith's itself was demolished though one or two drawings of what the humble building looked like remain.
On old maps, very close to the site of St Faith's, a mysterious feature was marked - "St Faith's Well". It was probably a holy site but there is no sign of it any more and as far as I know, no history books have ever recorded its significance way back in the medieval period and possibly before that.
When I was a boy, we had freedom to spend spare time and summer days out in that seemingly endless windblown farmland where very few vehicles ever passed by. It seemed to never occur to my parents that there might be any danger out there. Mum just asked me to make sure that I was home in time for tea.
Every two or three days, a milk lorry from Hull collected silver-coloured churns from a stone platform at the bottom of Heigholme Lane. That lane led to a fairly grand country house called Heigholme Hall that was surrounded by trees. It was the very private home of Colonel Wood who was, like my father, a church warden. You only ever saw mustachioed Colonel Wood when he came to church. Looking back, I suppose that he had seen active duty in World War II and he may have witnessed terrible things. Perhaps that is why he was so reclusive and appeared so fierce.
One summer, he generously invited all the Sunday School children to the grounds of Heighholme Hall for a Sunday afternoon picnic and games and that was the only time I ever got to see the place. Though I did not know what it was called, the garden had a "ha-ha" - a kind of sunken boundary wall - frequently used in country house gardens to prevent intrusion by farm animals without spoiling the view. At that garden party, we repeatedly jumped off it for fun, rolling in the grassy trench below. We also played a strange lawn game called croquet for the first time, bashing wooden balls through white hoops.
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All right. That's enough of that. For now at least, the little memoir experiment is concluded. I doubt that I will be adding two hundred more pages and besides I still have to bring my "Stanage Edge" poem to the finishing yard.
What is it they say ? Go in as late as possible and get out as early as possible.
ReplyDeleteThat's way to craft a story that holds the reader's attention. You held mine.
Rats terrify me. Glasgow is overrun with them. We need cats. Beautiful cats.
Rats hunt scraps of food in backyards. I can hear them at night.
In the morning the scutter of rats is replaced by the chatter of magpies eating leftovers.
This is Britain in the 21st Century. Boris Johnson bequeathed us this squalor.
Johnson's face had the look of an albino rat. I can imagine him down in the urban gutter feasting on discarded slices of pizza and half-eaten kebabs in the 3am quietness of the night. Listen as he gnaws and scurries.
DeleteThe rat in your memoir touched a nerve.
DeleteTories were in power 14 years and left us the worst of all possible worlds.
Rubbish collection is once a fortnight because of financial cuts. Austerity.
Your sketch of Johnson has me laughing. Power to your pen.
The albino rat piped us into the Brexit mountain and the cave door closed behind us.
DeleteWell written and interesting. I think your children might like to know more. I wish I had known about my own parent's lives before they died. Mum tried several times to write things down but her handwriting (never good to begin with), got much worse as she aged and lost her eyesight. I wish I had taken the time to write things down for her, but of course I was too "busy", doing god knows what.
ReplyDeleteWhen they are gone, it is impossible to ask the niggling questions that they leave behind.
DeleteI've wondered but never checked to why haha walls were built. We have them here, well at least one that I know of, in the inner city.
ReplyDeleteThey certainly did not build ha-has for a laugh!
DeleteIt is fascinating how we can look back at our childhoods and see them so clearly, a very different childhood to the children of today. There was definitely freedom to roam the streets or fields.
ReplyDeleteNowadays there is danger around every corner - most of it imaginary.
DeleteHow strange that a church would be called St. Faith. It's a bit like the "Holy God Church" in The Simpsons.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I very much liked this glimpse in a world long gone, the world you inhabited as a child. Like you, I was out and about on the fields for hours on end without any means to contact my parents or be contacted by them. My friends and I played out there on our bikes and went sledging there in winter, with the only instruction being that we should be home by 6:00 pm.
Your assessment of Colonel Wood sounds very probable.
Saint Faith, Saint Faith of Conques or Saint Faith of Agen (Latin: Sancta Fides; French: Sainte Foy; Spanish: Santa Fe) is a saint who is said to have been a girl or young woman of Agen in Aquitaine. Her legend recounts how she was arrested during persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire and refused to make pagan sacrifices. Saint Faith was tortured to death with a red-hot brazier.
DeleteAt the senior center here, classes are offered for 55+ people. The courses are taught by volunteers, many of whom were former teachers. This is where I have been taking my French classes. When they had their winter enrollment, I signed up for tai chi, and another French class. Unfortunately, the tai chi class was filled and I am on the wait list. In their course catalogue, a class was offered on memoir writing. It is too late now, but I think I will sign up for it on the next go around. Your entry has got me to thinking about writing some things down myself.
ReplyDeleteYou could be a history tutor at the senior centre Michael.
DeleteI have actually thought about that. I wonder though sometimes if my "leftist" outlook on all things MAGA would cause me some trouble.
DeleteBut Michael, it's only leftists, woke folk, democrats and asylum seekers who care a fig about history. MAGAts and Trumpists would never enrol on your course.
DeleteWho will play you when the movie is made? Will it sell more tickets that Melania?
ReplyDeleteI would not buy a ticket to see Melania, even if she was standing in her birthday suit in a shower cubicle.
DeleteWe had more freedom to roam back when I was a kid, too. Just as long as we were home for meals.
ReplyDeleteHow the world has changed. That age of innocence appears to have gone but I contend that 99% of the reason is simply people's imaginings.
DeleteYour story brought back so many memories of visits to my grandparents farm in Illinois. I loved those visits - tea parties under the weeping willow tree, climbing the apple trees to pick apples and a great spot for hide-and-seek, picking green beans and shelling peas on the back stoop, swinging on the tire swing, pumping water in the cow trough. Such a pleasant, meaningful time in my life. Thanks for the walk down memory lane.
ReplyDeleteSo glad my post resurrected those memories for you Diaday.
DeleteBack in my day children had a childhood and adventures and great days of wonder while the children of today have phones and tablets.
ReplyDeleteThe only tablet I ever had was an aspirin.
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