LOOKING BACK

Last night I dreamed I went back to my child hood home again. I arrived at the parent village of E....... almost four miles from the tiny hamlet in which I grew up. There was the pub on the corner, my fathers local and run when I was a child by three very handsome bachelor brothers, and here a gave my first public performance at the age of three.

My mother loved music and the radio or records were always playing in our house. I was no Shirley Temple though, I sang songs such as “Begin the Begin” “In the mood” “You,ll never know” and such like, to this day there is nothing I dislike more than a small child parroting love songs it cannot possibly understand. I was by all accounts a popular performer until I stopped in the middle of “Perfidia” and announce that I wanted to wee, and did so right there and then to the detriment of several pints of bitter; the pub table was my stage back then.

Evening was falling as I walked through the village, just as it always was as I made my way home from college, most people were at their evening meal or their tea depending upon their social status. Closed for the night the old blacksmiths forge was silent and deserted, we were proud of our blacksmith for he had shod horses for the queen

My journey home began with the first on several steep inclines, past the well and the last few house in the village Well Cottage,the post mistresses house(She was almost a hundred at this time) a row of six stone labourers cottages and a large white house in which lived a school friend of may years and my only real rival at school sports.

On the right a modern brick house, the home of our local artist and poet and nearby a large and lovely old farmhouse, his former home then lived in and run by his two sons neither of whom ever became half the man their father was. New mown hay scented the air as I walked past the Grange formerly the outpost of a local monastery and still boasting fish ponds and some very odd stone coffins in the cellar.

The lane twisted and turned and always there was the climb, for my village was one of the highest in the county,then as now I knew every twig, every stone and my whole heart was bound up in its peaceful sights and sounds. Tumbling down hill the millrace ,boisterous even in dry weather but raging after heavy rain or snow melt rushed down to the village ,no longer hampered by the long vanished mill wheel.
And now a dark sunken tunnel of road completely overhung with trees,a haven on a hot summer day but terrifying on a wild winter evening when darkness came early and the branches groaned and creaked in protest at the wailing wind.

At last a short level piece of road and a gentle little brook bubbling and full of sparkles as well as minnows, sticklebacks and other childhood delights, then the crossroads haunted by a long dead servant girl buried there as a suicide,and finally the last long climb of a full mile to my home. Here jays flashed across the road and badgers snuffled at night, hay stacks lined the road sweet smelling and offering shelter on rainy days for tired travellers.

One ,two, three four small farms , the sisters cottage and the hall and then at last the track-way which lead to my home ,deeply rutted with grass growing in the middle and where in the winter would be many deep puddles hard to avoid.
I stopped at the last bend,I hesitated for a while and then I turned and walked away afraid of what I might see....or not see after all these years. Four many years I walked this route both ways daily ,now another family lives in my old home and to say the truth I could not bear to see what changes they might have made.

Nowadays I can walk that way as often as I choose using Google Earth and yet I know that I shall never walk that last bend in the road,I may visit my village but never my home which will have change as much as I have myself so that we should not recognise each other. Better for both to remember the past with love and not look back.