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| A slightly younger me with our Jack Russell 'Happy" |
Having three eight year olds in the house recently, gave rise to much pondering on childhood and being eight. What was I like then? Was my eight year old life much different.
The sense of smell causes memory overload at times. Our recent hot dry summer days carry their own memories from a time when I was eight . The smell of hay fields basking in the sun. Wafts of groundsel trampled underfoot. Sump oil from tractors, and good old farmyard smells. Need I say more.
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| Mum and Dad |
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| My brothers |
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| Gran's House |
I'm back in the early sixties. My family had moved into my Gran’s house in Yorkshire to keep her company when my Grandfather passed away. It was a big house in the middle of a large garden surrounded by flat Yorkshire fields. Next door was a farm. My brothers were away at school so I befriended the farmer’s son next door.
The simple pleasure of building dens with hay bales in the barn, rides on the tractor round enormous fields, staying away from the sump oil pit but intrigued nevertheless. It was a different world to the village life that I'd known before.
The farmer’s mother would babysit me a times. Mrs Robinson, a wonderful lady. She spent many an evening teaching me patiently to crochet. A skill I still love . Sometimes I would pop round to her cottage. On one occasion she was skinning a rabbit and I stood opened mouthed watching the whole process. In my mind’s eye I can still see it happening.
In the autumn I would go foraging in the lanes with my gran. We'd collect hawthorn berries, and all manner of nuts. Back home I would set up a little shop with all my produce. Simple pleasures. On the walks she would tell me about her six brothers and sisters and their lives in the country.
The winter of 1962 was the time of the big freeze. The school bus collected me from the bottom of my drive and took me the three miles to school, whatever the weather. No closures in those days. Making massive slides on a frozen pond at the bottom of the school playground. Oh what fun we had. You can tell Health and safety hadn't been invented yet! Coming in from the cold and the intense pain from frozen fingers as they gradually thawed out.
My mum wasn't a fan of our move to the country. She came from London, definitely a city girl. My father bought her an old fashioned street light to put at the end of the drive to make her feel less isolated. Wonder if it's still there.
She regularly tussled with the ancient coke fired aga in the kitchen. If the wind was blowing in the wrong direction it would go out. Never ideal when you are trying to cook Sunday lunch. My Gran liked to make comments like: 'I never had a problem!'
She regularly tussled with the ancient coke fired aga in the kitchen. If the wind was blowing in the wrong direction it would go out. Never ideal when you are trying to cook Sunday lunch. My Gran liked to make comments like: 'I never had a problem!'
Every Saturday a blue Bedford van arrived, driven by Mabel. It was the mobile shop. If I was lucky a bottle of Dandelion and Burdock was purchased. I can still taste it today and think of Mabel’s visits. Sometimes we visited York on a Saturday and missed Mabel. It was the days of the first episodes of Dr Who and the Daleks. Occasionally we left it late coming back from York and my father would race home to be in time for us to hide behind the sofa, as the daleks appeared!
My gran was very particular about her garden, going out daily to cut out weeds from her immaculate lawn. We had brought our Jack Russell ‘Happy’ with us, not always the best behaved. Gran had a King Charles spaniel called Bengy and a dachshund called Sherry. Happy led her two dogs astray and not always in the best interests of the lawn. They would sometimes disappear over the fields and come back covered in unmentionable things. Gran was not amused and a frosty atmosphere would linger for sometime.
She would always cheer up when her brother Alf turned up. He'd lived in Ireland for years and had adopted the accent. We had a miniature putting green on another part of the garden and had great fun trying to beat Alf.
So much for memories, certainly a very different world for an eight year old today. I wonder what smells set you off reminiscing, what were you up to when you were eight? I'd love to hear.
Barbara xxx
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