The following days at nan's house were very strained to say the least. Nan didnt have the best of health and had enough pills around the house to keep a small chemists shop open for a week, but she did cope with her ailments quite well, even if it was a known fact that the last thing you ever did was to ask her how she was.
This would result in you having all the gory details of every illness and operation she had been in or had over the previous 40 years. I wasn't in good books for quitting my job and Nan had her way of showing it, everything I did or said over these next few days would encourage a comment from her with regards to my job, or indeed lack of, i could not escape either as i lived under her roof and was fast running out of money.
One night, about 3 weeks after my walkout a local farm worker came in to the house and implied there may be a job going on a local farm in Ludlow, quite a big farm and one that he himself worked on. It seemed there may be some light at the end of the tunnel.
I went back home to my parents house on my motorcycle that evening, back to the village i grew up in and around, Munslow. It was the archetypal English village with stone cottages a shop and Post Office and a war memorial, it once had a vibrant school that i had attended along with my siblings but it had long since been turned into a private house. Riding in to the village i turned off the B road and headed up a steep bank, past the Church on my left, then around a sharp right hand bend and up another small bank until the road levelled off, to my right then was a tennis court owned by the Francis-Moores, they were a very well to do family who were seldom in the village, but as children we were allowed to use the court anytime, amazing generosity when you think abaout it, could you ever imagine such a thing these days?. Turning a tight left hand bend i passed a style at the top of a field on my right, i had been through this style every day of my Grammar School life to catch a double deck bus to get to Ludlow and every day to get back home, it was like an old friend who you see once in a while, nod your appreciation to and drift on.
At the top of this road sat the small council estate that i was raised on. Nothing fancy, but it was home for many years and I have many memories of such great and sometimes not so great moments of living there.
My parents house was No.1, it had a small drive down to a wooden garage and was very plain and ordinary. The views from the rear were simply fantastic and always a source of inspiration, this was my back yard, this is where i grew up and had spent almost all my life thus far, it was a friendly face amongst a world of strange ones, a welcome bosom on which you could lay your head without fear. I was home.
Being home was not always a welcoming experience in every way however, despite my wonderful memories and fantastic care-free childhood. I had grown up and I was becoming a young man, a young man with attitude and a feeling of wanting to be a rebel against the people who I had grown up around. I liked motorcycles, wore leathers, grew my hair long, stayed out all night, drank, smoked, you name it I was up for sampling it. To my Chapel raised father and school mistress mother i was a huge disappointment and I knew it, I had shown great promise at school but as my Grammar education continued i fell behind and could never catch up so i started playing the class jester, the idiot, it was an easy role to play and required no effort. I now had a chip on my shoulder that said something like "all grown ups are miserable" and that was to stay with me for a long time. Mum seemed pleased to see me when i walked in through the old blue door with frosted glass as most of them were in those days, life had become tough for Mum of late, she had been the victim of a stroke at the age of 42 and it had wrecked her teaching career and her life, she couldn't move her left arm and leg very well and her speech was affected, back then stroke victims had a tough time, her life had been turned upside down and that had spread to the whole family as she had to be cared for by someone, mostly by my poor sister Caroline who always seemed to be there to bail the family out in times of crisis but got little thanks in return, she worked very hard to help mother recover, an angel by any other name but a daughter too. I told Mum i had quit my job, of course she already knew because i was living with her mother, my Nan and they talked, but at 17 you don't think of such things readily, she said "oh dear what are you going to do ?" as if it were a travesty on a grand scale, "Oh something has come up, i have an interview tomorrow"
"oh really?" Mum said in a mumbled manner, trying to speak as normally as possible despite her obvious physical problems,
"yes, its another farm, in Ludlow, seems a pretty sure thing"
"oh well, at least you will be working again" came the reply, i sensed that she would have loved me to have said i was going to be an airline pilot or a solicitor, but no, it was farming again and after all, hadn't she and father been the ones to push me in to employment the minute i left school? what more could they expect from this boy other than a wasted life?.
I heard a car coming down the drive, it was Dad's Austin Allegro, it was such an ugly thing but i guess it got the family from A to B, Dad worked part time self employed catching moles or putting fences up, whatever he could do to get by to be honest, it wasn't a great living but Mum did have her school pension which was a great help. Dad walked in and didn't say a lot, he didn't think much of me and didn't mince his words or try to hide it, he would be sarcastic almost immediately and try to get me to react, most of the time i did and Mother would end up crying in the middle of the argument for which i would get the blame, or sister perhaps if she was in earshot, I already carried the burden of being told i had caused mum's stroke because i had left home at such an early age and I had put mum under so much stress. With no-one to tell me otherwise i carried that with me, in my heart even now i still believe part of it is true, despite many attempts from people who i love and love me to dispel such a theory. It was just another example why myself and Dad could not live under the same roof, instead of nurturing he would criticise and use his superior strength to brow beat, he could sting with words in an instant, his wall of insults knew no boundaries when he was losing his temper, you got exactly what came to his lips warts and all, many's the time i simply walked out mostly in tears at the thought of such a lonely existence and how bad a lad i had really turned out despite all his best efforts. Worthless is the word i was thinking just then. I felt worthless.
I said "Hi" to Dad and he mumbled something about my losing my job but i refused to rise to it and with that i slipped next door to see my old mate Tater Davies, his name was Pete but as he was growing up his high forehead left him with the nickname "spud" and it has stuck even to this day. I looked up to Pete, he was a great bike rider, a mechanic and above all he was different and he made me smile, he had a leather jacket with so many badges on it was unreal and a pair of motorcycle boots with huge stainless steel wear pads and shin protectors on, he was 6ft 1inch with long hair and was mostly out of work at the time, but to me he was a great friend as it was always Pete i would go round to if Dad got too miserable... as was the case that evening.
Tater (Pete) was just off to Ludlow on his Kawasaki triple and asked if i was coming, i immediately agreed and slid round back home and shouted to the folks that i was splitting to Ludlow, again another sarcastic bunch of mumbles came forward but i paid little or no attention to it, it was the norm.
The ride down the Corvedale road to Ludlow is set in biker history. It is a tight twisting B road with junctions everywhere and tractors that spring out of fields in a heartbeat, but it held no fear for me and Tater, this was our turf and we rode that stretch of the Queen's highway like we had stolen it. Very soon we were in Ludlow, catching up with a few more biker mates in a pub called The Nags Head, ironically it's now a bloody Tesco's..
tbc....
This would result in you having all the gory details of every illness and operation she had been in or had over the previous 40 years. I wasn't in good books for quitting my job and Nan had her way of showing it, everything I did or said over these next few days would encourage a comment from her with regards to my job, or indeed lack of, i could not escape either as i lived under her roof and was fast running out of money.
One night, about 3 weeks after my walkout a local farm worker came in to the house and implied there may be a job going on a local farm in Ludlow, quite a big farm and one that he himself worked on. It seemed there may be some light at the end of the tunnel.
I went back home to my parents house on my motorcycle that evening, back to the village i grew up in and around, Munslow. It was the archetypal English village with stone cottages a shop and Post Office and a war memorial, it once had a vibrant school that i had attended along with my siblings but it had long since been turned into a private house. Riding in to the village i turned off the B road and headed up a steep bank, past the Church on my left, then around a sharp right hand bend and up another small bank until the road levelled off, to my right then was a tennis court owned by the Francis-Moores, they were a very well to do family who were seldom in the village, but as children we were allowed to use the court anytime, amazing generosity when you think abaout it, could you ever imagine such a thing these days?. Turning a tight left hand bend i passed a style at the top of a field on my right, i had been through this style every day of my Grammar School life to catch a double deck bus to get to Ludlow and every day to get back home, it was like an old friend who you see once in a while, nod your appreciation to and drift on.
At the top of this road sat the small council estate that i was raised on. Nothing fancy, but it was home for many years and I have many memories of such great and sometimes not so great moments of living there.
My parents house was No.1, it had a small drive down to a wooden garage and was very plain and ordinary. The views from the rear were simply fantastic and always a source of inspiration, this was my back yard, this is where i grew up and had spent almost all my life thus far, it was a friendly face amongst a world of strange ones, a welcome bosom on which you could lay your head without fear. I was home.
Being home was not always a welcoming experience in every way however, despite my wonderful memories and fantastic care-free childhood. I had grown up and I was becoming a young man, a young man with attitude and a feeling of wanting to be a rebel against the people who I had grown up around. I liked motorcycles, wore leathers, grew my hair long, stayed out all night, drank, smoked, you name it I was up for sampling it. To my Chapel raised father and school mistress mother i was a huge disappointment and I knew it, I had shown great promise at school but as my Grammar education continued i fell behind and could never catch up so i started playing the class jester, the idiot, it was an easy role to play and required no effort. I now had a chip on my shoulder that said something like "all grown ups are miserable" and that was to stay with me for a long time. Mum seemed pleased to see me when i walked in through the old blue door with frosted glass as most of them were in those days, life had become tough for Mum of late, she had been the victim of a stroke at the age of 42 and it had wrecked her teaching career and her life, she couldn't move her left arm and leg very well and her speech was affected, back then stroke victims had a tough time, her life had been turned upside down and that had spread to the whole family as she had to be cared for by someone, mostly by my poor sister Caroline who always seemed to be there to bail the family out in times of crisis but got little thanks in return, she worked very hard to help mother recover, an angel by any other name but a daughter too. I told Mum i had quit my job, of course she already knew because i was living with her mother, my Nan and they talked, but at 17 you don't think of such things readily, she said "oh dear what are you going to do ?" as if it were a travesty on a grand scale, "Oh something has come up, i have an interview tomorrow"
"oh really?" Mum said in a mumbled manner, trying to speak as normally as possible despite her obvious physical problems,
"yes, its another farm, in Ludlow, seems a pretty sure thing"
"oh well, at least you will be working again" came the reply, i sensed that she would have loved me to have said i was going to be an airline pilot or a solicitor, but no, it was farming again and after all, hadn't she and father been the ones to push me in to employment the minute i left school? what more could they expect from this boy other than a wasted life?.
I heard a car coming down the drive, it was Dad's Austin Allegro, it was such an ugly thing but i guess it got the family from A to B, Dad worked part time self employed catching moles or putting fences up, whatever he could do to get by to be honest, it wasn't a great living but Mum did have her school pension which was a great help. Dad walked in and didn't say a lot, he didn't think much of me and didn't mince his words or try to hide it, he would be sarcastic almost immediately and try to get me to react, most of the time i did and Mother would end up crying in the middle of the argument for which i would get the blame, or sister perhaps if she was in earshot, I already carried the burden of being told i had caused mum's stroke because i had left home at such an early age and I had put mum under so much stress. With no-one to tell me otherwise i carried that with me, in my heart even now i still believe part of it is true, despite many attempts from people who i love and love me to dispel such a theory. It was just another example why myself and Dad could not live under the same roof, instead of nurturing he would criticise and use his superior strength to brow beat, he could sting with words in an instant, his wall of insults knew no boundaries when he was losing his temper, you got exactly what came to his lips warts and all, many's the time i simply walked out mostly in tears at the thought of such a lonely existence and how bad a lad i had really turned out despite all his best efforts. Worthless is the word i was thinking just then. I felt worthless.
I said "Hi" to Dad and he mumbled something about my losing my job but i refused to rise to it and with that i slipped next door to see my old mate Tater Davies, his name was Pete but as he was growing up his high forehead left him with the nickname "spud" and it has stuck even to this day. I looked up to Pete, he was a great bike rider, a mechanic and above all he was different and he made me smile, he had a leather jacket with so many badges on it was unreal and a pair of motorcycle boots with huge stainless steel wear pads and shin protectors on, he was 6ft 1inch with long hair and was mostly out of work at the time, but to me he was a great friend as it was always Pete i would go round to if Dad got too miserable... as was the case that evening.
Tater (Pete) was just off to Ludlow on his Kawasaki triple and asked if i was coming, i immediately agreed and slid round back home and shouted to the folks that i was splitting to Ludlow, again another sarcastic bunch of mumbles came forward but i paid little or no attention to it, it was the norm.
The ride down the Corvedale road to Ludlow is set in biker history. It is a tight twisting B road with junctions everywhere and tractors that spring out of fields in a heartbeat, but it held no fear for me and Tater, this was our turf and we rode that stretch of the Queen's highway like we had stolen it. Very soon we were in Ludlow, catching up with a few more biker mates in a pub called The Nags Head, ironically it's now a bloody Tesco's..
tbc....
No comments:
Post a Comment