Sunday 5 February 2017

Been and gone


This is a place which - until quite recently - could only be visited in a car, or in a dream. It is the small private road which runs in front of the house I grew up in and left aged 16, all those years ago. The photo is a Google Street View.

Having updated the maps app on my iPhone, I looked up the road in rural Surrey and - using one finger - walked its entire length as I had done - using my feet - many times before as a child.

There are many new houses built either side of it now and the private school 500 yards away from here has gone, but it is intrinsically the same, recognisable road as it was over 60 years ago when we first came to live on it.

I decided to take the route out toward Guildford as I did many times on my motorcycle, when I left my parents in bed to go back to my new home. After reaching the bottom of Mount Hill, I found that this stretch was pretty much how it had always been, with leafy hedges hiding open fields on both sides.

The road rises to a little hump-back bridge over the railway line, and when I reached it, I would gun the engine of my bike in the darkness to let my parents know that I had got that far without mishap. They would lie in bed waiting for the distant sound of a Triumph 650 briefly revving a final goodbye, then go to sleep. I see they have replaced the red brickwork on both sides of the bridge.

That tree stump in the photo is all that remains of a large Poplar, and I am surprised that so much of it does remain. Maybe they left the huge stump just for me.

One lonely Summer, I spent several days riding my bicycle up and down this private road, back and forth repetetively like a caged tiger. The Poplar's roots had grown halfway into the road, and with each pass I would steer my front wheel over the largest of the roots which pushed through the tarmac, giving myself a little lift from the flat surface. It made a change.

For hours, I would ride up and down this road with The Shadows's 'Stars Fell on Stockton' running through my head and dreaming of an imaginary American girlfriend, until it would begin to get dark and I would go inside.

Summers for me were whole months of loneliness - even the annual two weeks in Brighton with an aunt and uncle, taking walks through The Lanes, pushing pennies into slots of machines on the Palace Pier, watching the coloured lights come on in the gardens around The Pavilion and watching the build-up between opposing groups of Mods and Rockers on the Front  - completely surrounded by people - were suffused with loneliness.

I went into an esspresso bar there one evening, and espied a - to my eyes - very beautiful young girl amongst a group of friends. She must have been around 19 and I was about 14. All I could do at that time was stare, and try to make it meaningful.

I think I had made the right choice in this girl, because she gave me some very good and kind advice.

She noticed me desperately gawping at her from the other side of the room and left her group to come over to me. I began to panic.

She leant forward to me and quietly said, "Don't worry. Your time will come," then returned to her friends.

It was not until some years later that I realised that I was not always missing out on parties just because I was on my own, and that everyone else was not having a great time without me if I was not with them. It took a while, but she was right.




30 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. I am feeling a little melancholic today.

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    2. This is the second Sunday when I have been overwhelmed with a 'back to school on Monday' feeling. I wish I could stay positive about my future, but I dread going to where I have to go tomorrow.

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    3. We go full circle don't we? Oh to be in the in between bit when we didn't or wouldn't care.

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    4. I think that is achievable, but it involves the restoration of faith. I have been losing my faith recently, but hope to regain it before I kick the bucket.

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  2. Summer holidays were 8 weeks of loneliness for me too. I was very inventive in games I played though taking multiple parts. I used to go on long bike rides to places I shouldn't go to and I never told anyone.

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    1. Yes, it wasn't all lonliness - I would spend peaceful hours in the places I cycled to, staring into the stagnant water of ancient, overgrown mills, or sitting in woodland. Trips to MOD ranges to find spent ammunition or just reading a book on the flat roof of our huge house was aften enough to enjoy myself on my own. The winters were spent waiting for the next Hammer Horror film I could blag my way into, and my best winter was 1963, when everything came to a complete and silent stop under three or four feet of snow. Bliss.

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    2. I remember that winter very clearly. It was like the Tundra here - perma frost and the mains frozen, but little or no snow. Difficult on a farm with a milking herd. I started writing that winter because I did a lot of staring out of the window and have never really stopped writing since.

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    3. I would go just outside from the above photo and watch some cars trying to drive down the road through the snow, slewing around and ending up in hedges. More bliss.

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  3. Now you've got me heading down certain memory lanes, too. I am trying to stay on the pathways to some happy childhood times and to stay well away from the Teenage Years.
    You've written this very well, Tom. Wouldn't it be something if some lonely young person happened to see this post and be reassured about the future?

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    1. Young people don't read blogs by old people, but it's a nice idea. They are too busy convincing each other that they have 1000s of friends on Facebook.

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    2. Anyway, I would not inspire any teenager who compared my past with their future.

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  4. Thank you for that glimpse into your early years. I think loneliness is something that effects more people than we think. I spent a lot of time alone, playing outside, as well. -Jenn

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    1. There is, of course, a big difference between being alone and feeling lonely.

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    2. True. You could be surrounded by people and still feel very much alone.

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  5. I was very lonely as a child, with no siblings and no cousins my age, living in a tiny, poor, dying small town. My family life was shit. I spent all my time alone in my room or outside, reading and dreaming of escape.

    Very evocative post today, Tom. I enjoyed it.

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  6. Like everyone else, you were not alone. My childhood was not shit and I grew up in a pleasant environment. I was lucky - as my mother kept reminding me.

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  7. Kudos to the 19 year old who took a moment to notice you. I'll bet she grew up to be a spectacular woman. Thanks for sharing those memories Tom.

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    1. She couldn't very well ignore me, but at least she didn't scream at me.

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  8. Really enjoyed this post Tom. I don't remember an awful lot of my childhood but I do remember a sense of waiting, and I agree with Donna about the 19yr old girl.

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    1. My absolute favourite childhood reminiscences are Laurie Lee's in 'Cider with Rosie'.

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  9. I sent Google earth to the first childhood home I remember, up to age three. When I tipped up street view, it was in the process of being demolished. But, I've Google earthed the other homes I remember, my Grandmother's and my parents' They look like I last recall them. You've recalled them to me again. I enjoyed being a child as much as I enjoyed moving on.

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    1. Yes, there were so many good times - I have just concentrated on one little bit of mine. Funny Google caught your house being demolished.

      The first time I went up in a light aircraft from Bristol, we taxied past a WW2 bunker which my father had guarded in WW2. When we landed a few hours later, it had been bulldozered out of existence. They waited until I caught a glimpse of it.

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  10. Having revisited my native Surrey village some years ago, the only thing I noticed that had changed was the appalling noise of aircraft; something that would not be obvious on Google Street Maps.

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