Since I retired,
the alarm function of my bedside clock has had less and less use and so it was
a shock to the system this morning to find that I must inadvertently have pressed
the alarm button last night, with the result that it roused me far too early
from a deep and satisfying sleep. With no pressing need to get out of my warm
and comfortable bed (these late October mornings are much too chilly for my liking and I’m going to church this evening)
I drifted into that pleasurable state between waking and sleeping which allows
all sorts of odd memories to rise to the surface of the mind.
To my surprise I
found myself retracing my childhood walk to school, a small church primary
school in a little village on the western fringes of the Pennines in Lancashire . In my mind’s eye I climbed the slope from our
cottage to the stile into the field in which our neighbouring farmer grazed his
cows. Once through the stile (a swing-gate, not a ladder stile) I walked along
the footpath by the stone wall which bordered the field, until I reached the
stile at the far end leading into the centre of the village.
 |
| Post Office and shop |
From the stile I
turned right for a short distance until the lane met the main road through the
village. Ahead of me, across the road, stood the village post-office and shop,
next door to The Victoria Arms, one of the three village pubs, the other two
being strung out along the road through our small, but very straggling
community. Turning left at the junction, I passed on my left the second of our
village shops, run throughout my childhood by two unmarried sisters, Bessie and
Marion.
It was in this
shop that my sisters and I bought our small weekly allowance of sweets and the
choice was always fraught. For 3 (old) pence we could buy two ounces of a wide
variety of tooth-rotting goodies, such as pear-drops or mint imperials, aniseed
balls or dolly mixtures, jelly babies or humbugs. I could go on….
Alternatively we
could opt for a number of individually priced items like liquorice straps or
sherbet dabs or even (perish the thought nowadays) a packet of sweet cigarettes
which would allow us to mimic our elders’ behaviour before eating the chewy
little sticks one by one.
Once past the
shop I left the village centre behind and continued along the road for a few
hundred yards to the next group of buildings.
All but one were houses, but the exception also played a central role in
our lives back then. It was the Sunday School building for the Congregational
chapel we belonged to and was the scene of many of the most enjoyable events of
my childhood.
Its large main
room acted as a village hall and there we went regularly to chapel socials and
concerts and of course the annual Christmas party, with the obligatory visit of
Father Christmas and his tantalisingly bulging sack of presents. It was there
that my sisters and I learned to perform in the concerts and played our part in
the work involved in providing a sit-down tea for a hundred or more people. It
was there that we learned dances like the valeta, the Gay Gordons, the Dashing
White Sergeant and of course the inevitable hokey-cokey and where I realised
that, as far as dancing is concerned, I was born with two left feet.
 |
| Down the hill to school |
Beyond the
Sunday School building was a walk of another few hundred yards, before I
reached the next pub, The Rock Inn, and turned left down the lane to our little two-teacher school. According to the wizardry of the path function on
Google Earth, that was a walk of about three-quarters of a mile each way, which
we did on our own and on foot, winter and summer, through rain, wind, snow and even sunshine, until we left that school and graduated to the luxury of a bus
journey to the grammar school in the neighbouring town.
I’m sure that
there must have been many times in bad weather when we wished we didn’t have to
make that walk twice a day, but it had its compensations. The details of our
daily route, the individual buildings we passed, the people we met and the
wonderful distant views from the hillside road, are deeply embedded in my memory
and in my heart in a way I don’t think any car journey would allow and I’m glad
of it. Perhaps I ought to set my alarm by mistake more often….
What a very pleasant way to spend your slowly awakening Sunday morning. I do hope that when you finally arose DH had a cup of tea ready for you.
ReplyDeleteOh the memories of aniseed balls which you could suck forever until you came to the tiny seed in the middle, and my favourites sherbet dabs - although I liked the ones with the licorice straw.
I expect we would all look like the old google photos if we were magnified!!!
Not a chance, Rosemary. DH doesn't drink tea himself and can ruin even a teabag. :-) My tea is lovingly made by me and taken back to bed to drink in peace.
DeleteAs soon as I started to think about those sweets we used to buy my memory was flooded with names and flavours. Weren't the ones with licorice straws called sherbet fountains? My teeth were half ruined because I loved mint imperials and could make them last for ages.
Your last remark made me chortle!
Of course, that is right - gorgeous sherbet fountains.
DeleteYes, indeed you will have to set your alarm more often if this is the result!
ReplyDeleteSuch a clear recollection...I felt I was walking along with you...and then I wondered if I could remember my walk to school...and I could!
I'm sure you're right...walking it lets things sink in.
Now I'm going to look at Google Earth to see how much it has changed since those far off days...bet I'll be astonished.
I surprised myself by how very clear it was, Fly, as so many of my earlier memories are far from crystal clear nowadays. Walking the same route every school day for nearly four and a half years certainly allowed all the detail to sink in for me.
DeleteHaving just checked Google Earth along the route of my walk, I was astounded to see how very little it has changed in nearly 60 years, other than the normal sprucing-up of old houses. It is still a very small village....
Lovely post Perpetua, and like Fly it started me wondering whether I could remember my walk to school too...and I could. I also remember all those sweets too. My grammar school was some distance away and a friend and I should have caught the bus. However, we used to set off early on foot so that we could spend our busfares on sweets. Great of course on the way to school...not so good when we had to walk home, having spent the return fares as well.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ayak, I have this lovely mental image of my blogging friends all over the world busily retracing their childhood walk to school. What have I started?
DeleteIf only I could have done the same as you and your friend, but our bus journey to school was about two and a half miles each way and went up and down some very steep hills. Just too much effort, even for more sweets. :-)
Lovely memories, Perpetua, and you've stirred a few of my own too! I didn't have as far to go but there was much here that chimed with my childhood memories of sweet shops, Sunday school and village life. I must have done my walk in bad weather as I can remember the feeling of having very icy legs - so cold that it was painful as they began to warm up! (Life was 'ard up north!)
ReplyDeleteAxxx
Thanks, Annie. There's nothing like a trip down memory lane from time to time. Life was indeed hard up north :-) and though we were sheltered from the worst of your cold easterly winds, we were wide open to the westerlies with all their rain and must have arrived at school sopping wet countless times. Those were the days of no central heating and chilblains too. Brr!!!
DeleteHah, these are still the days of 'no central heating and chilblains' in our house! :D
DeletePoor DB! Our central heating is nearly useless, but at least my hand-knitted socks keep our feet warm. :-)
DeleteWhat a really enjoyable walk through your childhood Perpetua, and how clever of you to illustrate it so well.
ReplyDeleteMy youth was spent on foot too, though quite a while before yours, and it does allow the memory to record with camera-like precision scenes which would go by in a blur from a car.
Though we were probably unaware of it at the time, it was a unique way of viewing life.
I'm glad you enjoyed it so much, Ray. The period I'm recalling is the middle years of the 1950s, though the old photos predate that by some decades at least. It's amazing what you can find on the internet and also amazing how relatively little the village has changed in all that time.
DeleteI agree completely with your last sentence and can't help feeling what a pity it is that today's children won't have such deeply-engraved memories.
Dear Perpetua, thank you for inviting all of us along on your journey to your town and then down the road to your school. This was a thoroughly satisfying posting as I so like to learn about the past that we carry into the present. As I read your postings, Perpetua, I always come away with a "ah....." feeling of satisfaction and contentment. Thank you for enriching my days. Peace.
ReplyDeleteAnd thank you for coming along with me, Dee. :-) Our little village was very plain and simple, but set in unspoiled countryside, which it was always a pleasure to walk through.
DeleteYou're so right about the way we carry our past into our present and we have to count ourselves lucky when the past we bring with us is full of pleasant memories like this.
Like the others, I also started thinking of the path I took from school to home and it does have pleasurable childhood memories indeed. Your countryside old world views were so different than ours over here. Isn't it interesting how geography effects psychology?
ReplyDeleteWe're obviously all at it now, Rubye. :-) Travelling back into the past can be a mixed blessing, but childhood walks were usually good experiences, even if the weather wasn't.
DeleteI can well imagine how very different our hillside Lancashire village, with its small stone houses, must appear to someone who grew up in Oklahoma. My childhood home was the second cottage from the right in the top picture and we could see for many miles from its back windows.
When I think of my childhood it is often characterised by long walks. I want to go back and walk again from my old house to my school which was three miles away
ReplyDeleteI wonder hos much it will have changed, Mark? I was so surprised to see how little my school walk had changed, though the bus to the secondary school now passes under the M65 before it reaches the town! We did plenty of long walks as recreation, especially up to the moors or down to the woods.
DeleteIsn't it fascinating how vivid those old memories are? I loved going along with you on your walk to school! My walk to elementary school was fairly short -- out our back yard and along a horse trail strewn with seeds from eucalyptus tress lining it. I remember the feel of the soft dirt and the smell of the eucalyptus as I made my three minute walk down the path and through the back gate of the school. Even though my memories of that are vivid and pleasant, I like yours so much better! It is so nice to go back and walk around in old memories. It's often better than re-visiting places in the present. I'll be going to my 45th college reunion (at Northwestern University near Chicago) this week. Though I sometimes have a flash while walking through campus of how I felt and what I saw during my time there as a student in the 60's, too often I feel like a ghost from the Sixties haunting a place that has changed and grown on to become quite a different place altogether.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised by just how clearly and vividly I could remember the walk, Kathy, well before I went back over it on Google Earth to look at the changes. I think I did it so often that the memory is very deeply embedded, unlike more recent ones which just clog up the surface of my mind. The smell of eucalyptus seems a most exotic detail of your school walk to me. :-)
DeleteIt's now 47 years since I started college and I know that if I were to visit the place now, it would seem very different from my memories in so many ways, not least because it is now mixed, rather than being a women's college as in my day, and has a number of new buildings. Best to enjoy the memories, I think....
Thank you for the nostalgic look back, which has triggered nostalgic looks back for many of us! I remember my first school years in our Canadian small country school, about eighteen pupils grade one to eight, ages seven to fourteen, I guess. It was a quarter mile walk along our dusty driveway for us, close enough that we could go home for a quick lunch at noon hour, although I also remember our mother sending along lunches some days. I have fond memories of our teacher, who taught all these different grades by himself and maintained what seems to me was a warm atmosphere most of the time. My siblings and I, and our nearest neighbours' children, walked and dawdled our way to and from school every day, rain or shine, or blizzard. One summer day, walking with my sister and our neighbour girl, I found a stone arrowhead in the dust of the roadside! The other two girls laughed at me and said it was just a stone, and one of them flung it into the ditch. I was shocked and searched for quite a while before I actually found it in the grass, and brought it home where I was vindicated upon parental confirmation that it was indeed an Indian arrowhead. Oh, and so many more memories of that long ago and so different world! Thanks again.
ReplyDeleteI think a lot of people of our generation must have these memories, poetreehugger, but most of the time they lie buried under the minutiae of everyday life until something wakes them up. I'm really enjoying the school walk details you and others have shared in your comments, which highlight how similar and yet in many ways how different our experiences have been.
DeleteI always thought my village and primary school were small, but your tiny school with its wide range of ages and just one teacher makes me realise just how sparsely populated your part of Canada must have been. As for finding an Indian arrowhead on the road to school, that is truly an unforgettable thing to have done. Thanks so much for giving this vivid description of your childhood.
Thank you it brought back many memories - it is amazing how those old memories stay with us while more recent ones disappear.
ReplyDeleteYou're very welcome, Susan. Like you I'm finding more and more that recent memories just don't last, while the old ones are always there just waiting to be brought to the surface. Oh, the joys of getting older....:-)
DeleteTodays children miss so much by being taken to school everyday in the car. Your memories read like a good book, I didn't want to put down.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Molly. What a lovely thing to say to a bookworm. :-) Sadly I think today's traffic levels, even in the small village I grew up in, would make my childhood walk to school too dangerous for children on their own. We didn't even have any pavements - just walked next to the wall at the edge of the road. Imagine that today....
DeleteWhat a delightful walk down memory lane. It certainly brought back similar memories (though not quite as chilly) of my early days. I particularly remember those candy cigarettes complete with a red tip. How we used to show off our 'smoking' prowess to all and sundry. What an absolute hoot :)!
ReplyDeleteNo, I don't think you do chilly, do you, Astrid? :D But I'm sure we can all share equivalent memories, if not temperatures.
DeleteViewed from today's standpoint, those sweet cigarettes seem an appalling idea, but smoking was still taken so for granted in the 1950s that no-one thought anything of it. How silly we must have looked.:-)
How delightful! You have written a charming evocation of childhood, which I'm sure will be valued by your own family in years to come. Already it sounds almost as vanished a world as that in 'Lark Rise to Candleford'. Walking to school! Sweetie cigarettes! We had all of that in my own childhood, which makes me realise that my own children must think I am absolutely ancient. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks, DB, and how lovely to see you here again.:-) Capturing these thoughts and memories was one of my main reasons for starting to blog, so I hope our two and their children will enjoy looking back at the very different world in which their mother and grandmother grew up. I'm perfectly sure young children always think of their parents as ancient. :-) One of the nice things about growing up is that the generation gap between parents and children starts to narrow, though of course it never disappears, nor should it.
DeleteI used to love gobstoppers, the ever changing colours. You had to take it out of your mouth every now and then to look again leaving a sticky residue on your hands and eventually your clothes.
ReplyDeleteMy walk to school was along roads which would now be considered to dangerous for young people to walk alone. I had to walk past some trees which in the winter were dark and forbidding. I always felt that anything could come out of those dark trees and attach, particularly on dark winter nights.
Oh, I forgot gobstoppers, Kerry. I liked them too, though my mother wasn't keen as she worried we might choke on them. But she still let us buy them and you've reminded me just what a sticky experience it was to eat them. :-)
DeleteI can well imagine that walking alone past a group of dark trees was sometimes a scary thing to do. For many people today it's almost unimaginable that children were allowed to do this, but we took it for granted back then. I never had to walk to school alone, but always had at least one younger sister with me and sometimes friends who lived nearby.
I did things in reverse. My bro and I took a school bus to junior school but we lived a 5 min walk from senior school.
ReplyDeleteThe little shop in your photo looks exactly like the little shop with houses on the right where my mother used to live West Cross near Mumbles. There was even a pub on the other side. All are still there.
The timing may have varied, Sarah, but we shared the same experience of getting to school on our own two feet, and that's something many children lack nowadays.
DeleteI love the fact that my home village in Lancashire looks so similar to your mother's in South Wales. In fact when you think of it, the clustering of shop and pub in the centre of a village is a logical pattern likely to have been replicated all over the country. The shop in the picture did in fact have a window on either side of the door and still does, though sadly it is now just a house.
That is very nostalgic for me also Perpetua but I also remember walking along the bottom lane on the alternative route from school. Certainly I was walking that way on the day aged about six when I arrived home slightly behind our neighbour's children who announced with some triumph that 'I have seen your baby sister before you have!' Our mother had arrived home from hospital with our youngest sister.I am not sure when & why one route was preferred to the other. Perhaps when traffic increased a little on the main road later in the 60's.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that, PolkaDot. Interestingly when I was small we were specifically forbidden to use the bottom lane route for some reason (if I ever knew what it was, I've long since forgotten, though it could be because it was very quiet with no houses along most of its length and is also very narrow) I vividly remember once being sent to bed without my tea for disobeying that prohibition. :-) You're probably right that it was the increase in traffic on the main road which made it less desirable for children to go that way. Google Earth tells me the distance is about the same.
DeleteMy memories of traveling to school are dominated by two things..
ReplyDeleteOne, is time spent with my Daddy. During middle school, he drove me to school in the old truck. It had an 8track player and we listened to the Blues Brothers sound track almost every morning. I cherish those memories.
Two, catching a ride with the neighbors to high school every morning. The neighbor's daughter would, ten years later, make the mistake of marrying me. Ha. She was my greatest tormentor back then...still is.
Not nearly so picturesque as yours though. That was a lovely walk and thank you for sharing.
Picturesque is all well and good, EF, but good memories of time spent with special people beat it hands down. Nothing could be better than those memories of the school trip with your father and the Blues Brothers.
DeleteAs for travelling to school with the girl who would one day be your wife, how romantic is that? She certainly must have known just what she as taking on by marrying you. :-)
Glad you enjoyed walking through my memories.
I've enjoyed sharing this journey with you Perpetua, just lovely. Thanks....Jx
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad, Janice. Wandering through other people's memories is such fun, as I've found in some of your lovely nostalgic posts.
DeleteP xx
Hello Perpetua:
ReplyDeleteOh how well we can identify with that time between sleeping and waking when in the warmth of the bed one's mind can wander free.
And, how tenderly you describe those childhood experiences. Surely, sweet cigarettes are no longer produced in these politically correct days, but how well we too remember chewing on them and painting the lips red with the cigarette end!!!
Good morning, Jane and Lance. Isn't it fun to set the mind free and see where it takes us? Being able to do this without the pressure of a deadline is one of the many joys of retirement.
DeleteAmazingly (Google being my friend) I've just discovered that you can still buy what are now known as soft candy sticks - sweet cigarettes without the red tip and sold loose rather than in packets. The ingenuity of manufacturers in the face of changing attitudes. :-)
I was with you every step of the way, through your village, the stile, your Sunday school building, and all your memories Perpetua. What a lovely time to spend between the Land of Nod and awake on a memory filled morn. I love that space of time between being awake and asleep.
ReplyDeleteAll those sweets, by different names here but sweets none-the-less, that tempted us through our childhood, including the candy cigarettes.
I still remember each corner, each store, crossing over the expressway, even the one house we stopped at in good weather to view their ducks along my way to school. You've evoked a good many memories, dear soul. Thank you.
It's one of my favourite times of the day too, Penny, though I don't often use it to such good effect. This time though the walk just unfolded in my memory almost without any volition on my part.
DeleteI'd love to know the names you had for sweets in the US. I expect many of them were very similar to ours and just as bad for the teeth. I'm not sure how I still have most of my own teeth after sucking so many of them.
I'm glad to have evoked such good memories of your own walk to school and I'm smiling here at the thought of you and your sister stopping to watch the neighbour's ducks en route. :-)
That was a wonderful dream walk, Perpetua! On those rare occasions when I can roll over and go back to sleep I find I have more vivid dreams, or at least remember them well! It sounds like you really too pleasure in making that walk and recalling some happy, simple pleasures. I did chuckle at the recollection of candy cigarettes! We had those things, too! This was so lovely to read. I also love recalling the simple pleasures of childhood freedom! I'd try to find a way to have those nice dreams more often, if you can! :-)
ReplyDeleteGlad you enjoyed making my walk, Debra and of course you would have had sweet cigarettes - we all did. Like dressing up in our mother's old clothes and pretending to be grown-up.:-)
DeleteThis was more of a daydream than a sleep dream. In my sleep I'd have flown to school, rather than doing something so mundane as walking, especially in the rain. :-) I love lying there on the wakeful edge of sleep and letting my mind wander and must do it more often.
Fantastic post P. I can now smell the privet hedge I walked past on the way to school and those sweet sickly candy cigarettes.
ReplyDeleteThanks, BtoB. Those early memories are all there, but sometimes it takes a bit of a prod for them to surface. It's amusing how we all seem to remember the sweet cigarettes so well. :-)
DeleteI'm having a bit of a catch up and find myself compelled to comment on this post. Your memory of the walk to and from school is wonderfully detailed. I wondered if there were people you'd see each time and if 'hello' was exchanged as you passed. Were there spots that were a bit scary when you were young?
ReplyDeleteFunny, but 3/4 of a mile would seem much too long a walk for a healthy child nowadays.
Thank you, Pondside. To be honest I surprised myself at how clearly I remembered everything. We must have met people sometimes, but as we were always walking as a group (family and friends) we were probably too busy talking among ourselves to remember contact with others. I certainly don't remember anything scary about the walk, other than the cows in the field we crossed, as they could get a bit frisky at times. :-)
DeleteLike you Perpetua, I too used to walk from home to both of my Primary Schools. We moved house when I was ten years old so I attended two different ones. The first one involved a journey of at least a mile & which could have various permutations. I can visualise certain aspects of it but I have re-visited the area in more recent times and whilst some things were still familiar, others had changed considerably as a result of new housing development.
ReplyDeleteLike several other of your commenters, I strongly believe that children are missing out on both exercise and gaining the self-confidence that goes with taking oneself to school & returning home without parental assistance. Very pleasingly, most children here in Prague, do still take themselves to & from school. See my http://rickyyates.com/the-sensible-czech-attitude-to-children-and-their-safety/
Having just read your excellent post, Ricky, I concur with everything you say. Growing up in the 1950s my sisters and I were used to playing outside all day when not at school, and though there were some ground rules, we were given what today would seem unbelievable freedom, including the daily walk to and from school. Sadly I don't see things changing for the better in the UK, especially in the light of the very occasional, but nowadays inevitably highly publicised, cases of a child being harmed when out on their own.
DeleteYou've brought back memories of my very young school days in North eastern Vermont and going to school in a small town. In all I attended two different schools and I walked to both of them and home for lunch as well! About 8 years ago I took my husband to the town -- it was winter and snow-covered. The town has seen some changes since the 1950's but not the places that were part of my daily routine -- and I was surprised that I remembered various short-cuts as well as the usual route to school. We moved from Vermont in 1955 and from then on had to catch the school bus -- it was such a different dynamic than seeing the world by foot.
ReplyDeleteAnd now that mid-night has come and gone I think I'll head for dreamland -- I'm up at 5.30 ;-)
These memories seem to be still there for all of us, Broad, once something wakes them up. I enjoyed those walks most of the time, but was glad not to have to go home for lunch. How good that on your return visit you found 'your' parts of town unchanged. Thankfully that would be true for me too in our little village. I think it must be very sad to go back to a place that once meant a great deal, only to find that major changes have transformed it beyond recognition.
Delete