1 1942 The Missing Years

I was born in 1942 in a snow storm. Nurse Hough delivered me. She lived somewhere on the edge of the estate, and would be sent for frequently as the years progressed. Bustling, capacious, competent, and totally relied upon and trusted was my infant perception of her. A perception obviously imbibed with my mothers milk. From then on throughout life midwives would hold a special place in my heart. Was this gratitude for bringing me safely into the world, for bringing others in equally safely, or was it something much more metaphysical? The house was a semi detached built of red brick. The number was 59. Many the roads were named after monasteries , or buildings or personages associated with monasteries, priors, fryers, abbeys etc. Only very much later did I discover that the road in which I first saw the light of day had the same name as Lord Byrons stately home. Something I discovered for myself. Byrons star would not shine in that benighted street. But should it be mentioned that he was mad bad and dangerous to know this would have been believed immediately without any knowledge of him at all. My birthplace is now much smaller than it once was of course. It was surrounded by a paling fence and access was by means of a narrow wooden gate. No provision for a motor vehicle was ever thought necessary. The only car we saw belonged to the son of a clerk at the town hall who lived a few houses down the road. He and his son were both freemasons. It is still a mystery to me as to how I came by this information. Once when the son was visiting he drove slowly past our gate, his car seemed to fill the narrow avenue. It was an avenue I was born into. Attractive mature trees lined both sides of the road whose leaves were rough but quite sweet to the taste. I am pretty sure they were not limes, therefore I cannot claim to have been born unter den linden, although the son of the fireman who lived a few houses further down than the freemason was called by the unusual name of Linden. I think I ate quite a few of those leaves over the years. As the huge shiny vehicle crawled past, I an infant, as usual sitting on the kerb called out mad head. A term I must have heard others use in similar circumstances. Young as I was the irony of the term struck me quite forcibly. A mad head was one who travelled at a dangerous speed. Freemason junior was travelling quite slowly. I had no expectation that I would be heard. But I was, and Victor, I think that was his name, stopped his car, got out and chastised me harshly reducing me to tears. Satisfied with another victory over one of the denizens of the council estate, he drove on. I was born and lived for a number of years very close to the ground. I became very familiar with the earth; soil, gravel, grass, tiny flowers, tarmac, pavements, kerbs, drains and grids, populated my world. From the gate the narrow crumbling tarmac path led between two plots of the garden. To the right, the front garden out on to which the bay of the front room looked, to the left a much large plot mainly lawn but with well stocked flower beds. Possibly because of the position of the house on a slight bend, the garden was significantly larger than most of the others in the road. This second plot ran alongside the road for a considerable way until it reached the neighbouring house. The path ran beside the house and terminated at a privacy board, a large wooden structure placed strategically to afford some protection from prying neighbours. At the end of the path one turned right and there a small flight of stone steps climbed to the back door.

2 This path was the artery of my world, I lived on it and along it, it fed me with knowledge. For hours I would sit here, secured in a small wheeled chair. This contraption would be placed on different days at different points along this esplanade, and I would observe all that I was able to within an arc of 200 degrees from my confinement. Often I would be situated so that my view ran directly into the long garden. This began at a level a little lower than the path, which as I say was somewhat crumbly, and therefore there was always the fear that my tiny wheeled home might at times tumble over the edge. If it had done so, I would have been pitched into the bushes and shrubs which grew between the garden path and the large lawn. What they were I can only guess. But were probably spirea and syringa, their stems were brittle and they lost their leaves in the winter. There may also have been flowering currant for the strong cats piss aroma of their leaves has always evoked the earliest of memories for me. Clumps of Michaelmas Daisies I am sure were also my constant companions. In late September, although then I had no formal sense of time or dates , they would sway and nod to me in the breeze. Their plethora of tiny blue flowers each with a friendly yellow eye seemed to smile complicitly, as they allowed multitudes of minute insects to feed hungrily upon their pollen. Ever since I have always checked on the 29th of September for the flowering of these friends and I have never been disappointed. The long side garden was separated from the equally large rear garden by an herbaceous border. A separation made even more formal by a trellis constructed of rough wooden poles, upon which scrambled a variety of climbing roses, some of which I like to think, may have been yellow when they flowered. Behind the trellis was a large greenhouse, a place of refuge for my father during the births of his many children. It was in this greenhouse that I first encountered death. It was a common practice in those days for rag and bone men as they were called, to visit our streets and in exchange for old worn out garments, (woollens I seem to remember they preferred above all others) they would give out day old chicks. Once I was fortunate to receive one of these tiny yellow balls of fluff. A home was made for it in the green house constructed of a wooden box with a vertical sliding glass panel for a door. A place I recall in which it seemed most happy. For most of that first day I would watch it, enthralled as it searched and scratched for the tiny seeds I scattered to it. The watching of fowls bye the way, searching and finding food has throughout my life given me great peace and satisfaction. The next day I was eager to continue my husbandry. I can only think that my inexperience with the manipulation of the sliding door led to the catastrophe, although the memory of it is somewhat blurred. Be that as it may, the decapitation of this tiny creature was both clean and instant. On one side of the glass inside the box lay its body, on the other side near to me lay its head. I may have been consoled by my father who informed me that the life expectancy of day old chicks kept in this manner was very short indeed maybe even only a day, in fact none of them ever lived to maturity.