Just following my fifth birthday, we moved house, moved area and moved churches. Tradition in the Methodist church at that time in the 1960’s meant that the families house always came with the church. The house was known as a manse, a term I did not like to use or even enjoy hearing. It was just a normal house to me, my home and indeed this new house remained my home until I was 14 years old.
The new house was in a new area in Leicestershire in the East midlands around 60 miles away. Although it may as well have been in a different country for a small girl. I had just turned five years of age as it was so very hard to comprehend what 60 miles actually looked like. The village was old but we were in a newly built five bedroom detached house on a new small, by today’s standards, estate. The manse, or my home, had to have five bedrooms as a stipulation was that a Methodist minister could have a separate place in which to work, a study. The study also doubled up and served as a warm and welcoming place where my dad could meet individual people in private, discussing their needs and concerns, or hold a meeting of church people discussing the latest service plan, social event or general meeting just to focus on church issues.
The village itself was nice, it was welcoming with nice people in it. The usual but small array of shops was present, a newsagents, a betting shop, which now looking back does seem a little strange for a small village, a co-op which sold food and a small selection of home goods, a general store, a greengrocers and a butchers. I very often walked down into the village centre to do some shopping for my mum. Usually going to the butchers to buy meat, including quite often, tomato flavoured sausages. Almost vegan nowadays, but that’s another story.
I wonder however if my decision to become vegetarian over 30 years ago was in anyway due to being in that butchers. I remember that if I had to wait in a short queue before being served; you could see into the back of the small shop where one of the butchers would raise an enormous knife, the size of a small car, and swiftly cut into some poor dead animal or at least what was left of it.
This happened right there in front of me and other customers on the huge and bloodied wooden butchers block. It may also have had something to do with the smell, the smell of dead animals, blood and raw meat is highly unpleasant to me now although I guess at the time, both the smell and the sights I saw were just what happened quite normally in that or any other small village butchers shop.
I became good friends with the girl who lived on the opposite side of the road. We became inseparable during my time there and played together most days I also befriended a young couple who had two very young children, a baby boy and a little girl, just a toddler. In fact they were both born in my time in the village. I would spend most days with them immediately after school, playing with them and helping to look after them both, even though I was of course I was only a young child myself. It is so interesting now to look back and see where tiny but not insignificant seeds of me working with children may have first been sewn. I very much loved my time spent with the two children and I learned a great deal about caring for young children. I would play with them, bounce them on my knee and sing nursery rhymes, play and show them their toys which included a good range of primary coloured plastic Fisher Price items today probably described as retro.
I remember a pull along telephone, a jack in the box, a record player, a television, a dog with a springy tail, the list is long and rather nostalgic too. I also helped to feed both children and this is where I was first introduced to marmite on toast topped with scrambled egg. They were indeed happy times spent in the presence of these two children and their mum. I remember that the children’s mum taught me how to tell the time on an analogue clock of course which was something which I found very difficult. I remember her getting slightly impatient with me. There were as far as I can remember not many digital clocks around at the time. I did learn to tell the time eventually but it was so hard. How could a number one actually mean five, or a number four actually mean twenty?
I also spent a lot of time in the spinney, a small wood at the top and around one side of our cul-de-sac. It was great for the children in the street. It had all manner of places where we could dig and find treasure, mainly glass bottles, pieces of stoneware or china. We would climb and run, also build great dens out of branches, leaves, moss and bricks. In late summer, early autumn we would pick blackberries, there were so many and of course I loved to eat a few along the way. My mum would make jams, pies and cakes with our small harvests which went a little way to help her housekeeping stretch that bit further.
I also helped with my friend from across the road, to look after donkeys and horses. I loved those donkeys, less though the horses. I always felt they were a bit large and looming. We would ride the donkeys in the field and in the spinney. I do not remember riding any of the horses but I helped to groom them and mucked out stables. I did though ride a little, even did a bit of jumping on a couple of occasions when having lessons. I did not really enjoy it and could only go every now and again as the lessons were on a Sunday morning and of course, I with my family was always at church.
I consider myself when a child as a bit if a tomboy. Maybe due to me having two older brothers and no sisters or maybe as I just enjoyed playing in the dirt in the spinney. I was quite a tough child and did not often cry unless really hurt. I trapped my right hand thumb in a neighbours front door, yes I cried then as I needed four stitches. I was fine at the hospital but cried when they gave me a tetanus injection. I must have been around the age of 7. I also cried when I fell on one of those metal chains with huge great diamond links. The chains separated the front garden with the pavement. On one occasion I was jumping over the chain as I did regularly, but this time I landed on one and the spike sank into my knee I still have the scar.
I remember making perfume out of rose petals in the garage, singing songs popular at the time, ‘A long haired lover from Liverpool’ was one. I acted and remember vividly dancing the gorgeous dance that the character Truely Scrumptious performed in the film ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.’ Yes, I was scared of the child catcher, a fear that was somewhat softened by learning much later in life that he was a member of the royal ballet. So I did little sketches, played throwing balls up against the side wall of the house and also played darts of all things. I even played that very dangerous games of ‘Splitsies’ as we called it, although looking it up now it was called ‘Split the kipper’. This involved one child throwing a penknife into the ground, then the other child spreading out a foot to reach it. The game continued until one person fell over, terrible really and it’s a wonder but a relief that no-one ever got hurt.
I had a few pets as a young child, goldfish, a guinea pig called Goldie and some stick insects. I think the stick insects came from the school my mum was teaching at, not a pet I would ever have again. My dad loved dogs and I would have also loved to have had a dog but it never happened.
One summer holidays I remember my brother made up a series of exercises in an attempt for us all to keep fit during the summer. I think I lasted two days. A game I do remember playing a lot though was the game of ‘Elastic’. This involved three children or wooden posts if there was just two of you. The elastic was held between the open legs by two of the children or child and post while the other child did a series of jumps, great fun when jumping in out, in, on.
I think my main sauce of activity, next to running around and climbing in the spinney, was riding my bike. I loved my bike and would probably use if every day, cycling round the estate or further afield. I passed my cycling proficiency test at school and remember cycling round the playground thinking it was the best thing ever. I sometimes thought of it as a horse although I cannot remember naming it.
My cycling days have been re-imagined very recently when my husband and I purchased electric mountain bikes. What a great little invention they are. It allows one that extra power needed when cycling up a hill or on slightly rougher ground. There is even a walk mode allowing for help if needing to walk with your bike. I am very impressed with mine and we try to use them most Sundays weather permitting, going between 20-28 miles and always breaking the journey at a church for tea and cake.
My very first venture out on my bike was very eventful however. We went along the canal towpath which was fine, very picturesque. However less than a mile along and I end up in the canal! It was pretty awful, I went down to the bottom of the canal, although not deep and immediately pushed myself back up and scrambled out onto the bank, looking around quickly to see how many people had noticed. It was a beautifully hot day in the summer, so I got back on my bike and we ended up cycling 21 miles. I have not been cycling along the towpath since.
I do not consider myself to be un co-ordinated but I do consider myself to be clumsy, which fits with dyslexia. Of course there are many co-occurring difficulties which can go alongside dyslexia and dyspraxia is one of them. Dyspraxia affects co-ordination, weather fine motor or large motor co-ordination and is a developmental condition. This is something worthy of consideration when teaching handwriting to young children. It can take a good while for a young child to develop a dominant hand to write with, boys generally taking longer to secure a favoured hand than girls. This may be due to the fact that boys develop slightly slower than girls initially.
So anyway, I very much enjoyed my first summer holidays in Leicestershire. I settled in well to our new home and the village, for children are generally very adaptable. My bedroom though was a tiny box room. Looking back on it now, I guess the little box room would have been too small for a study if more people than my dad needed to be in there at the same time. It would though make a nice little home office. My two elder brothers got good sized rooms, my mum and dad of course and the fifth bedroom which was also a good size was my dad’s study.
So I made a nice new friend, enjoyed playing in the cul-de-sac and of course the spinney. If only it could have lasted, but as I turned five at the beginning of the summer holidays, it was now time; time for all that happiness and freedom to suddenly stop and time that I had to go to school! Of course I had no choice in the matter and went along with it all. You would think I would have been fine with this as I had already had some school experience being in the classroom with my mum. More of that later. Unfortunately however, those memories did not help or prepare me for what was to become as I ventured into the dizzy heights of primary school.
Childhood moving on
Carefree days of childhood
Skipping along with ease,
laughter, cuddles, warmth and love
Everything done to please.
But time moves on, children grow.
The need to make a move
leads one child to lose
such securities, as she had to
go to school.
The happiest days of your life?
By far not true for me,
for school was a place of terror and fear
never ending pain and hurt.
Id’ really rather just stay and play
outside, or go digging in the dirt.
