Return to Briggadoon

What  better activity for a wet and stormy Bank Holiday Monday than to travel back in time over 40 years.

I reluctantly agreed to the suggestion of my wife that we have a drive to and around the town where I used to live before a family house move in 1979.

It was not a massive expedition, far from it, as the place in question is only twenty five miles or so away from where I live currently. I have drifted back a few times over those four decades.

In those far off times, however, even such a short distance did to me, in my early to mid teens give the impression of the other side of the world. That was to be expected given the vast differences in the two locations , one being a small sleepy market town and the other a regional city of around half a million population.

I even went on what was called a Cultural Exchange back in the mid 1970's from town to city which involved a rickety coach ride, paddle steamer ferry boat crossing and dodgy mini bus transfer over that relatively short distance. The big metropolis was pretty frightening to a sensitive soul like myself and I was quite homesick over the 36 hours of the stay.

That same journey which involved multiple types of transport and took around 3 hours some 40 years ago is now a 20 minute drive. This is on dual carriageways and over the striking landmark of a suspension bridge, at one time the longest in the world, which saw the end of that characterful and adventurous ship crossing when it opened in 1981.

First call on the trip down memory lane was the former family house.

 It was brand new when my parents bought it in 1972 and at the very end of a cul de sac with open fields on two sides. In neo-Georgian style it was then very grand and befitting Father's position as a Bank Manager. During out time there the huge Elm Tree which dominated the back garden outlook perished from the Dutch disease and within a few years a new housing estate occupied one of the two pieces of open ground.

The house looked good in its own middle age, well looked after.

We drove down the street and around the corner past the bungalow where Gran lived. That always seemed to my teenage self a sprawling almost ranch style place but was now just a very small looking residence.

The same shrinking effect went for the local park which could accommodate a ranging game of no-rules free for all footie where  most of the kids in the town would participate and get bruised but always came back for more.

I almost drove past it as it was only really as wide as a tennis court. That would explain why we lost so many plastic footballs into a house garden on the opposite side of the road and whose owner would take great and obvious joy in spearing them immediately on trespass with his fork or other sharp implement that happened to be within reach.

On the roundabout with the town War Memorial in its centre what had been the sole petrol station was now a window showroom. I can clearly recall the pricing display on the forecourt stating 33 new pence a gallon and this being the target of disgruntled locals for what represented a big price hike at a time of yet another oil crisis in the Middle East.

The main road through the town had always been busy with a constant flow of heavy lorries and through traffic constituting a peril and hazard as we walked to school but following construction of a motorway link and new ring road in the late 70's some semblance of quiet had returned with only local users out and about.

There had always been a very pleasantly potent mix of smells being a merging of the fumes from a marmalade factory and a sugar beet processing plant. These were sweet and sickly but long since dissipated as their respective industrial sources had fallen to market forces and obsolescence.

I had not expected the place to take on the form of a time capsule over the four decades but was disappointed to find that my junior school, an open verandah type to serve  the 1920's expansion of the population had gone and was now a housing estate.

Similarly the wooden Scout Hut where I spent many an hour was no longer there although the plot on which it had stood remained undeveloped.

A smart paved square had been formed as part of a pleasant pedestrianisation scheme where again, the lorries had once thundered along.

Father's Bank Branch was now a bar or eatery.

The Parish Church where Mother and my two sisters had formed half of the choir numbers was still there and seemingly unchanged which is always an indication of constancy in a rapidly changing world.

I had been a keen angler following in the footsteps of my maternal Grandfather .The two rivers that ran through the town had back then the aura of mighty watercourses both in length and breadth. A group of us in our mid teens thought nothing of arriving and setting up at 5am during the school summer vacation and not moving away until dusk.

That magical tree lined river bank was still there but now very much in miniature.

I was keeping a look out for any familiar faces from my childhood years but it is difficult to physically age anyone over such a elapsed period of time. I was perhaps expecting the exact same teenage faces of my old mates but on adult shaped bodies.

I do believe that the move away in 1979 did give me an opportunity of a wholly different  set of  experiences but made all the more worthwhile by some wonderful childhood memories of freedom and a safe environment in that place.