The Stray

Typing amid the tannoys.
Leeds station bound for London bound for Brussels. Starting to feel familiar, this.
It's been a bit of a bonkers 10 days in the UK, in truth.
Only natural, I suppose, to try and race about, to see as many people as possible, to catch up with family and friends...but it feels as if I've been moving too fast, a blur sweeping through towns and counties to meetings, lunches, a different bed every other day.

Some strange moments...
Going back to Chesterfield last week was uncomfortable, especially driving past our little house, now the abode of rent-paying strangers. I stopped outside. All was as it should be - and yet a tiny part of me couldn't compute that I was actually there at all. That I was ever there. Brain playing concertina with time again. Does that make sense?

 The town was as it always is - right down to the same traders shouting bargains from their market stalls - yet it was if something had shifted, and everything was the same...but different.

 It disturbed me, how little it felt like home......as if I were an outsider looking in. I sat there, at the wheel of the hire car, and I thought 'I don't know where home is any more'. Home was always where you were. And you were never here.

 A few days ago, visiting a friend in Halifax, we walked through the Stray at Lightcliffe; a pretty park - swathes of green grass, cherry trees lining the pathways, an ancient, tired little children's play area and a new playground being built near the site of some long-demolished, grubby old shelters.

 Let the time machine do its work here and you will surely find me at all the ages of my life.

 It's where I ran with the gang, swung on rusty swings right up to the bumps, went roly-poly down the grass slopes near the posh houses on Sutherland Road, ruined shoes climbing the low-hanging branches of the cherry trees with Sarah Ramsden.

It's where we played bicycle lamppost tig, hide and seek in the bushes, did cartwheels and walkovers, fell out, made up and all on a permanent diet of penny chews, sherbert dips, ice-pops and icecream screwballs.

 It was there where, on rickety roller skates fastened precariously with nut and bolt, we'd fly from the war memorial all the way down to those grotty urine-smelling shelters, screaming, veering and careering, only stopping by about-turning and crashing into a wall. Here, where we would wade through thigh-deep snow to the top of the hill and plummet to the bottom on rubbish wooden sledges, scraping knees and shins on the way.

 It was where I nervously, met my first 'boyfriend' after he asked me out at a Hipperholme Grammar School disco. Hardly a fairy tale first love...his friend fancied my friend and we'd had a clumsy, awkward snog to, of all things,  Joe Dolce's Shaddup-You-Face. Yes. Really.
So we met in the shelters. He gave me his scarf and then I decided, just like that, that I didn't fancy him after all. And I ran away. Literally. Silly girl. I never saw him again..and he never got his scarf back.

It was in this park where I got about as rebellious as I was ever going to get - splitting a packet of 10 Regal King Size with a friend, smoking five each, then scoffing a packet of Polos to try hide our faggy breath from our parents. We would sit, pretending to inhale, bubble-permed teenagers in stretch jeans and pixi boots, in the shadow of the war memorial, plucking up the courage to go to the phone box to ring whichever boy was flavour of the month.

Then, oh so many summers later, it became our place Thomas.
First, gentle walks with a pram - a new mum, scared to death, worrying, worrying; worrying if you slept, worrying if you didn't, just worrying.
But I found a peace and a freedom there, in the park.

You'd sit in the pushchair and shriek with a laughter punctuated by dirty giggles as funny mummy flew higher and higher on the swings pulling daft faces and singing nursery rhymes.
Then you had a go. Slow pushes on the baby swings, moving on to the big swings once you'd learned how to hold on.

As you got older I could heave you up the steps of the slide, sit you down and let you slide to the bottom by yourself. Remember when it was wet and you got stuck halfway down and got a soggy bottom? And other children and their parents watched as I clambered up the slide to free you, me laughing and crying, embarrassed but drinking in your smiley face as I scrambled towards you.

In summer, you'd wear your shorts, and I'd see from the corner of my eye how others would stare at your plastic leg splints.....noticing your difference.

It meant we almost always had the swings to ourselves. People would circumnavigate us, pretending to look the other way, waiting for us to leave, ignoring their toddlers straining and pulling. Mostly it didn't bother me, but sometimes it felt lonely.

We made them uncomfortable. I know it was because they didn't know what to say. I'll never forget the mortified woman who shushed and slapped her son when he asked why you had 'plastic legs', even as I tried to tell her it was ok and I was happy to answer his question. Stupid stupid woman, dragging him away, scaring him half to death.

None of it bothered you though, which was all I cared about.

 I would show you trees - how you loved the texture of the rough bark! I would pick flowers and tell you their colours and sometimes, on sunny, breezy days, when the grass was dry, I would lie down and try and pull you down with me on to our backs to look at the scudding cotton-wool clouds. You always sat bolt upright again though, as if you were worried about missing something.

 I would stand you under a cherry tree and shake it and shake it and shake it until the blossom cascaded and you looked and looked amazed as petals and sometimes whole flowers tumbled and showered around you, landing on your head, your shoulder...

 And sometimes we'd just take a picnic rug and a drink and a yogurt and a book.

 All this I remembered as we walked through the park towards the swings. And suddenly I am 10 years old again, swinging and swinging and swinging, higher and higher. And the tears leaking out of the corners of my eyes are caused by the rushing wind, nothing more.

 Every step I take I know you'd taken it before. I put my palms against the trunk of our horse chestnut tree and wonder if it still holds your imprint. The cherry trees are again full of blossom and I pull down a small branch and shake it. The wind catches the petals and lifts them into the air.

 I stand for a moment, feeling my own roots plunging deeply into the soil of this park where I played the games of a carefree child..and where you did too.

And I think, here's home...


xxxx

The Stray, Lightcliffe