To Days Long Gone, Part One

I find myself reflecting on my boyhood more and more. On the things that shaped me, guided me, inspired me. I need to get these thoughts down. A country boy from working class stock who lived in what was then council houses overlooking fields of wheat, distant trees, with a big sky always overhead. I remember two big trees in my garden, one of which was a purple beech and heavily leaf laden. I could climb one and scuttle under the other. I remember spending so much time outside on endless summer evenings beneath vivid orange and purple skies. I can still see the bats that terrified my mother flitting across the encroaching night, fast and soundless. And I can smell the tarmac and feel the heat from the roadworkers that would grit the road during the heat of the day. We would follow them through the village, enthralled by what to us were huge industrial machines. The days seemed warmer, longer, so full of adventure. I'd play a game called "Hiding from cars" with my neighbour Daryl. It wasn't too complicated, and consisted of watching cars coming from the distance and then leaping into a ditch when they rounded the corner so the driver wouldn't see us. And then there was Cindy, our old Yorkshire Terrier. An everpresent, lolloping around the garden, her hair too long but her heart so big. Funny what memories stir when you give your mind free reign. From village life we did a house swap with a couple from Winslow, so I became less of a Country boy whilst still living in a country town. Think I would have been 11 then. My two sisters were significantly older so I have no great memories of time with them. I was solitary quite a lot, which is possibly why I have grown up to become so creative in my thinking. I had to amuse myself for hours, days. There was less of a focus on parents being hands on back then so I was fed and watered and then mostly left to it. I'd spend hours building lego football stadiums, only I didn't have too much lego so I had to make a little go a long way. Whilst Dad was not hands on one of the things he would do was take me to what was then Aylesbury Odeon which was on Cambridge Street. My god I loved this, and it gave me a passion for the movies that has stayed with me. I remember those chocolate coated raisins you could buy from the confectionary stand. I always loved walking through the double doors into the immense dark space of the movie theatre. It was here my childhood imagination took off, inspired by Star Wars, by anything Spielberg conjured up, by those 70's and 80's James Bond movies. Roger Moore, you are a legend and always will be. At some point, and I don't remember when I discovered reading. Mostly movie tie-in's, which served as a platform for reading tons of science fiction. Hours I would lose in these imaginary worlds. I had friends but the memories of them dim in contrast with the stuff that really fired my mind. I even started writing, filling countless notebooks with adventure stories which were probably carbon copies of the stuff I was seeing on the big screen. Didn't matter; turns out the more you do something the better you get at it, so I read and I wrote from the moment I got home from school. Talking of school, I think it is fair to say that I was not designed for the education system. Wrong kind of bright, apparently. I think this is true of a lot of boys. My parents never pushed me or encouraged me or mentored me in any way so I developed largely based on my own impulses. Don't think too badly of them, will you? They were working class stock and products of a different time. Mum and Dad were providers. I never missed a meal and I was always well clothed. None of the clammy, clingy, obsessive parenting we see so much of today. I'm grateful. That said, I sometimes wonder if I would have achieved more had I been fortunate enough to find a mentor. Just a guiding hand, a quiet voice to nudge me on wiser paths. Please note that I could be badly misbehaved. Boredom and I do not make good bedfellows, which is to say that if you're no fun then I'll make my own, at which point you might want to stand clear because this can get messy. On reflection, I was probably allowed a little too much freedom. Nobody really put the brakes on me,or perhaps it was simply that they did not know how to? I think I'm going to stop for now. These waters run deep. These kinds of posts have no intended destination and I have no point to press home. Just ramblings really. Just me trying to trace the echo of a boyhood long since past. Yet one fondly remembered.