These memories were first published in the Walkern Journal in November 2005. Zara was living in France.
When you live abroad as I do, you tend to idealise the country you have left behind and selectively remember only the good bits about it. I have particularly fond memories of my childhood, most of which was spent in Walkern where I lived from the age of six until I left home to go to university. Looking back, Walkern seemed a quintessentially English village at that time.
School was obviously the main influence and I loved it. Mr. Baker, the headmaster of Walkern JMI school, was one of my favourite teachers and I still remember how enthralled we all were listening to him reading “The Hobbit” to us with his Welsh lilt. He took us to Cuffley Camp where I recall first flirtations between the boys’ and girls’ tents, nocturnal walks designed to give us the creeps, midnight feasts,and campfire singsongs. I remember little about the three Rs, more about going on nature walks around the village, taking brassrubbings at the church and playing rounders on what seemed at the time like a massive playing field. Maypole dancing was a highlight, although the disappointment of not being chosen to be May Queen is an abiding memory!
Other characters who spring to mind are Mrs. Boorman who used to snap open her enormous handbag to take out her own glass tumbler to drink from in the canteen and Mr. Beadle, the ever cheerful lollipop man. An inspiration to me at an early age was the delightful Mrs. Carlisle who taught us some French. I think it was she who got me hooked on learning foreign languages.
When I recall those days, I remember fishing for tiddlers in the river Beane with my sister. .. sledging down the hill to the War MemoriaL .. buying quarters of aniseed twists at the sweet shop which were supposed to last for a week. .. carol singing around the village with the tractor and trailer and being invited in to all the “posh” houses for mince pies and a tipple …. playing with the other children behind the club house while our fathers played cricket and our mothers did the teas … cycling to the arts and crafts museum in Weston and stopping off to climb a tree on the way .. .learning to do my duty as a brownie and guide in Benington, drinking cider at the Jolly Waggoners in Ardeley as a young farmer, and so it goes on.
Such carefree days. Such precious memories. Hopefully more will come flooding back to me as I grow older.