Up in the hunter's pulpit in Adamów Rososki. Nice place on a summer Sunday afternoon; a wooden cabin on stilts overlooking fields and forest. Settle in, settle down, crack open the tinnie: Guinness Draught (with free kitten toy inside each tin). Out of the fridge and into a small cool-bag, the beer is suitably chilled.
The field in front of me is green and yellow; goldenrod and tansy are coming into flower. As I sip the Guinness, I am cast back my first Guinnesses as a teenager. The Wye Valley, on the English side of the river. Yes, and the first Guinness I drank in Ireland in 1981. I remember the taste, the experience. Not Watney's Red Barrel or Skol lager but a far superior beverage. As the beer begins to have its effect, I allow myself to drift off into a reverie; I find myself savouring earlier memories – indeed, some of my earliest memories – from the journey from West London to South Wales when I was three...
A recurring memory (or set of memories) from childhood relates to when we lived, briefly, near Newport, South Wales. Much I recall of that happy time, but this specific set of memories relates to the journey there, by car, most probably in the spring of 1960.
My father, a civil engineer, was posted to Newport, Monmouthshire, to supervise the construction of the foundations under what would become the Llanwern steelworks. This would have been late 1959, when I was two. From memory, my father went out first (photos of Christmas 1959 were from our West London home), my mother and me joined him later. I seem to recall making the journey several times.
Many memories flooded back to me today as I sat there high up in the hunter's pulpit, sipping stout.
Our route took us west along the A40 (this was before the M4 and M40 were built). One memory was of leaving London, the A40 in Hillingdon as it crosses Long Lane. To the right there was a yard where construction equipment for hire was stored. Cranes, what have you. My father explained that his company hired pile-drivers and vertical drilling machines from here. The old road would wind through small towns and villages, the occasional wood, up and down hills – and traffic jams would be frequent. I remember that we were part of an enormous jam once – a bank holiday? As we stood there. stationary minute after minute in the heat, a car drove by the other way (traffic flowing freely). I remember it well; it was an estate car with wooden frame in the rear, not a Morris Minor but something older and bigger. Maybe a custom conversion, maybe even pre-war. Inside were several older children. They were laughing at us. My father, evidently cross at being stuck in the jam, said "huliganie" (hooligans). I had just learned the word 'cyganie' (gypsies, Romany), and associated the car-load of mocking children with gypsy-folk.
As a child, I could distinguish cars, lorries and buses very well. The lorries I liked best were the ERFs and Fodens and the big Commers with their distinctive diesel growl, especially as the driver dropped a gear to labour up a steep hill. And the roadside food... Much as my mother distrusted the snack-bars, trailers parked up in lay-bys, there was often no alternative. I remember one such place; we stopped there more than once. The woman serving the hot dogs (with British bangers rather than frankfurters) would ask each customer in turn "With onions or without onions?" in a sing-song voice that my mother imitated as we drove on. Again, I remember the greasy smell of the onions and the fatty sausages with mustard served on a white bread roll.
And I remember the petrol stations along the way. National Benzole and Cleveland, brands long gone, sold from pumps standing outside tin shacks with corrugated roofs, My mother would tell me that well before I could read, I was able to identify all the petrol stations by their logos – Shell-Mex, BP, Esho (as I'd pronounce Esso), National (Benzole), Cleveland and BP.
In Herefordshire and Gloucestershire – orchards. It is the sight of the orchards around Chynów that snaps me back to those childhood memories. They also remind me that as a small child, even then, the sight of those orchards set off anomalous memories; a strong sense of familiarity, from where I knew not; I'd been here before but not here. Another time, another place.
This time last year:
Procrastination, time and mindfulness
This time time three years ago:
Summer as it should be
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