from the pond, at no more than stepping distance from the end of our terrace a large billowy oak marked the spot where a cross-country footpath straddled the road. I say footpath but that would be to underestimate both its lineage and its mystery. Locals called it the alley, the back-path, and most deliciously to me, the bridle path. What connotations. What glorious visions of highwaymen and musketeers, of moonlit, midnight dashes, of steamy-nostrilled, foam-flanked, owl hooting escapades. Absolutely nothing before or since has made as much of an impression on my mind as that sinuous thoroughfare through the wilderness. On that first day I dared not venture very far. My erstwhile lion-hearted self was back with the hanged man. The noose at the top of the stairs in faroff London swung here as well, in the guise of a child’s swing dangling from a bough of the billowy oak.
Back at the house things were being put in order. The removal had been achieved, albeit mostly in the form of yet to be unpacked wooden-crates and cardboard-boxes. You may at this point be wondering, why thus far, I’ve said so little about my father and mother. To say nothing of my brother who’s five years older than myself. The truth is that I don’t think any of us given the option would have chosen each other as soul mates. We were as different as dreams and daylight. All three of them had what I considered to be strong, logical personalities. Being the youngest member of the tribe I felt that my place in the pecking order left a lot to be desired. No doubt they would have a very different view of the situation. But as a unique human being in my own right, what else can I do but assess it from the admitted bias of my prepubescent vantage? My parents were good - if somewhat strict - dutiful, God-fearing on the one hand, and fearing nothing on the other, sort of folk. My brother, by virtue of the five- year’s difference in our ages, seemed more an adjunct of parental control than someone to share my new-found excitements. All in all they appeared to my underdeveloped and highly suspicious - not to say superstitious - mind, like rational demons haunting the periphery of an otherwise totally irrational, spontaneous and idyllic existence. No doubt all three of them will be mentioned again periodically: my mother as the major influence in the development of my neurotic personality, my father as the personification of fear itself, and my brother as the role-model for fishing and affairs of the heart. But for now I must slip back into solipsistic mode and interpret the universe from the only place I can know for certain. My own demented mind!
Having been allotted a bedroom I was anxious to discover the view from the window. The garden - still more reminiscent of a builder’s-yard than anything approaching the council-house equivalent of suburbia - stopped at the edge of a small field. On the other side of the field were two more rows of terraced houses. In front of one of those was a group of hawthorn bushes. In front of the other stood a tall solitary oak, home to the massed accumulated tangle of a magpie’s nest. To the left - no more than fifty foot-itching yards away, was the soon to be explored, all-enticing bridle path. By the side of the path was one of the plotlander’s shacks. A ramshackle building, cobbled together with wood and tin. In its garden there were apple, plum and pear trees. Old rickety sheds, stacks of kindling and a well, stood witness to the rigours of self-sufficiency. In that shack there lived a hymn singing, hard working, old time evangelist known locally by the acronym ELIM - Lil. Being accustomed to rats - due to my Canning-Town upbringing - I was neither surprised nor mortified to see them there in abundance. The place was alive with them. Not just at ground level either. More than once I saw them in broad daylight sauntering along the veranda roof, as bold as you like. How they got up and down from there I never found out, all I knew was that rats in the plotlands were as common as sparrows. Many a time on looking into a well you’d see the bobbing, bloated carcass of a drowned one. “Don’t forget to boil the water before drinking it,” was one of the more sensible local maxims. Personally, I’ve never been afraid of rats. I’m not saying that I’d like to fill my trousers up with their wriggling, whiskered weight. It’s just for all the undoubted problems they cause, I still have a sort of sneaking regard for them. Their survivability is stupendous. Mankind and rats go together. Wherever humans are, rodents are there to take advantage of anything we care to give them, wittingly or otherwise. I find it strange - diseases aside - that tame, white rats of the children’s book variety can be thought of as cute; while their duskier cousins elicit screams of terror, traps, poison and armed-to-the-teeth rustic vigilante groups. Still, it’s easy for me to say, I’ve never kept chickens!
Dawn broke to a new day and a new life. Breakfast was a meal to be endured. I wasn’t interested in cornflakes, toast and jam, tea or anything else for that matter. All I wanted was to be free of familial restraints and to reconnoitre the soon to be legendary bridle path. I made my first major sortie down the alley from the side of the road opposite to our house. On entering the cavernous shade, with hawthorn and dog-rose bushes on one side and fully-grown privet hedges on the other, I was immediately assailed by the smell of the place. Smells and the bridle path went together. Not bad smells either. Whatever the season of the year the air was redolent with some commensurate perfume: sometimes musky, sometimes dank, sweet and fermenting in late summer or early autumn, tangy in mist and fog, or acrid with bonfire smoke. And how to explain the subtle aroma of frost or the rising volatile essence from a mulch of decaying leaves is beyond the skills of this particular writer. On that day however it was musky - hot and musky. Crickets and grasshoppers augmented the heat with their rasping insect equivalent of love-songs. Monotonous through five well rounded syllables the ringdoves tuned-in their recorders. Flies with bottle green and metallic-blue bodies droned through the slanting shafts of sunlight and a common-lizard skittered across the path. What the path itself was made of I’m not certain. It was as hard as concrete but darker in colour and more gravelly in texture. It had been laid in a continuous length but by now - due to wear and tear and the vagaries of climate - it was beginning to crack and break up. There was hardly a level plane of any consequence. Dislodging slabs were arranged at various angles of opposition to each other. To run along this path - or worse still, to cycle at full speed - was to take one’s life in one’s hands, especially as a deep ditch ran along its entire course. It was a bone-breaker in summer and as unfathomable as Davy Jones’ locker after the rains of autumn. As I ventured a little further into the alley I came across a wooden-gate set well into the privet, privet that had grown over as well as around it. Through this sombre archway I could see a small, squat, single-storied house. It was simply a tiny rectangle, pebble-dashed on the outside and roofed in slate. At its front three steps led up to a veranda. On that veranda there were a set of cane chairs, a small table, and a four-feet high wooden balustrade topped by thin horizontal planking. On this were rested flowerpots of various shapes, sizes and colours: earthenware and china, glazed or unglazed, glass and porcelain, patterned or otherwise. From these flourished a display of geraniums that would have lifted the heart of the organizer of the Chelsea Flower Show itself. The subtle and contrasting shades of pink and red were highlighted by the enlightened placement of white-blooming varieties. Was I dreaming? Was this where I had come to Live? I couldn’t believe my luck. It was better than a dream. As long as I could stay awake it would be there. None of that, “if only I could remember it,” or “if I could just pick it up where I left off.” This was for real, and it was mine, all mine! There too was where I encountered my first real plotland orchard. It was a veritable Eden of trees, grass, daisies and dandelions. There would I bite the fruit, yet retain my innocence a little longer. Magic names and scents and flavours hung from that Merlin’s Cave of an orchard. Great pendulous William’s pears, gleaming like yellow lanterns, Victoria plums - as big as a child’s fist - tempting the tongue with their sweet-sharp juices, and apples of every kind bearing names that are memories only: James Grieves, Codlings, Pippins, Bramleys, Worcesters and Blenheims. There too the greengage and the half-forgotten bullace, rounded their succulent flesh, as the cherry-ripe dangle of mimic earrings were sucked to the core of their nectared bones, and then spat from the sweetened lips of my sated childhood.
Summers don’t last forever. Even the seemingly longest, hottest and most idyllic of them must - it appears - come to their inevitable soggy end. I come from a family that used to be known - a mite irreverently, I might add - as one of mixed origin. That is to say that one half of the parental duo - ipso facto, my mother - was Catholic, and that the other half - not so ipso facto, guess who? - was Protestant. It seems that my father had tried his best to follow the course of conversion