A town from the past

"Time is an endless lane/ And Life a little mile without a bend...Behind us what? Before us, if we ran,/ Might we not be in time to seek the Grail?" Morton, In search of England

It was a small and safe town, and the place I stayed between '79 to very early '83 was 157, Cliff Gardens. It was located in what was then known as South Humberside. The house I stayed was bang opposite to the Scunthorpe General Hospital. The hospital looked huge back then and very grand – made of brown brick – and yet when I checked in on google images on a whim – it doesn’t look that huge any longer. The whole street view feels very strange to see…and I’ve never, ever wished to go back into my own past, and I’m not exactly sure why or how I’ve been tempted to write the following. Maybe it has to do with reading a book in sudden and very drawn out shifts or maybe they are old memories simply rearing like ghostly horses upon being jogged by different essays I've been reading and the conversations I've been having, and they almost feel like they happened to somebody else... 

There were not a few families with children living on the same street, and my memories while they are not linear – I do remember playing with them, and I would walk the three or four blocks on some early afternoons and mornings to go play with the kids. On one occasion three of us ventured out of the back gate in their garden after some days of wondering of what lay beyond – a space which was covered with grass and had trees and looked like a little forest grove. I remember holding the youngest child’s hand in mine as we set forth for our adventure one fine day. I don’t remember any longer how long the walk was or whether there was even a path but eventually somehow or the other we made our way into concrete and tarmac actually and I remember looking at the building that we could see rising in front of us. As we walked all around it we realized we had reached nothing but the front of the hospital building. Another day while sitting in the back yard I saw a helicopter in the air for the very first time in my life. I waved and waved and yelled but the chopper after hovering around for some long minutes flew off. The front garden and I had a relationship going. I planted some orange pits and something of a strawberry once, and watered the plants regularly but sadly enough never got any fruits for my labours. There was a sweet shop cum general store a little way off but I don’t remember what I got from there apart from lozenges for which I showed a great fondness. Those days the tinkling musical ice-cream van with its friendly man, on Sundays was a regular feature. I don’t think we got ice-creams every Sunday but certainly every now and then. I showed a penchant for only ice lollies in garish colours and sometimes in a ‘cola’ flavor and none for the creamy stuff.

There was a library close enough. It was a circular in shape from what I remember and  had a few broad stairs, and every week there were 3 books that I got. I don’t remember getting to learn English, and I don’t remember when I started to read on my own. I remember reading lots of ladybird books for children, a mix of different books for  kids, the Mr. Men series, Paddington Bear, encyclopaedias of space and geography books filled with pictures and  a mishmash of different kinds of general knowledge books with lovely pictures, and then an Enid Blyton – only I didn’t know she was the Enid Blyton until later.  Never read a Dr.Seuss until I was in my late teens. I remember there being a small book-shop inside the hospital. I used to go to the hospital every now and while ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ had been a birthday present, ‘Heidi’ was a general gift. Both were in comic book form, and by the same publisher with black and white sketches. ‘Heidi’ I read much later but the unabridged ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ I never could read. The kids’ version gave me the chills.

I joined St. Augustine Webster Primary school – meant for kids between 3-ish and 12-ish – and after I showed an overwhelming reluctance to go to a pre-school for toddlers. These are the only bus trips I remember. Otherwise all the places I went to in the town were on foot. I remember the school years and the teachers and a few incidents rather vividly, and the kids in school. Alison Kent – a tiny sprinter and a fast friend, Francesca Ristangio – the Italian, Cecelia, Fiona, Anne-Marie, Sarah, Sarah’s friend Alison Brader, and the dark long haired Natalina whom I may have forgotten…, and other girls whom I vaguely remember. I didn’t get along with the boys in my own class but have fond memories of a younger boy and a few of the older ones. I remember Miss Queen who was the loveliest, very cheerful, and youngest teacher I had and she used to laugh a lot apart from one day when she was in a crying fit and a temper and had scolded us when one child had spilt a bottle of milk. Every school child used to get a glass bottle of milk before lunch hours. I hated the milk. I don’t remember what I did with it but one day I feigned illness after finishing my class work just so as to not drink the bottle of milk. That was the last year that they gave us milk in school. Alison and I were such fast buddies that Mrs. Joan Miller whom we had in class 4 declared on the first day of class 5 that while the circular seating arrangement in the class with a girl seated next to a boy would apparently mean fewer noisy conversations in class, she didn’t have the heart to separate Alison and me even if we were noisy. So we gloated in the class with angel wings sprouting from our heads although I wouldn’t have minded exactly being seated with a  nice enough boy on either side... Fate had different ideas however. Not within minutes of settling down, the Headmaster, Sir Paul Ibbotson (who was always in his Mr. Chips garb) walked in and called out my name. I stood up and walked out of the class with him, and I still remember thinking that it was a funny day to be having an impromptu reading test. But they were always lovely and one got to be with the Headmaster for some glorious minutes in his idyllic office and he answered different questions  about the pictures that graced his office and one could even sit in an armchair for a few minutes after the reading test – and if one performed well one got a toffee (now I think everybody did but one still felt mighty special). I traipsed along with him that day and was almost sure about turning the corner in the corridor when he was talking about this and that and said that I was to do classes in class 6 and not in 5. That happened often enough – jumping a year (I don’t think it had anything to do with being smart or clever – I think there was some age factor too playing in the equation). I was not happy about it and I don’t remember what he said but he gently herded me into class 6. The best thing about that was that the Headmaster used to take our special science classes and that’s the first time I knew what “gravity” on the earth as compared to the moon meant because the Headmaster did a pretend moonwalk in the class. There were prayer services which I quietly adored, ‘best effort’ competitions which involved drawing and colouring but I don’t remember any writing competitions apart from the regular classwork and homework, and there were no exams on a regular basis at that age. I remember learning the multiplication tables till 4 at home. I learnt the five times table from Alison’s stopwatch, and that was my one moment of glory for the rest of my life as far as Maths was concerned.

Christmas was a beautiful time. I remember getting a few gifts every year, and I opened them on Christmas morning with great excitement. I loved the carols and knew all about Jesus and the timeless tale of the baby born in the manger in Bethlehem, and the places of Nazareth and Galilee I used to roll around with my tongue, and the inarticulate deep feeling for the spirit of Christmas and for Jesus have stayed with me, and have probably grown deeper if different through the last decade... There were not a few dinners with a mix of guests at different points of the year – and that’s how I tasted wine and alcohol and had a go at cigarettes and cigars before I turned 8. I remember the fireworks from one year, and it was the same year when I first got a very long stick of pink peppermint candy, which I saved like a miser. The fondness for peppermint and mint have stayed.

There was a park somewhere – the name of which I have clean forgotten. The park, I did not visit alone but I had the habit of brushing my fingers along the trees and bushes on the way to the park which was along a hilly road, and every time I would come back with what I now know are painful nettles. I liked the hilly park and yet I didn’t learn how to swing on my own till I was 8 and so I had to wait to be pushed on the swing unless I romped around. It was in that same park that a big dog had chased a neighbourhood friend and I had looked on aghast. I don’t think the excited dog had any real intentions of biting him because the dog pranced away after some seconds once his master called him but the huge brown-black barking dog with a  wild face running after the friend is something that had terrified me.

The bridge connecting South and North Humberside wasn’t built till ‘81 apparently and I was there in that town till  very early ’83, I think. I remember a few trips to that bridge and also eating take-away fish and chips wrapped in newspaper in a strange place off the bridge with little seats and on a cold day. I don’t know whether it was the same day or another like it but on one occasion I stared for long minutes at a horse which was wandering around in a grassy field with lots of trees. It was probably somebody’s house with a space of a small field. The horse was simply wandering around and did not take much of an interest in me, as far as I remember, but I was fascinated by it, and insisted for the first time that a picture be taken with that dark brown horse and me. Everybody tried to convince me that the horse was not a particularly fine horse as horses go, and that it was all angles and bony and most likely unwell but I couldn’t care less. That picture is still around somewhere but not with me but I remember the horse and my stubborn face which shows up on the picture.

I used to watch a fair lot of TV too. I must have watched children’s shows as well but don’t remember them too well. But I watched Panorama on TV and the old James Bond movies with the incomparable Sean Connery, Casablanca, Guns of Navarone (I remember liking ‘Force 10’ better when I watched both a decade later) whether I understood much or nothing - and other movies which I don’t remember. It’s from TV that I got to know about the Falklands War and Jack the Ripper, and the race riots that used to break out in parts of England, and God knows what else. I heard and saw a lot of music on TV too. That’s how I got to hear ABBA, The Beatles, Cliff Richard, Julio Iglesias Sr., Tight Fit, Modern English, The Cure. …Shakin Stevens was probably my long-distance first infatuation but I won’t bet on it. I watched ‘The Sound of Music’, and ‘Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang’ (supercalifragilestiexpialidocious!) and ‘Charlie and the Chocolate factory’ and ‘Pygmalion’ during the Christmas special film telecasts on TV, and I heard the songs and also a few other pieces from the old records that were purchased and played on a record player.

I was also with not a few bizarre fixations...I wanted seven brothers and a maybe a few sisters and all of us would have bunk beds and talk a lot and be great friends. It was one of my fondest fantasies. I fell ill once, and for the longest time I believed that I had seen the doctor drawing out some spinal fluid with a huge needle. Only many years later did I realize that it was a false memory because the doctors and nurses would not have put up a mirror on the ceiling for my benefit simply because I preferred seeing what was being prodded into me. I had one sudden infatuation when about 7-ish: he was a friendly, communicative, red-haired (!), tall, and lanky bus driver whose name I remember, and I remember feeling the pangs while singing songs during prayer service when in school, and at some point I had a quiet crush on an older boy named Steven, and very badly wanted to talk with him but never did. For the years there in that town I was rather boisterous and noisy and adventurous in some ways, and also quiet and fairly precocious and sometimes silly, I think and yet I remember feeling the feeling that life lay somewhere else and I missed a deep part of me, and one day when I knew I was coming/going back to India (and I’d known that India was the land where I came from) I was equally excited about the prospect of returning. I carry the smells at the then Heathrow Airport and on Scandinavian Airlines, and I remember nothing else about the return journey. There are other strange memories which kind of rise in the mind and yes, there was the weather in that town in England – but this is more than enough for now...

I know I missed toast once back in India and I used to get quietly enraged when people didn’t know what the hell I was saying or would laugh about my pronunciation and everybody around me would join in on the joke whether I was speaking in Bengali and even in English, and yet I couldn’t blame them so I would feign a quiet indifference at the beginning. Some two decades later I got to know that there had been a much older boy back then who had defended my pronunciation in my absence, but I hadn't heard of him or seen him back then when I was 8.