| Returning home from Brightnesses� late one night, I parked the car and crossed the street to my house, but instead of climbing the few steps to the door I walked straight passed.
� I need to think,� I thought. A turn around the block in the fresh night air would clear my head. I intended to turn right into Carlyle Road and just double back on myself to the house, but I passed the turning and kept walking. Perhaps that way was too short for my purpose. I would take the next right, into Marlborough Avenue, that would be a longer walk, and bound to suite. But I walked passed that as well. It was raining lightly now, and with no sense other than one of following my nose and a half-remembered story from my youth about a man who liked to walk at night, I kept walking. I crossed the road and walked into Newton Road; this felt strange, this wasn�t now just a stroll round the block, this route was away from home, this was exciting. Then the woods called! That was it, I would walk to Dodderhill, a favourite place, and friendly, I would go there. The rain whispered in it�s wetness, shining the streets blackness to an amber glow of reflected lamplight, I walked on passed darkened houses, imagining the people within tight in their beds. From Newton Road I walked through what used to be known as Garringtons, where my father used to work years before. Silent now the hammers that used to beat me to sleep as a child, peopling my dreams with club carrying giants. A shadow of it�s former self, quiet, wet, and sad. A solitary night watchman was stationed in the gatehouse, picked out by the dull glow of a reading lamp; he looked up as I passed, wet in the night. What did he think? Probably that it�s best to leave lonely nutters to pass unchallenged at this hour, in this weather! Memories of fetes, and Christmas parties echoed as I passed the playing fields and then the social club, summers were bright, and winters cold then, childhood was secure and I was provided for. On I walked, along the path besides the sewage farm, its unmistakable aroma pinning my thoughts to my childhood. We played around here lots when I was a kid, here and the bordering railway line! Mum would have had kittens if she�d have known, come to think of it, I�d have kittens if any of my children did what I did as a child, but isn�t that just like a grown up?! This was all so familiar, I knew this path, and the road it lead to, and after that the turnings I would make, and the ways I would follow on my to the woods. |