Scenes from childhood
March 28th, 2007Janet, my wife, and her cousin Jane have been drowning in nostalgia. Which is quite understandable because they have been revisiting the scenes of several long holidays together in their childhood and teenage years. By all accounts they were extremely happy holidays and with ample opportunity for the growing girls to escape the adults and have all manner of fun. Those holidays revolved around the village of Instow, which is on an inlet of the Taw estuary in North Devon not far from Bideford. It is a most beautiful spot. I sat on the hotel terrace listening, to their conversation, and gazing out across the water to the church at Appledore, nestling on the hill crowded with white painted houses. A few boats moved languidly over the water, clearly concerned not to disturb my tranquillity. No speed boats or red arrows. Not even any screaming children because the season is not yet upon us.For Jane it is the main home she remembers because she was there for most of the year when her father was in Nigeria with the Colonial Service, and she went to school there. Janet holidayed often with Jane’s family there in those years and when our own children were growing up holidayed often in Instow and nearby places like Bucks Mills and Clovelly.
Bucks Mills is a strong contrast. It comprises only a few houses a mile from the main road down a narrow winding lane. It is a steep walk from these houses down the pebbly beach. A waterfall cascades over the cliff on to the rugged rocks below. When the weather is the least bit stormy the waves crash over the jetty. There is no café or ‘facilities’. Just raw nature. And many times we have had this scene to ourselves. And it has a particular emotional signifence for me too. It was the first holiday for my eldest daughter, Holly, then nine months. And the last holiday I spent with my father. He loved Bucks Mill as much I did. Definitely the product of a tough-minded God.
In my wife’s extended family it is the women who are the toughies. When I finish this sentence I shall be sitting down at dinner with Mary, Jane’s mother and Janet’s aunt. Aged 91. Which means she was born in the first world war when all the young men were getting killed. She was in the WAAF in the second world war, where she learnt how to captivate men as well as how to defend the country. She still tells a good story. She still rollicks with laughter. Thirty years after we have buried most of the men in our families.