Open Writing

I am looking at a house but pretending I’m looking somewhere else. I haven’t the courage yet to walk up the small front garden path and find out who lives there.

The two bed-roomed semi, number fourteen, is at the lower end of a road of identical semi-detached houses. Just to my right, a leaning sign on chipped concrete posts, confirms that I’m in Fox Lane. Fox Lane on the Frecheville estate on the outskirts of Sheffield.

It’s cold and beginning to rain. The overcast, February sky tells me there may be worse to come. What on earth am I doing here, I ask myself for the umpteenth time?

If I’m going to find out who lives in this house, I have to get on with it. I’m acting suspiciously. I can sense curtains twitching. I play over in my mind, what to say when a stranger answers the back door, the door just beyond the lavatory.

“Excuse me, you don’t know who I am but I used to live here. I came to live here when the house was built in 1931. I was three years old – I’m the same age as the house actually. I have been wondering what it’s like now – I hope you don’t mind?”

I can’t possibly say that – they’ll think I’m some kind of fruitcake.

“I stood in the garden just over there when the bombs fell on Sheffield in the blitz. The sky glowed blood red and I could hear the bombs dropping and the intermittent drone of the German planes.

“The free issue Anderson Shelter was built later where the clothes post is. I can still smell the damp hessian the bunks were covered with. My dad was called Walter and he was the area gas warden. He didn’t have to fight in the war because he worked on the railway. I used to run down this path, past the coalhouse to meet him when he came home from work on his bike. I once set the coal-house on fire when I was trying to light a clay winter-warmer I made.”

I sound idiotic - like a child - I cant tell them all this. What if they call the police?

Maybe I could find out who lives here from the lady next door. She’s appeared at the small upstairs window a couple of times in the last ten minutes. Ten minutes - I can’t have been here that long – no wonder I’m freezing.

I’m feeling very conspicuous now and as a diversion turn to stare at no. 9 over the road.

“The houses across from here were being built when I was a kid playing in the street with John McCormack. The joiner broke the shaft of his hammer , working on the bottom house there and gave it to me – I had it for ages. There were eleven kids living between numbers 14 and 28. I can still name every one and lots of their parents. I had a lot of bad coughs in the winter and couldn’t play out much.

"Dr Murray’s surgery was on the shop fronts on Birley Moor Road. His red cough medicine was a shilling so we didn’t send for him often. He was Irish and a cavalry officer in the first war. He always wore or carried bright yellow gloves, even in summer.”

Are you seriously considering talking like this to a perfect stranger? You haven’t lived here for sixty years and look at the place - it’s past its sell by date. Cream and green kitchens with a black line running round the middle are figments of your imagination. You’re not going to find delicious new Raleigh drop handlebar bikes, with a dynamo and white mudguards, leaning against green and cream kitchen walls here now.

“We had a concert for the war effort at the top of this garden. up by Mr Machen’s, backing on to Longstone Crescent there. The stage was a rickety old bench by the hen hut, made out of pieces of rustic pole – quite crude it was really. Roy Pulford - he was older than me and wore his new long grey flannels – got up and told a few jokes as I remember. As he jumped down his smiles turned to horror as his trouser leg caught on a six-inch nail and slit to the knee.

"You’ve got the garden nice – it’s amazing what sixty years can do.”

The people who live here don’t know Mr Machen from Michael Jackson - or Roy Pulford for that matter - they’ll think you’re a raving loony telling them about some prehistoric hen hut and a war-time kids concert. Complimenting him on the garden won’t wash either.

We’ll have a quick meander up to 22 and then call it a day. We can go and look where the school used to be another time. At least you’ve made the effort to come back. And another thing – this talking to yourself all the time – it’s not good you know.

“ Sorry to bother you .You wont know me, Derek – Derek McQueen my name.
My mother’s sister Betty lived here with Albert Stamford in the 1930’s and I lived just down the road there at 14. Harold Maw lived at 24 and the Bowdler’s at no.20. Mr Bowdler was very nice – he was a tram conductor but Mrs. Bowdler was fat. Mr Maw hardly spoke to anyone.

"I enjoyed coming to this house – Betty had a modern gramophone with copper needles and loads of 78’s – mostly Bing Crosby and Hutch. They kept it in the front room there. Those are nice plastic windows you’ve fitted, by the way. I expect the original ones had gone rotten.

“Albert worked at the abattoir so he didn’t have to fight in the war either. There was a small greenhouse just at the back there, near the door, where he bred his own maggots for fishing. He was able to get plenty of liver and stuff and the bluebottles fed on that. He got tons of maggots that way but it did smell a bit to tell you the truth.

“Albert had a bit of a temper and took it badly when I overturned a table full of food for a party.”

Don’t look now but I think someone’s coming out of the house. For God’s sake don’t tell him about the maggots or the gramophone – he’s already looking at you as if you’ve got two heads.

“Hello – You seem to be taking an unusual interest in the house. Maybe you’re lost or something. Can I help?”

“ Oh - sorry about that – staring I mean - I used to live here. Well not here exactly – there – at no. 14. Aunty Betty lived in your house in the war with Albert – they were married of course – not like these days eh?. I er I just wanted a trip down memory Lane. You know how it is? I’m getting on a bit now you see.”

“ Did you say they lived here during the last war? Come and have a look at this then. Oh, Nigel my name – Nigel Bowdler, my grandfather lived next door – he was on the trams in the war.

“See this– we’ve lived with this since we moved in – never had a proper garden. It’s a shelter – home made – walls three feet thick full of f’ing iron bars. A bloody bomb shelter – never been able to touch it. Outlive us that sodding thing. Wish I could get my hands on the stupid buggers who built it.”

I had a distinct feeling that my tale of Uncle Colin getting stuck in it when the sirens went, would be best told another time.

“Mr Bowdler – I really am most grateful. You’ve been very helpful – Oh, sorry about the shelter.”