Open Writing

Dust down your memory. Make sure it’s fit to travel, then send it on the longest journey.

Send it back, far, far back to earliest days. And what is the first thing it sees, feels, hears?

The arms of a loving mother? Being in a warm cot, with dawn breaking through the curtains? The barking and the wet fur of the family hound as it dashes into the kitchen after a rainy escapade?

The first thing I see is a lawn roller. A substantial metal cylinder, filled with concrete.

And the first thing I hear is the destructive clanging thud of iron hitting stone.

We lived then in a tiny stone house, sharing a packed-dirt yard with two other houses. In wet winters the yard was a mud-bath. In dry summers, its surface was flint-hard, made to scratch and scar the tumbling knees of small children.

The communal roller was propped against the wall of the biggest house, in which lived the prolific and penurious Ramsden family. Mr and Mrs Ramsden made up for a lack of cash by conceiving and raising extra children.

I often went into the Ramsdens’ house. A delightful kingdom for a small boy. Scattered clothes, dirty plates, rarely-washed grey underwear forlornly draped on a rickety clothes-horse… And children, playing, pushing, squabbling in every corner of the bare lino.

I don’t know who brought that lawn-roller into the yard. It was not needed. All three lawns added together wouldn’t have made a pocket-handkerchief for even the smallest giant.

But one summer’s afternoon it was the centre-point of a splendid game. Two years further on, in 1940, we would probably have called the roller a tank, and used it in war games.

As it was, we called it nothing. The Ramsden children and me, sharing a hold of its long handle, raced the bulky contrivance across the yard. Time after time, we crashed it into the gable-end of the Ramsdens’ house.

That night Mr Ramsden told my father that the frequent impacts had loosened the fire-place from his living-room wall.

The roller disappeared. I have no idea where it went.

I continued to play with the Ramsden children. Down at the bottom of the yard, by the wall to the village chapel, the bigger children played endless games of marbles.

A small hole was dug in the dirt near the wall. A line was then marked in the dirt, nine or ten feet from the hole.

Turn by turn, the older children would roll up a marble, trying to get it into the hole. The first one to succeed was allowed to gather up the scattered marbles which had failed to reach the target. These were then thrown in one big handful, and any which fell into the hole could be kept.

Some of us were too young to be allowed into the marbles club. We stood to one side, watching with increasing boredom. Then one of us would snatch a marble and run off with it, receiving a generous thump in the back when the owner came to retrieve his glassy.

Friday nights were special. The Ramsden children and myself, clutching small pudding dishes, went to the chapel at the bottom of the yard. There a generous helping of pie-and-peas was ladled into each dish.

I didn’t like the pie. Just another crust, with something unidentifiable lurking inside it. But the home-made mushy peas, cooked in meat stock, were wonderful!

After the battering-ram roller incident I wasn’t supposed to go into the Ramsdens’ house again. I did though.

If my mother saw me scratching she would promptly say “I know where you’ve been! Wouldn’t surprise me if you’ve got nits. I’m sure everyone of them kids is loppy.’’

All that was long ago.

Now I live in a different village. I still live in a yard though which is shared by two other households.

None of us have a lawn roller.