Reply With QuoteMemories, I wish I had more of them from my childhood. You sound like you have many good ones and nice you've still got your mum and your childhood home - and you obviously cherish them all. Thanks for sharing your meanderings.
I'm in Hartlepool at the moment, at my Mum's house; a small detached house in a suburb of my home town. I wasn't born here, but I was moved here in 1960 when I was just a few months old. Consequently, this place is unique to me in that I have no memory of ever being exposed to it. It was always just there around me like my skin, until I finally moved out at the age of 29. Of course I've been back here many times. It's still the most familiar place in the world to me; I could find every light switch or door handle blind-folded. I still have the knack, developed at the age of 18, of closing my bedroom door silently by applying just the right pressure against the door handle while turning it, to avoid annoying my Mum at two in the morning. Unfortunately that's not really necessary now that she's almost deaf. Yet I still practice it, out of habit.
My mum is 93 now, and in failing health. I'm afraid the time will come soon in the next year or two when I won't be able to come here.
Just looking around this room where I'm sitting now, I feel not so much surrounded as submerged by memories. The chair next to the window, piled with presents on Christmas mornings 50-odd years ago. Years later as a teenager I'd be in the same chair while the rest of the family was watching TV in the other room, and I'd be listening to Yessongs, All The World's A Stage, Kiss Alive! or Live and Dangerous, immersed in a domestic concert experience with headphones on. Or listening to Fly By Night, Caress of Steel and 2112, my favourite Rush albums of the time.
In the late '80s, the last couple of years before I moved out, I'd sit in here playing a guitar unplugged, watching Miami Vice or Hi de Hi, or Life Without George (remember that?). I'm sure I must have watched other TV programmes but those ones stick in the memory for some reason.
This afternoon when I got my bike out of the garage, I did a lap of the garden as an homage to the moment that I found I could ride a bike unassisted, in the same place, some time in the late '60s. It looks a bit like a park garden now, with nicely sculpted flower beds and well-maintained borders but back then it was more like a small field. I'd play out there for hours in the summer, taking breaks for Thunderbirds or The Likely Lads. I lost most of the bullets from my Johnny Seven out there and I sometimes wonder if an archaeologist will find them some day.
As I lay in bed last night I noticed that the sound of cars moving along Grange Road was exactly as I remembered as a child, when I slept in the same room.
I can't actually remember what the point of this post was, now. Anyway. Really strange to think of this place being owned by someone else after all these years it's been in our family. But nothing is permanent.
Memories, I wish I had more of them from my childhood. You sound like you have many good ones and nice you've still got your mum and your childhood home - and you obviously cherish them all. Thanks for sharing your meanderings.
Your last paragraph summarises it well if I may say so. I also made a trip back to what I now realise was supposed to be the home in which our family was supposed to settle down in. Circumstances changed as they do for all of us and a move was forced upon us.
The return was emotional but the place seemed somehow smaller and has over the subsequent years lost the totemic status it used to have in my mind.
My point? Nothing original or earth shattering, just that we make assumptions based on experience to date and then life comes along and throws sand in the gearbox.
Time and physical distance has worked, mostly, for me. Hope it does for you as well.
What an interesting post. Have you managed to hang any French spies on this trip yet?
In the Sotadic Zone, apparently.
Sometimes just sitting and thinking....taking a pause from the circus we call life....is a very good thing to do. Glad you found the time to do it. I guarantee you will reflect back on this day more than once in the future - in fact I’m almost certain you will find an excuse to swing by if you ever drive within 5 miles of it.....probably on the spurious excuse to see if the garden has been changed.
Funny things houses and memories - I’m sure a chat with your mum, about how you felt in your thoughts, would yield another rewarding memory or two.
As certain aspects of your life change we always tend to look backwards, it brings forth great memories but also for me anyway, great sadness. I often think of my childhood and family get togethers, Xmas’s etc and they will never happened again as most of those family members have now passed including both my parents.
I try nowadays to concentrate on the not so distant future but it’s very difficult with our human brains.
What a lovely post and memories of childhood I’m sure we can all relate too.
Into my heart a wind that kills
from yon far country blows
What are those blue remembered hills?
What farms; what spires are those?
That is the Land of Lost Content
I see it shining plain
The happy highways where we went
but cannot come again.
A poignant post by the OP.Originally Posted by Carlton-Browne
But of course any discussion about the fine town of Hartlepool would be incomplete without mention of the monkey hanging, Peter Mandelson's mushy pea gaffe and Blackadder's exploding trousers.
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What a beautiful, honest post.
That house is a part of you.
Many years ago, I took my Father back to the place where he grew up and I could see the memories returning as he looked around.
Such a lovely, heartfelt post. I could visualise you doing all those things you described despite having never seen the property because your words brought it to life so well. I fortunately have great childhood memories, most of which centred around one particular house which remains my favourite of those we lived in. My sister was born there and as my Mam died at just 43 in 1995, that house is very special to me.
That house is a two minute walk from my current home and I walk past it with the dog most days. The current owner bought it because of a feature wall my Dad built in the living / dining room in around 1978 and they still have the wall and love it. They've got the house in beautiful condition which always makes me feel warm and fuzzy as they clearly love the house that I loved.
I often wonder what I'd do if it came up for sale. It would be a downsize for us but one that would be perfectly liveable. They say never go back though, don't they?
We have Priti Patel for that now.
My apologies, I was drawing a, admittedly shaky, line between the Hartlepool element and the utterly fantastical tosh that the OP normally contributes and was pondering how little changes in 200 years. In any case I can see that the OP has returned to torpedo his own thread...
Last edited by Carlton-Browne; 29th April 2021 at 10:18. Reason: a not an
In the Sotadic Zone, apparently.
Wonderful post, cheese-eating monkeys and all
I often fall asleep thinking about former abodes, it's funny how a virtual walkaround is possible even after many years; I guess our surroundings do indeed get ingrained without ever observing them intentionally.
My Mum still lives in the house we moved to when I was 10, so it's got similar memories for me that the OP's has to him.
Like him, too, my Mum is getting on (although in relatively good health, thankfully, at the moment), so there will come a time when someone else moves into the house and I'll never visit again.
I was talking to a friend of many years recently and we laughed about how we only ever seen to talk about people dying these days, both our fathers having gone in the last few years.
Life rolls on, of course, my children (now grown up and left home) were lucky enough to have a good number of years with healthy grandfathers, something I never had.
In 50 years time, I'll be long gone, this house (which we've lived in for 30+ years) will be someone else's home and they'll, hopefully, be making good memories of their own.
"Life's sh*t and then you die, unless you're Buddhist and then life's sh*t and then life's sh*t and then...."
M
Breitling Cosmonaute 809 - What's not to like?
The post struck a chord with me and later on I'm going to (try to) take some virtual walks around the houses that mean a lot to me.Wonderful post, cheese-eating monkeys and all
I often fall asleep thinking about former abodes, it's funny how a virtual walkaround is possible even after many years; I guess our surroundings do indeed get ingrained without ever observing them intentionally.
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I sometimes dream about the old houses I lived in as a child.
I've been past and looked at them, particularly in London SE 25 but like Alec's poem, we can't go back.
Cheers,
Neil.
Excellent post!
I feel like my childhood is a very distant place now.
I left the UK 32 years ago. My parents both died far too young and are long gone. My sister lives in another country. Through Facebook and occasional chats I’m in contact with a handful of people I knew from school and just one person from university.
I don’t feel sad or wistful for the past as a rule, as I have a wonderful wife, daughter, stepchildren, extended family and a small circle of friends, and I believe in living for the present.
That said a few years ago Mrs Draft and I visited the quiet corner of Kent where I grew up. We drove past my school and childhood homes and had a quick drink at our village pub where I learned that a friend I used to spend a lot of time with but had lost contact with had sadly died just a year earlier. I also met a couple of school friends I hadn’t seen in over 20 years apart from through online interaction. I have to say, memories came flooding back.
We are fragile and temporary beings and in the last couple of years I’ve begun to appreciate that enjoying the present is more important than chasing deals and working myself into an early grave.
A year or two ago I would never have thought that, yet alone share the thought.
OP - can you clear your Inbox please.
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Done, thanks.
I’m currently 38. I grew up in the house where I currently live with my mum, dad and sister. I moved out at 16 and returned to it with my partner after an early inheritance at the age of 21. I lived here with my partner for the second half of my life and unfortunately my relationship failed last year, I now live here alone. For those who’d appreciate a reminiscence of the creak of every floorboard I’d be happy to provide. I can associate with the OP over 2 lifetimes to date. Memories of two lifetimes in every room x
Ohh, a Johnny seven! Never had one, a kid in our back ally had one, we had spud guns, loads of free ammo!
Not mine sadly. For those who didn't recognise it, it was typed from memory by myself but created by Houseman in his anthology "A Shropshire Lad".
I did write several pieces of original poetry, but the caretaker made me wash them off.
Strange thing to say I know, but I wish I was in your position. I lost my mother when I was younger and would like nothing more than to be able to return to the house where I grew up and talk with her. I can see it now and it has happy memories. Talk to your mother, as much as you can.
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
What a lovely post... hope you enjoy every second there - I've moved every few years since I was a kid, and the place I grew up in no longer exist.. wish I could visit again
Lovely to read and fortifying for my soul.
As grains of sand in this marvelous universe, thank you.
When go back and sleep in my old bedroom, in my parents' house, where they have lived for 45 plus years, and I grew up ; the rain sounds exactly the same on the roof as it did all those years ago.
Last edited by The Doc; 30th April 2021 at 23:10.
Well, as of today our house in Hartlepool belongs to someone else and with poetic timing my mum, to whom it belonged for 62 years, died on Wednesday night. She'd had a very long innings at 94 years old and she died peacefully, in comfort. Something of a relief to a degree because she was almost immobile in her last few months and seemed to spend most of her time unconscious.
Last night as the sun faded here in Leicestershire I thought of the dozens of late summer evenings when I played in the back garden as a child before coming in to watch The Avengers, or Department S, or The Man From Uncle. The house had been empty for months - and yet it was very strange to think of the evening light dimming in the back garden for the very last time until someone else calls it home, after these six decades or so. I wished I could be there to see that. I never will be again.
But who knows - perhaps a new family will get 60-odd years of memories out of it, as well. You never know.
This is a photo of the house taken in 1967. One of the art-deco curved window panes at the front got cracked and couldn't be replaced, so new frames went in with flat panes some time in the '70s.
The blue car was our Vauxhall Victor estate. My abiding memory of it is that it was like an oven on holidays in Spain. After it had been left in the sun, you had to put towels on the plastic seats to stop them burning your legs. But I loved the road trip down through France, it was quite the adventure. The back of the car would be absolutely crammed full of stuff behind the back seat so that we could barely see over it.
Sorry to hear of your mum's passing, seems like you have some fantastic memories together and that means everything.
RIP to your mum and condolences to you and your family.
What a lovely looking house Mono. You'll still have your memories.
So sorry to hear of your Mum's passing.
Cheers,
Neil.
Basically you have achieved most of what you want and you have concluded that the days of pedalling uphill are over and it's time to freewheel down. That happens to us all. You will soon become a soft hearted old man and you will enjoy being lazy in the afternoon.
It's actually quite enjoyable the only problem is that it doesn't last long enough.
My condolences Monogroover. Thank you again for your first post, which did set me off on a virtual tour of houses that meant something to me, and thank you for completing the story. As for a new family living there for 62 years, the odds must be against that - what a privilege to live somewhere for such a period and to have family able to revisit their roots in that way.
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Wonderful first posting and it's good that you tell us about your mother. My condoleances.
I was in this situation 15 yrs ago. My parents became older, my mother passed away suddenly, and within a year my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer. My mother had warned me for that a few weeks before her death. I did the same 'tour' like you and made sure that I had a mental list of items I wanted to keep when my father went to a specialized nursing home. The house they had at the time was not the house I grew up in. I have no brothers and sisters, so all decisions were my own entirely.
Fast forward two years: I happened to read that the apartment where I was born, came up for sale. Even without consulting my wife, I bought the house unseen. Why? Simply because I was born there. I had no intention of living there. But I didn't really want to become a 'cold' landlord. I rented it out to a second cousin and her boyfriend. She worked in a flower shop and he was in the building trade. I kept the rent low and they did a lot of work inside the house: kitchen, bathroom etc. Trade and mate prices. I was really comfortable chipping in financially. After a few years, they wanted an end-of-terrace house because they wanted to have children. That's not too easy on the third floor without an elevator (how did my parents do it?). They moved out and I sold the apartment. And then, the itch of owning the place I was born, was gone. It felt good to have been able to help two young people with a decent home. My parents would have approved that.
I have very, very early memories of the house where I was born. We moved out before I was three years old. Over the years, I'd checked memories of living there with my mother. And she confirmed my memories: carpet colour, bedroom curtains with a pattern. I even recall a total solar eclipse. According to the internet, that was in November 1959. I was born early 1958. I remember us (mum and myself) in front of a window with special glasses on. I can recall where we sat and where we looked at (direction). My mother had confirmed that many years before. And some research learns that the solar eclipse was visible when sitting at that spot! The time of day vs the location of the apartment building is correct. So I must have been 18 months old at that time.
I was lucky to be able to re-live my own memories and that was enhanced when I bought the apartment. I would suggest that you take a lot of pictures how things look today. It will give you more and vivid recollection of those moments. Enjoy your memories.
Last edited by thieuster; 22nd July 2022 at 14:33.
I had a very similar experience a few years ago with my grandparents house.
I've known it since I was born. It was actually built nearly 100 years ago by my great-grandfather. When my grandmother passed in the 90's she left it to my uncle (who still lived there). He stayed until he passed about seven years ago.
I inherited a third. I couldn't bear to see it sold and with no mortgage fiding a suitable investment for that much cash would have been problematic. So I bought the other two thirds and now I run it as a rental property. We currently have a lovely family in there who want to stay long term and it's great to know they are making memories in a place I love so much too. Ocassionally I get to visit and repair something, which is a bonus.
It won't make any disposable income for several years yet, every cent that comes in is currently split between the taxman and the mortgage company.
EDIT:
As I often do I read the first post in the thread, and waded in with a comment before realising that that thread was old and before reading the rest of the comments.
My condolences on your loss Mono. I know it's a trite comment, too often used, but it is a difficult sentiment to express. Chin up.
Last edited by mikeveal; 22nd July 2022 at 15:59.
just the monkey!
First of all, condolences on the loss of your mum.
I`m afraid i may be in the same boat very soon with my own mother who is suffering from advanced dementia and is deteriorating in health very quickly. In fact, my father and i visited a care home just today where she will likely reside in the very near future.
Your memories of the house are wonderful and so is the house itself - what a super looking home.
`Properly built`, stylish, and i would guess on a nice, safe, leafy, traditional street, the sort of place that just seems safe and comfortable. Homely.
I love houses of this era and grew up wiith similar.
I wonder if the thrown-up, soulless, characterless cardboard boxes they call new homes these days will evoke the same sort of memories?
Looking at the pic from `67, please don`t tell me the front wall has been removed for car parking.........
Condolences to the OP, 94's a good innings but that doesn`t diminish the sense of loss when a parent passes away. No matter how old you are you still feel the loss, possibly more than you expect.
62 years for a house to be in one family is a long time, very rare thesedays. My own bungalow stayed with the original family from new (1982) till 2020 when I bought it, the neighbours at both sides bought their bungalows from new too, so they've both done 40 years.
I would be curious to go inside the house I grew up in from being a baby till moving out aged 21, the house has been altered and extended but I`ll bet there's still some original features I would recognise! Has a look on Google earth to see how the garden and surrounding had changed, that's an interesting exercise and it's v. easy to do.
Some thoughtful insight Mono. I grew up from the age of about 5 on a council estate in Oxfordshire. Back when council tenants were proud of their homes. The door was always open friends and neighbours would just walk in. Everybody share and literally everyone child on the estate was my friend.
My sister bought the house on the right to buy scheme many years ago. My mum moved to a retirement flat, she's 80 and my dad passed.
I moved to Sussex 20 years ago.
I still visit my mum and sister (obviously) but the place I grew up is beyond what I ever knew. Council estates aren't what they were. Meal tickets for people who really don't care about society or what was really a beautiful place to grow up.
An absolute dump now. Drugs , violence ,theft, you name it. The house next door looks like a war zone. They were Mormons when i lived there! Really nice people but we got a 'we dont do Christmas' note when we sent them a card!
Left and never looked back.
Loads of friends and family there but certainly not the rosy painted picture that you have.
Really enjoyed your perspective though.
Lovely post OP and condolences on your mother's passing.
My grandmother lived in (as a tenant rather than owner) the same house for over 60 years. In that time it hardly had any work done and retained all of the original victorian features. A number of years after her death my Dad knocked on the door while in the neighbourhood. By huge coincidence the new young owners share the same surname. They invited him in and he revelled in the fact that they had also left it as much as possible. Lovely memories that my Dad still recounts regularly.
No doubt we'd love to tour our childhood homes.
My next door neighbour who had lived in the house since it was built in 1954 passed away a couple of years ago. It had never been on the market, nor had it ever been updated by the look of it...
The middle-aged daughter who was living with her for all her life continued to reside there until this year when her siblings insisted the house was sold as they wanted their share of the inheritance. She was forced to sell. Nice...
A young couple have since bought it and are now in the process of a complete renovation.
Where there`s a will there`s a relative..
Condolences on your loss OP.
The places we grow up in are forever in our memories, alongside the family we shared them with.
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
My condolences Mono. Great memories though. Cherish them.
As an aside, you can create something similar using Rightmove's 'Sold Prices' page. For example, I lived in this house in the eigthies, during my O Level years: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-pr...985a9d070b07#/
It's changed massively in the intervening years: it was 4 beds back then, and there was no extension, but seeing it made the memories flood back. My dear old gran, my first FS1-E, my sister's boyfriend failing to make the bend in the road and crashing into a lamp post in his Capri, hiring a chainsaw and cutting down the willow tree in the back garden (makes me shudder just thinking about how unsafe that was). Crawling drunkenly round the front garden looking for dropped door key. Loads and loads of memories, and as I say, we were only there for a couple of years.
Last edited by hogthrob; 23rd July 2022 at 01:05.
I will have lived in my present house for 40 years on the 24th August this year and both the wife and I enjoy living here and don't really want to downsize, so we will probably die here. Our three sons pop in and out all the time and they grew up here and can't imagine anyone else living here.
I don't have any emotional attachment to any house that I grew up in because we often moved quite regularly but my grandmother lived in the same house for, I believe, forty years and I often spent what is now termed a sleepover there during the school holidays. It was an old cottage in a little village called Ideford in Devon and it was cob built in a row of eight houses. Because she had lived in the house for over 21 years she enjoyed what was effectively a sort of protected tenancy. Her rent was fixed for life at 2shillings and 6d which in todays money was 12.5p which was dirt cheap even in those days. I suspect the landlord was counting the days for her to die.
She brought my mother up as what is now called a single mum which was a massive stigma in those days and I suspect she had a boyfriend who either left her or died as a result of WW1. She refused to have electricity in the house and had paraffin lamps everywhere to light the house. Water came from a well in the back garden and she had an outdoor loo and washing house. She cooked on a very long cast iron range that also heated the house. The decor was absolutely Edwardian and there were pictures of a young man in a WW1 army uniform hung on the wall everywhere. I last visited the house in 1968 just before she died.
I started to research my family history early in the year and have just about done my mothers side of the family. I have gone back to the early 1700s and all of my maternal ancestors come from around the same village as she lived in.
I looked up her cottage on google and much to my surprise it has been merged into one of the neighbouring cottages and I would guess it is now heavily spruced up.
I would love to have a look around the house and see how it has changed but how would you feel if someone knocked on your door asked if they could look around just because it was an old family home.
I suppose the moral is you have to move on and forget.
Quite happy, to be honest (as long as they didn't want to move back in!). A home is more than property.
Move on but don't forget. Your memories are part of who you are.
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