Much of my childhood was spent with my Grandparents at their cottage in the north Yorkshire village of Bishop Monkton. Although fifty and more years have passed since those halcyon days, my memories and freed spirit still journey back regularly. I am tied to the place and its memories by an:
Umbilicus.
Seasoned in autumn with ochre blaze of fruit and fire
that once was bud of green by Monkton’s beck
and rooted in its sculptured soils and niche in time
this spirit oft returns to tread the paths of shadow memories
layered in summer cast shackles and grit scored flesh
to touch that freedom and innocence of a gentle time…
…and cross old Dransfield’s sleeper bridge to rouse that watching witch laired tense coiled sprung from curtain twitch to garden gate to curse
a trespass child’s audacity and make me run to Grandma’s arms that
flail like tendrils from an oyster cottage…
…in drawn to seek the love within that frugal shell of functional simplicity
anchored firmly in richly satisfied need and absent extravagance
swirls the blue wisp smoke of Granddad’s twist and grey clay pipe content by Yorkshire range and odours from the marble slab comes basic food yet wholesome…
…and bread from baker Eddy twice a week with tempting sticky buns today the butcher calls and Rington’s tea and the man that sells the fish with flies opaque to white now sizzles in the fat from Riley’s pantry shop green garnished with the parsley fresh from Mr Chandler’s market garden and now the milkman calls the postman on this dew clad morn and crumbs for birds…
…the day lays spread when Granddad flees the carpet beating daily dust removal and seeks the pence in neighbours gardens this child absconds to fantasy in the wrecked and derelict contents of the farm across the hump of bridge and wades where trout and shrimp grow old and fat and playmates are the feared Hun who brave frontiers and seek the grunts of the secret Hymas sow to liberate a paper mill and roam across the collaged fields on mushroom hunting morns…
…chimes the Mechanic’s building clock each day to rise from starch crisp sheets stone bottle aired to breathe anew where odours hang upon the air suspended wood and coal with sweetly boiling marmalade chased through Mrs Wilkinson’s rickety porch to dance upon the nostrils where the bus runs Ripon bound past Topham coal the blistered hands stack Milburn bales till sunset tales of Somme and Ypres melt the light of programme jigs to joy unheard and the whispered ghost of Esie Davey tell me… tell me why …
…thrice widdershins round the blarney stone in wish yet nettle cursed to Keighley and the other dusty tracks where outcasts dwell and moles and rooks and stoats drape the powdery wood and swing bell tolled on Sunday peels to day through beef and pudding and jovial joy in Masons Arms and in the closing old white haired Joseph calls its time…
… calls time…
… Mae Fayre like those summers gone holds missing scents of GM jasmine now
and time has stamped the marks of change on Monkton with a noise where peace once reigned and light reflected softer tones the beck now chuckles to constructed rural idioms and waits for double yellow lines on Main Street as bloated ducks feign hunger still for more and more embalmer’s wheat and alien odours seep to rouse the memory makers stilled in deepest slumber shelved below their strained and bowing memorials