Oddthorpe

A week ago my feet hurt. Despite following the wisdom of a certain old wives’ tale to wear two pairs of socks when undertaking a walk of any considerable length to avoid my feet rubbing against the inside of my walking boots, I was becoming increasingly aware that I was growing a blister the size and colour of a fully ripened plum on my little toe. Being a brave little soldier I carried on trekking over hills and cliff edges as I ventured unabashed towards The Needles Pleasure Park on the Isle of Wight. Never has a man been so keen to see those coloured sands.

The reason for my yomp was that I was participating in the annual Walk the Wight event, now in its 25^th year, for the third time. I didn’t feel that I had particularly trained well for this.  A wander round Nottinghamshire the other weekend was a nice little walk but it didn’t prepare me for the deceptively challenging inclines that the Isle of Wight’s topography throws up at certain points. However, I completed the thing without making my feet bleed. Having said that, I was walking a little gingerly for a couple of days and my late application of headwear meant that I resembled a man who had spent the afternoon lightly grilling his face. I’ve now entered the peeling stage which is particularly attractive. When I get up from the sofa I leave the outline of my body in skin behind me, like the residue from a disintegrating ray.

Undeterred I decided yesterday that it was just too clement to hide myself away indoors and so I retrieved my walking boots and headed out on a modest 10 mile walk to Stamford, this time applying liberal amounts of sun cream before I left the house and donning an appropriate hat.

It was glorious; a lovely day in mid-May is the ideal time for a walk. The fields are awash with fragrant yellow flowers, the birds are singing, and the paths underfoot are dry and welcoming, not slippy and squishy like they were when I was out a couple of months ago. Spring has peaked and summer is just around the corner. The whole world just seemed so alive.

Well, I say that, except there was one place on my route where time appeared to have stopped completely. This place is a small hamlet on a narrow country lane just south of Bourne. It’s called Obthorpe and I always approach it with some amusement mixed with trepidation. I’ve walked through Obthorpe on two occasions before and I’d noted that, despite signs of life, I’d never actually seen anyone there. I hadn’t even heard voices of people chatting, no keen homeowner  beavering away in their garden, no TV or radio idly burbling along in the background, no dog barking, nothing. My recollections of walking through Obthorpe was of the wind whistling through the telephone wires and the strange feeling that everyone had left suddenly.

There are cars on the drives, the occasional light on in a house, but no people. As I approached I wondered if this time it would be any different. Would I finally get to see a living, breathing resident of Obthorpe? I was almost excited as I passed the lonely sign just before the first house. I reached the first home, a small bungalow and I scanned it for signs of life. Apart from a car on the drive, there was nothing. Next door there’s a second bungalow. Another car on the drive, a window open but, again, nothing.

I continued past the larger houses, and a farm building but yet again nothing. It was a nice, sunny day for heavens sake but no-one was out in their vast gardens and no farmer could be seen, despite a tractor parked next to a barn. No farmer, no pigs, cows, horses, chickens, alpacas, nothing.

It was then that I became aware of something else that was peculiar. It was just so quiet. Apart from the aforementioned breeze there was no birdsong. I’d not noticed that before. There are trees but nothing chirping away within them. It’s May. My garden is alive with birds of all different shapes and sizes but in Obthorpe they’ve all flown the nest.

I bravely took a few photos of this ghost town before carrying on my way, looking behind me in case someone, anyone, suddenly appeared. After about a mile or two I reached the next village along, Wilsthorpe. I was immediately aware of birdsong, people in their gardens, a baby rabbit hopping about in the hedgerow and, well, just life.

I would like to think that Obthorpe isn’t as unsettling as it appears. I’m sure there must be people that live there. You may even know someone, but I suspect you don’t. Obthorpe is an enigma, a façade if you will, most likely for something sinister. I noticed this time that up a short track in the middle of Obthorpe, about half a mile away, marked with ‘Keep Out’ and ‘Private’ signs are two black barns. I’ll repeat that, black barns. Who paints their barns black, apart from some kind of comic book super villain?

Mark my words, something odd is afoot in Obthorpe. The conspiracy theory starts here. 

Wherever I Lay My Hat........

I don’t know whether it’s nature or nurture but somewhere deep within me there’s a Romany spirit. Not in a Big Fat Gypsy Wedding kind of way, I’m not likely to buy a caravan or aggressively manhandle women in a car park; it’s more wanderlust.

One thing I’ve learnt about myself over the past few months is how easily I settle into a routine, and that makes the flighty part of my brain quite cross, and so I always have that urge to up sticks and see another part of the world.

I suppose I could have gone backpacking when I was a younger chap but it didn’t appeal. At the tender age of 17 I’d discovered beer and girls and the thought of holing up in a bivouac in a desert didn’t seem as appealing as the new world I was exploring in my own back yard. It’s also not about just visiting somewhere, but moving lock, stock and barrel somewhere for a year or two, and to really live somewhere, warts and all.

I can only guess this may have something to do with the fact that I lived in three places before the age of 12. To a young and expanding mind this sets out the stall for how you live your life, constantly on the move. That need for a change of surroundings becomes the routine.

I never really moved that far, but there was always a change of school involved, and so that created challenges in maintaining friendships and having a sense of place, but I don’t think it harmed me. If anything it made me less clingy to one location because my childhood memories were scattered around.

So, for no good reason I’ve compiled a quick assessment of Hayward Homes past and present. All the places I lived and the ups and downs. Or the downs and ups, we’ll see how it pans out.

Calbourne, Isle of Wight

Technically I didn’t live in Calbourne, I lived at a place called, according to the map, Five Houses, but Calbourne was the nearest village. There weren’t actually five houses there. There were two and one of those as I’ve mentioned before was haunted. Also, the place was overrun with spiders, woodlice and other creepy crawlies, it was a good bike ride to get to my friends’ houses and there was an Alsatian who used to come and shout at me. 

On the plus side however there were fields, and countryside, and so many places for a young lad to play. Farmers’ fields were just massive play areas and I have very fond memories of the place. Had I reached my teenage years there it would have probably driven me insane as there was nothing much to do, unless I was going to become a farmer, but that didn’t happen, which is a relief as I can’t milk a cow and the smell of manure turns my stomach, so all to the good.

Nursling, Hampshire

Technically I didn’t live in Nursling either, but again it was the nearest village. I lived on Foxes Lane. It’s not there anymore; it’s now a B&Q car park. When I did live there though it was like Calbourne but with added fun. A motorway had split Nursling in half and we were on the abandoned side. Next to our house was a steep embankment. This could only mean one thing; a length of blue string tied to a tree meant that I had a makeshift abseil rope.

Behind our house there was a patch of what we called ‘the wasteland’ where I used to play with friends. It was a fairly uneven patch of land but the tour de force was what appeared to be a large crater. Many hours were spent speculating what may have caused it, a crashed spaceship being our favourite option, and we’d go searching for the aliens that were obviously now hidden out in the nearby Industrial Estate.

There was plenty of countryside on our doorstep, and a railway track, amazing for someone who came from the Isle of Wight. I accept that there’s a railway line on the Island but not like this one. These were exciting trains that went to exotic destinations, like ‘that there London’. There were some horses in a field opposite the house who I used to feed cow parsley to (not sure if I was supposed to), and there was an abandoned road we discovered where we could cycle up and down with abandon. Also, when I got older and braver (about 10) and my parents were out, I could cycle to Redbridge station and catch a train to Southampton on my own. My parents never knew, and that’s what made it all the more exciting.

Totton, Hampshire

Totton felt amazing when I arrived there as a tender 11 year old. It was only a normal town with houses, and streets and shops but I’d never lived in one before. When I finally left, in my twenties, I realised I’d been there too long as I’d grown to hate it. Everything about it just seemed to annoy me, the miserable, ageing shopping precinct, the large Asda dominating the town centre with the same faces behind the tills that were there when I was a kid, and the lack of a decent public house, one that wasn’t filled with aggressive track-suited chavs, all meant that I still to this day slightly resent visiting it.

It did, however, have its plus points. All my friends were a stone’s throw away, it’s close to Southampton and public transport links were, in my day, good. Having a big Asda was actually quite handy, and I was always slightly impressed by Eling Quay. There’s Totton looking a bit run down and sad, but walk a couple of streets and there’s Eling with it’s boats and church, and tide mill, and pubs. It was an incongruous sight, but a very welcome one.

Leicester, Leicestershire

I loved Leicester. On the surface it’s a fairly standard East Midlands city but it became my home when I chose to go to university there in the 90s, to the point that my visits home during the holidays became less and less frequent.

I can’t pinpoint what I loved exactly, maybe it was the convenience of a city, the freedom to be away from my folks, the many wonderful pubs, the many friends I made, a lot of whom were residents of that fine city rather than my fellow students. The only reason I left was because I ended up living on my own in a grim studio flat after my degree course, flitting between temp jobs, and I realised I needed to save some money, but it was a wrench and I remained a very frequent visitor for the next couple of years.

After years of pining for Leicester I recently realised that the flame has dimmed and it’s been consigned to the back of my mind as being ‘that place I used to live’. Leicester has changed, the pubs I drank in have closed and, in some cases, bulldozed to make way for the future, and with it my memories and fondness have faded, just a little.

Sheffield, South Yorkshire

Sheffield was the city I cheated on Leicester with. I made new friends, drank in new pubs, and rode on the tram system, even once going as far as Halfway just to see what was there. Not much, as it turned out.

I’m fond of Sheffield and for some reason it felt like a thrill to live there but I’m a sucker for dramatic views, and my bedroom window in the attic of an old stone house on a hill meant I could see all across the city below and all the way up the hill on the other side. It was magnificent.

The atmosphere of the city was always great and of course Meadowhall is on your doorstep for all your retail opportunities. Myself and the present Mrs Hayward were tempted to move here after I finished my course, but she got offered a job near her home in Peterborough and so fate played a hand in my next move.

Stamford, Lincolnshire

When the (at the time) future Mrs Hayward and I first moved in together it was in a little house by Stamford railway station. In the brief 18 months or so we lived there we got married so I have a lot of fond memories of that time. I also have a memory of streaking naked around the little court of houses we lived in, so ecstatic was I that Rowetta had been voted out of The X Factor. I may have had a little bit of alcohol before venturing on this scheme and the amount of heart attacks I caused to our elderly neighbours is unrecorded.

I still love Stamford, it’s a beautiful looking town and I would move back there in a heartbeat. The only down side is the cost of houses. For the same price as our barely two bedroomed house by the station, you could buy a good sized family house in, somewhere, er, well, like…..

Bourne, Lincolnshire

Ah yes, the hometown of the present Mrs Hayward. Say what you like about it, and I often do, it’s a nice little town with a couple of decent pubs and a motor racing heritage that was celebrated the other weekend with a cavalcade of old cars being driven by the likes of Damon Hill and Sir Jackie Stewart.

There’s also nothing nicer than driving back home after a day in ‘that there London’ to the tranquillity of the countryside. I don’t have to lie in bed at night listening to lorries rumbling past or police sirens or goods trains loaded up with gravel, the most you hear in the dead of night is the occasional Owl hooting in the distance. OK, so one night a Fox was outside screeching and it scared the be’jesus out of me but that’s about it.

The slight downside is the travel. If you want to go anywhere you have to drive for half an hour before you come to a decent road, and if you want to catch a train you have to travel back in time to the 1950s as the line has now long since gone. If you want to catch a bus you can, but only on every second Tuesday, and then only if the moon is on the wane. Bourne. You’ll never leave.

So that’s it. That’s where I am. In deepest darkest rural Lincolnshire. Those itchy feet though, they’re getting itchier, and no amount of athlete’s foot spray is going to cure that. The Romany in me wants to hitch up his caravan and move on. Time to stick a pin in a map and see where I end up? Perhaps, but I suspect that if I suggest leaving Bourne to the present Mrs Hayward she might just stick a pin in me. Ouch!!