Essentially the Only One

As my visits to England are separated by years, I often take the opportunity while there to revisit some place or area that once I held in great regard.

This year, I decided to stop in the Hampshire village of Bramshott. It was here that my grandparents had a home while I was a young child. I have fond memories of the old house and garden, so I was curious to see how it looked today.

I was on my way to Bishopstone in Wiltshire to meet my wife who was completing a walk along the Ridgeway, and by allowing a few extra hours and taking a southern detour, I could fit in a trip.

It was easy to follow the same route that I was carried over as child, heading out from Guildford through Godalming, down past Hindhead - bottlenecked as it ever was - and then exiting close to Liphook.

As I drove into the upper village, it looked exactly the same as I remembered it 40 odd years ago. I drove down the narrow lane that led past the church and came out onto the road that led to the driveway of the old house, Heronwater.
Just before reaching the stone bridge that crosses directly in front of the garden, I stopped the car and stepped out to walk. It was a gloomy gray day, with water in the air, and that peculiarly English light formed by cloud and rich green vegetation. I carried on to where the driveway began, and here I met a shock. What had been a open access gravel road up to the house was now gated and locked.

I looked more closely. On the brick gatepost was a key code touchpad and intercom, the only way of opening the gate. I looked around. High wire fences now enveloped the property. No more open access through the woods and garden that I and my sister played through as children.

A deep drainage ditch was being dug around the perimeter. Perhaps built only to cope with runoff water, it had an unfortunate impression of suggesting a moat, further isolating the house from its surroundings.

I walked around, trying to get a good view of the house. None was to be found. Only by peering through some overgrown trees could I make out out the building. It looked exactly as it always had, further increasing the jarring feelings that were generating within me.
I stood back and looked at the road and the stone bridge I used to splash under when I was a very small person.

Again, the landscape was unaltered. It was just as I had always pictured it.

With little else to do, I explored around the house but everywhere it either fenced off or overgrown. I returned to the bridge and to look on the little river where I would throw sticks from one side and rush excitedly to the other to see them pass under. I once spent hours doing this, but I didn't feel like it today.

As I stood there, several expensive BMWs, Mercedes and Land Rovers passed by. It all seemed very wealthy. It had been when I was a child, but much less ostentatiously and less dramatically removed from the surroundings. The gate and fence around Heronwater took on added symbolism as I contemplated this. I was beginning to feel a deep gulf between what was and had been.

In truth, there always is this gap in perception. 40 years is a long time, and much has changed even if the land has not. England, with its cherished and protected houses and lands, emphasizes this disparity far more than the more volatile United States where houses, fields and land have not yet developed the shielding barriers of history and track human activity much more closely.

I stood for a little while longer, looking away from the house into the field and wood on the other side of the bridge. As I looked, something caught my eye. It was a longhorn cow, much as I had recently seen in Scotland. This was new; clearly a change in farming practice.

I gazed at the cattle. Seeing that large animal in those familiar woods somehow comforted me. I can't explain how. But as I walked back to the car, I felt at ease.

It's funny how certain memories never go away, returning with such cyclical certainty that one can even predict under just what circumstances the memory will return. It's a bleak, rainy day here. Cold and forboding. A set of circumstances designed to bring back a specific class of recollections.

I began building model aircraft around the age of 8 or 9, and kept at it well into my teens. A second wave of construction impulses came over me in my late thirties/early forties resulting in this -


Unfortunately my enthusiasm for purchasing the models ran ahead of my actual building capabilities, leading to this!



Nevermind, I am sure I am not the only hobbiest who has gone a little too over the top with his pastime.

What these pictures do demonstrate is just how much pleasure and involvement I have gained from this hobby. So much so that certain powerful memories - such as those that returned today - revolve around these little plastic kits.

One the earliest I attempted was the Airfix model of Baron von Richthofen's Fokker Triplane. I must have been about 10 years old or so, and I was spending the days just after Christmas with my grandparents in their country cottage, Heronwater.

A beautiful house on some beautiful land near Liphook in Hampshire, England. For me - and my sister too - it was an oasis away from what was sometimes a tense and difficult time at home with my parents. How ignorant we become as adults to the emotional undercurrents that dominate a child's life. And how ignorant is a child to the concerns that can dominate his parents'.

But grandparents, somehow, escape this fate. Being older and more experienced, wiser in some things, but always more aware of the role of time in one's life, they can bypass many of the trials that can sabotage a young adult, and leap, unfettered, back into an appreciation of childhood. My grandfather, in particular, was adept at this. Not least because he lost his own mother when he was a boy and thus was prematurely thrust into a harsher world.

So I built my little model, fumbling uncertainly with the three wings and smudging the plastic with glue, in this atmosphere of almost supernatural peacefulness. The progress I made with it marked out the passing time, such that the final day there was the day I painted it bright red and applied the transfer decals.

Perfect, it was not, but it was my best effort thus far, and it gave me enormous pleasure in the making. Still, as the decals dried and I went to bed for the last night, a rising dread from the return home threatened to swamp my joys.

The following day was more than just a return home - it was an early morning journey back to the house and then straight onto school for a new term. I woke up that morning feeling physically sick and gathered up my things in a daze. With me came the model airplane.

We drove back to my parents' house and, in a moment of distraction, I moved too far across the seat and crushed the model. The undercarriage snapped off; one of the wings broke free of its struts. I picked it up, the bottom falling out of my morning. We arrived, I swiftly changed into my school uniform and my dad drove me to school.

Drawing up to the wall that surrounded it, I unbuckled, picked up my satchel, opened the door - and vomited.

Years later, of course, it seems of little import - compared to what Richthofen must have been felt as he prepared to take off once again to do battle, especially in his last days when injury and stress led to periods of nausea. But to a child, even small things are big, perhaps as big.