A Child's Memories Of Eynsham

A Memory of Eynsham.

I lived in Eynsham for just 6 months when I was 9 years old.  My mother was doing her health visitor training in Oxford and so from Monday to Friday we lived in a rented cottage in the village and I attended the local school.  At the weekends, we returned to the family home in Stafford.  I have such happy and vivid memories of that episode in my life; it seemed to me that we had stepped back in time to some bygone era.  I shared a bed with my mother - the mattress was made of horsehair and it was lumpy and tickly.  We had a paraffin stove that made me feel sick at times, I did not like the smell.

I would fetch the bread from the bakery and see it being taken from the ovens on spatulas on long poles.  I would walk to school through the alleyways between the thatched cottages.  

The school was wonderful - having come from a large town school, it was a different world.   I seem to remember that there were circus children there for a time and this proved to be very entertaining in PE lessons when we watched them using the trapeze in the gym.  At playtimes, the headteacher would unlock the shed in the playground, it was full of all sorts of exciting play equipment and I learnt to walk on stilts.  

All I can remember is that I wanted that time to last for ever, it was one of the happiest times in my childhood.  I don't suppose that Eynsham is quite the same now and maybe I should not revisit it.  Let memories remain as they were.