My Hurley

From the age of 48 hours until I was about 18yrs I lived and grew up in Hurley.  I have done my fair share of moving around not only England but the world.  From the busy, bright lights of London to spectacular, solitary mountains of New Zealand.  Now all grown up at age 45, or as grown up as I'm probably ever going to get.  Of all the places I've lived Hurley takes some beating.  I now visit regularly to spend time with mum and dad and walk my dog, taking wonderful trips down memory lane as I clamber over stys and fields I played in as a child.  Enjoying them all over again.  As I leave Cheshire where I now live, I drive that last little bit of the M42 exiting along the lane telling me I'm heading for Kingsbury.  I pass the vets at Dunton Island where Tiggy the cat got the snip.  Past the Dug Outs now known as Kingsbury water park, memories of having a whale of a time with my best pals, who to this day I am still good pals with.  I like to think that's what happens when you grow up in a tightly knit community.  Doesn't have to be a village.  But I have to admit I do consider myself one of the luckier people in life cos I got to grow up in the loveliest of little villages.  I'm now passing Greenies house and heading for the bridge.  This brings memories of us all walking to the High School in protest that the school bus fares were either going to be introduced or going up.  I really don't remember, it meant a day off school.  Passing the firing range - not sure why but this place always seemed like if you drove down that lane you would be driving for hours.  It was a place on my door step but a million miles from me.  Guns were not part of my childhood experience, and for me that's just the way it should be.  Now turning the corner that last stretch and past Miss Whitworth's place and remembering crashing backwards into her enormous breasts as she bellowed netball instructions at us in the Hurley school playground.  Now passing the rolling rapeseed fields, worthy of a mention in any book of splendid scenes from around the world.  I've well and truly arrived.  There she is, mum at the kitchen sink, no doubt washing up yet another set of mugs from the never ending flow of PG Tips.  This sight always makes me think of the time our Wend was preparing to enter the world.  I was not an atheletic child but those last few days before Wend was born I ran like the clappers all the way down the hill from school in anticipation that she had finally arrived and there mum would be at that kitchen sink.  She finally made her entrance into the world.  She, Sheila and I were aware mum had gone into labour early hours of the morning and the pair of us praying at this point that she could hold off until lunchtime and maybe we would get the day off school.  No such luck.  8 o'clock she arrived and we were packed off to school.  By the time I got to school I was so overcome with happiness and excitment at having a new baby sister I burst into tears in the playground bubbling "me mums had a baby".  As a child I don't think you are generally aware of what other adults in your community think of your family.  I look back now and would imagine some people thought we, or rather my Dad, was somewhat eccentric what with the boat and it's full mast constantly erect so he could hear the guide ropes whirring in the wind, sat beneath mum and dad's bedroom window looking over the back garden.  The best ever tree house, apart from that nail that always caught your knickers as you swooshed down the slide, it was usually Karen that that happened to.  Dad always in the garage repairing the lastest second hand green mini or constructing that old Bedford van we all went to France in, what a sight that thing was.  I can honestly say I cannot think of a better place to have grown up than in My Hurley.  How very proud I am to tell folk now where I grew up.