The Long Long Walk

A Memory of Owslebury.

My memory of Owslebury goes back to the hot summer of 1937. I lived in Bishopstoke at that time, being a lad of nine years old. My father had just bought our first car, not a posh one and looking back I doubt if it would pass an MOT of today. It was a little red Austin 7 Nippy that had long passed its sell-by date, but it made us the only family in our street that had wheels and gave us the chance to get away from the village to visit places like the New Forest, Lepe and a favourite evening run to Owslebury. We would sit on a grass island in the road that had a water pump close to the village pub. Dad would go in and return with port and lemon for mother and himself and lemonade with cheesy biscuits or a packet of Smiths crisps where inside there was to be found a little blue paper screw of salt.
My sister and I would play around the pump and drank the cool sweet water from it on many occasions. It was that pump and its cool sweet water that was to become my undoing.
It took little time to drive there on a summer evening when dad had finished work, so one hot afternoon I told my good friend Bob Williams that I knew of this magical place called Owslebury that had a water pump that anyone could drink from and it tasted like lemonade. So off we went, taking along my little sister, to find this pump that distilled free cool lemonade. By the time we got to Fair Oak we were thirsty so the thought of free lemonade drove us on, although by now we were a little tired. We made it to Fishers Pond and I was sure this pump was just around the next corner but it wasn't. Driven now by a relentless thirst we drank from a ditch after shooing away the tiny 'boatmen' swimming on the surface. It tasted pretty awful so made us even more determind to sup from that magical pump in Shangrila. Perhaps after we shall live forever. We came to a turning off the main road that I recognised as leading to Shangrila but still a long way for little legs to travel. At last there was THE PUMP, shining and glistening in the sunshine like the holy grail, the goal of all our suffering, and when we drank from it we were not disappointed. It was indeed better than lemonade. I pumped whilst my little sister drank from cupped hands and then Bob pumped whilst I drank the silver nectar, then it was his turn. We sat for a while to nurse our legs and we had no idea of the time and that hot afternoon we saw no one to ask and it was then I realized that I had never seen anyone at Owslebury. There were cottages there and a pub. Did Dad go in and help himself? Was anyone living in the village? It all added to the mystery that children love to weave. We had just started for home and already I felt it cooler when I heard this terrible sound. It was the five o'clock hooter from Eastleigh railway works, and I knew then that Dad would be home expecting us kids to be washed and dressed ready for him to take us for our summer evening ride. It was no good thinking of running, even if we could, for we knew were far, far from home. After another fill up from the ditch we made Fair Oak square (I did not know the shortcut through Sandy Lane) and there was dad in his little red car, looking for us. He was not very pleased, I could tell. We clambered into the little car for it was a sports model and it had no doors and it was not long before we met the wrath of my mother. I remember feeling so hungry when she grabed me to drag me up the dark stairs telling me I was getting no tea. Now things like bringing up your children in those days were different and I remember her showering her love on me by blows to the head and for the first time in my young life I saw stars and flashes of light. I knew then what they meant in my comics -Bang, smack. wollop, ***!!!***.
The next week I did it again, a long with my old friend Bob and my sister, when we got to Shawford, but this time in pouring rain.
I'm now 81 and I'm still doing it. I've visited 16% of all the countries in the world, but not in an afternoon.
I did return to Owslebury a few years after and the pump was still there, but I still saw no one! Is there anyone there? If there is and you were in the village in 1937, let's hear from you.

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