Leaving Oldton

Hi Tim, I used to live in Oldton until I was around seven or eight years old. I still remember the day we left, being woken early one morning and after some confusion I recall watching the streets and fields where I loved to play scroll past the grimy passenger window of a bulging removal lorry.

I later discovered my mother had looked out the window some months earlier and saw me sitting on the curb chatting with some friends. With good intentions she then decided we could all benefit from a more stimulating environment, one with more opportunities for our development.

The place we went to you couldn't sit on the kerb and I never really had real friends or nice neighbours to chat with. I then started to learn how cold the world was and I hoped it was all a dream. Ah yes a dream, but as the years went on I realised this was more and more unlikely, however there is a little part of me that still hopes I may awake from this vivid nightmare in which I imagine I am a disconnected middle aged man and back to my little wallpapered room in Oldton.

Maybe Oldton never went away Tim, perhaps we've all still there, lots of boys and girls asleep in our little beds, dreaming of changes, time and events which take us further away. I do hope so as at least there is a tiny chance we can return.....especially for one little lad, who I still cry for now sometimes. Many thanks,

Rik

Comments

[Jonny]

Thinking back to Oldton, it now seems to me like some strange dream, or that moment between asleep and awake on a summer morning, when the light breaks through closed curtains and falls onto my face. I now live in London, and the grind of every day life slowly rasps away at these delicate memories of my childhood in the rolling fields surrounding Oldton.

What was the name of the friendly Butcher? I used to play with his daughter, innocent and sweet; young and full of dreams.

Where are they now?

[timw]

Jonny

not sure what the butcher's name was, but we do have - from Douglas - a photo of his shop: http://timwright.typepad.com/your_oldton/2004/06/the_butchers.html