HOME COUNTRY
by
Bill Young
Bill Young decided to come back to Lincolnshire after living in Australia for 35 years. It was, to start with, just a trip down memory lane but after a month he decided to stay. Follow his re-entry into English society after all those years in Australia. It all began in the autumn of 2004. The CURRENT months instalment is first - previous ones are in ORDER.
DECEMBER
The imminent arrival of the Christmas holidays [2004] scared me stiff. I hadn’t spent enough time going out of my way to meet the local people, and with just a few weeks to go before Christmas I knew no one personally. I was looking at spending Christmas day alone, something I’d never done before. I had a few choices. I read in the Lincolnshire Gazette that a few hotels in Skegness offered a catered Christmas dinner and companionship to people alone on that day. I thought it was an excellent idea but not the kind of thing I wanted to be part of. It was coming down to just me and my newly acquired dog from the RSPCA - Reg.
The first few months in my new home went by rapidly. I bought more furniture, had a small gazebo installed in the garden, and had a local contractor do some additional work in the conservatory. I had a sales lady come in from Skegness who sold vertical blinds for a large company and had them fitted and installed. I had new carpet installed. And I set up my new computer and satellite TV. All was looking and feeling good, but, I was having no luck meeting people. I’m not the kind to go up to people and say: ‘Hi, my name’s Bill,’ prefering to sit at the end of the bar in the local pubs or at a table on my own and hope someone else says ‘Hi.’. Also I’m not a young man anymore! Anyone over 60 these days is in a class of their own, so every time someone came into the pub or bar I’d estimate their age and say to myself: ‘Yes Bill, she (or he) is more in your league.’ Most over 60’s have their own friends or spouses.
I trudged home on many occasions and decided that as Christmas was now just over a week away [2004] I’d stop looking for company and get on with planning the holidays alone. I bought a small tree and decorated it. I bought a small turkey, and promised Reg we’d dine extremely well. I bought fruit, nuts, chocolates, mince pies and a big Christmas pudding. Alone or not, I was not going to miss out on the food delights Christmas brings.
If you walk out of my front gate you’ll be on the beach front in less than two miles. The winds that blow in from across the North Sea are cold, and as long as you’re wrapped up from head to foot you’ll feel none the worse for those salty cold breezes hitting your face. How different from Australia I thought, where Christmas is spent sunbathing on the beach, not wrapped up like an eskimo. But there is something about spending Christmas where the snow falls and the winds whip up a cold chill. I looked out across the choppy sea and wondered, what’s the chance of seeing snow this Christmas. Reg and I gathered a few sticks of driftwood and a few bouquets of seaweed and headed home.
On the day before Christmas Eve I awoke to see tiny little snow flakes slowly drifting by my bedroom window. Reg leapt up from his bed and saw I was excited. I threw on a coat and gloves and rushed outside. There it was - snow. Not much, justs little flecks falling down from the sky as if they were in a Hollywood movie. I tried to make a snowball but there wasn’t enough. It melted. But it had come and it made my Christmas. Reg and I tucked into the turkey and all the trimmings and we both agreed that Christmas, with all its loneliness is still the best time of the year. And a merry one to you!
NOVEMBER
My new home, a delightful little bungalow in the true English style, being a simple one level red brick sort of square but cosy looking place, awaited me in the small village of Hannah close by to Alford, the town I was brought up in. As you know I had bought this new home of mine before I flew back to Australia to tie up all the loose ends of my long life there. All I needed to do now was collect the keys from the estate agent, whom I had called from Skegness the previous day, and begin my new residence. The keys were handed over to me at the agents office by the receptionist; my personal agent not being available, and she advised me that the electricity had not yet been turned on and I was to get myself into Alford and arrange that immediately. I was in no hurry and decided the first thing to do was to ‘take possession’ of my new abode.
It was just after the noon hour and the sun shone brightly over a wet road, lane, and driveway. The roof was a dark shiny wet and I detected a little steam rise off the roof as the sun warmed the world around me. I opened the gate to the garage, parked the car, took a long look through the lace curtains on the front window and went in under the porch and into the small but practical hall area. I knew a few old pieces of furniture would remain; having acquired a bunch of ‘furniture & fixtures’ for a few hundred pounds when I bought the house. On my immediate left was a small hall stand allowing for four coats, several umbrellas, and a rack on the bottom to place wet or muddy shoes on. An old runway carpet led from the front door through into the kitchen. On my right was the large ‘front room’ just before the hall zig-zagged to the right along the left wall of the kitchen, with one more room on my right, then a bathroom that took up the far right hand corner of the bungalow, and another room, being part conservatory on my left which joined up to an inner entrance to the kitchen. This area was a bedroom in the original building but the previous owner had made it into a two sided, glass walled southwest facing ceramic tiled floor conservatory. At a push I could see it could turn into a bedroom but immediately I had visions of a few bird cages being hung here and there. I was indeed truly happy with all I saw, except I didn’t see a whole lot of ‘furniture & fittings,’ so I reached for my pile of papers the agent had left for me, to see the lists of my new odds & ends. Hall table with rack, four carpets: bedroom, hall, kitchen, and a tiny one in the bathroom! Installed shower fixture and surround in the bathroom, and installed French doors in the conservatory. These were my ‘furniture & fittings,’ so I obviously needed to get me to a few showrooms, and quickly.
It was now getting on for about 2 pm and apart from being famished I needed to get the electricity turned-on and order some furniture. I did know these requirements would unfold this way, and having to ‘make-do’ is of course part of the fun. I needed everything, from kitchenware to tables & chairs, a bed, linen, and of course food. My first concern was the electricity, and at the board offices I was informed the ‘switch on’ would not be until the next day about 2 pm, as advised by the agent. Really? So this first night was to be candles, some pillows & blankets, some takeaway food, and a dog from the RSPCA.
PART ONE
Coming home was not an overnight decision. I’d been home many times since my wife Erica died some seven years ago. When she was alive she had no desire to return to England and only did so when her father, and soon after her mother who both passed away during the mid 1990’s. We went back together and it was hard to keep her interested whilst there, all she wanted was to get on a plane and fly back to Australia. This was never the case with me. I’d missed England a lot and all those little things you have to give up once you emigrate. She was a confirmed Australian with English roots, whilst I was a true Englishman living out my days in Australia. There was never conflict over this. We got along fine. After my mother died in 1988, when I went home on my own for the funeral, I returned to Australia convinced it was the last time I’d ever see Lincolnshire again.
Erica took ill in the late 1990’s and passed away with cancer in December 1999. We had no children, and no family to come out and join me for the funeral, only a few local friends mostly exPats like myself. After the funeral I had a bad time adjusting to her not being around, but never considered at that time to return to England for good. It was not until the beginning of 2001 that I got the idea a holiday back home looking up all my old haunts where I grew up would be fun. Early retirement was offered to me, so I took the ‘money’ and decided to make the expensive trip home, going in style without worrying about where the money was coming from. A return trip to England, from Australia, with all expenses considered, can reach $10,000.
A brand new wheely-bag, a brand new on-flight bag, a Qantas return ticket in the ‘business’ section, and a good car waiting for me at Heathrow saw me off on a holiday I had now looked forward to with the enthusiasm of a six year old going to the seaside. I left Australia as the late summer cooled things down, but arrived in England of course just as Spring was in its glory. The green fields, the busy freeways, and the neat row upon row of winding red brick houses greeted my view from the 747 window as we approached Heathrow, coming close to Windsor Castle itself. A roar, a screech of tires, a reversal of power, and we were on terra firma for the first time in 11 long hours. Here I was, in perhaps the busiest airport in the world about to go up town and explore the city I love, London, and more than ready to approach it all with a positive new attitude. Get off on the right foot I thought and not look for things you know won’t please you.
London, even after the sprawl and glamour of Sydney, is a whole new world of sights, sounds, and smells. Firstly, it’s always been there, as it is, with so very few changes. The parks, Kensington Park, Green Park, and Hyde Park have not changed that much since I worked in Oxford Street back in the late 1960’s when London was swinging, with The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Tom Jones, and a dozen more now world famous groups and singers. Little did I know that that day so long ago when I ate my sandwich lunch just off Rotten Row in Hyde Park that I’d be back 45 years later, doing the same thing, in the same park, and feeling the same great hustle and bustle.
London is all very well but my home ground is Lincolnshire, that flat, breezy, sunny county that very few people know much about or exactly where it is. If I asked you where Boston, Newark, New York and Bunker’s Hill were you’d no doubt say the USA, and rightly so, but all those town and city names were transported from England’s second largest county way back when Britons were sailing off to start colonies along the coast of North America. And finding Lincolnshire? Well for starters you go to The Wash just above Norfolk, through the fictitious Much-Binding-In-The-Marsh: it’s not really a real village but the name was ‘born’ by a writer for that BBC radio programme from a Lincolnshire village he lived in by the name of Welton Le Marsh, you continue up through where I lived and now live once again, Alford, finally finishing up in the once, biggest fishing port in the entire world, Grimsby. And we’ve only touched upon the east side of Lincolnshire.
But my pride in where I originated from before I set off for Australia has taken me slightly off course. Let’s get back to the details of my first solo trip home for puposes pleasureable. As I said I’ve been back to England many times, for family funerals mostly, but never for a holiday and a good look around all the places I lived in and all the places I’d never visited before I left for Australia. We go abroad and as the years go by we watch good British programmes on the TV and see many good films, and wonder sometimes how come we never saw that place, or that city, or that historic monument before. We become re-interested in our roots, our country of birth, our old way of life that now has progressed into a modern world where we seem to have no place. We’re bogged down by nostalgia, about the way things used to be, but nostalgia isn’t really about what life was once all about, it’s more about the passing of time, the loss of age. We think back to all those things that we did 30 or 40 years ago, not so much for the era past, more for the way we did them, when we were young. We had youth, we had challenge, we had a future that stretched out 50 years in front of us. And now, the race is run and the track of life is thundering under the glee and excitement of all those younger people. We’re in the paddock, after the race!
After a few days in London, eating that sandwich lunch in Hyde Park, walking around Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square, taking tea and a cheese roll (that hasn’t changed!) in a small cafe by the Embankment, I got into my rental car and headed north out of London. Ignoring the freeways that are the busy lifelines of this great country I took myself instead through the much lesser travelled roads to visit an email exchange friend I’d never met before, in Braintree, Essex. I stayed two nights with him and went on a local drive through the surrounding countryside visiting the Colne Valley railway and Hedingham Castle. Just like your ‘well take a look at that Billy-Jo’ I felt just like the American tourist that I saw so often in Australia. My email friend George had returned from Western Australia some seven years ago and had resettled back in with ease. It got me thinking. But first I must get on up to Lincolnshire and do my own look around my old Home Country.
PART TWO
One of my fondest memories as a child, and even well into my teens was the times we packed up our sandwiches and flasks of tea and went off to the seaside for the day. We lived in those days just outside of Bradford (West Yorkshire) and my mum and dad worked hard for a living but sundays in the summer were very special days. From June to well into August we’d all board the train on those special seaside day excursions they offered, and by 8 in the morning we were standing on a chilly platform, food and drinks packed, and all us kids (there were four of us) holding our buckets and spades and each one of us unable to stand still. Soon the train would come hissing into the station and dad would find us an empty or near empty compartment and we’d all pile in throwing our stuff up into the racks above the seats. Doors slammed, a whistle blew, the engine huffed and puffed, and we were on our way.
Our destination was always Morecombe where there were miles of sands and lots of entertainments. Our train made its way through Bingley, Skipton, Settle and High Bentham picking up lots of people just like us all dressed up and ready for a day by the sea. We chugged into Carnforth and went along the coast by Bolton le Sand and it was there we could see the sea. We opened the train door window and there would be great gushes of salty sea air, making us choke a little with its windy freshness. Then the train slowed, and we began to gather up our things, the train whistled a few times and sent up clouds of steam. We were there. Morecombe station, and the beginning of a day by the sea.
Along the front we’d all walk in loud excitement looking across the sandy beaches for a spot that would be ours for the day. ‘There’s a good place right there,’ yelled dad and soon we were on the sand eager to take off our shoes and socks and feel the delight of warm sand between our toes. Mum and dad found several deckchairs; for which dad paid a morning and afternoon fee of six pence each I think, and laid out the towels here and there and covering the bags with more towels to keep out the sand and the sun.
The order of the day began with a run down to the waters edge where we’d run into the sea jumping and splashing, still with our street clothes on but getting them wet was not a bother to mum or dad. Dad joined us, his pants rolled up to his knees, shirt sleeves rolled up, and his Marks & Spencer braces boldly visable. This was how the day began, with the sea around our toes and ankles. As the morning progressed, and it got warmer we’d change into our swim suits and go out further to where the sea rolled in over our waists causing us to gasp for breath. And soon we were swimming. We all swam well in our family, learning at school in the swimming classes but learning just as much here in the long shallows of a warm sea at Morecombe.
As noon approached and our appetites became enormous the tins of sandwiches would be opened and everything from luncheon meat to hard boiled eggs graced our midday meal. We had crisps, and homemade cup cakes, and all washed down with tea or warm lemonade. The afternoons went by in a haze of sun, sea, and sand, and soon it was time to pack up and go home. But nothing will ever beat our days out by the sea.
PART THREE
The entire coast of Lincolnshire from Skegness to Grimsby is sands. All sands. Nothing but sands. When exPats remarked to me in Australia that Britain was all pebble beaches (like most of the south coast) I would ask them if they’d ever been to Lincolnshire. Most didn’t know exactly where it was. I’d reply it was east of Sheffield, north of Norfolk, and south of Yorkshire. ‘Oh are,’ they’d reply, and then follow up by saying,’Oh yes, never been there actually.’ And if you’re not from Lincolnshire then you’re among the very few who ever go there. Skegness has always been a popular seaside resort for those from ‘the Midlands’ but it’s always thought of as a ‘long train ride away.’
Continuing my fact-finding extended tour of my old home ground I drove up through Boston. I never noticed any mention in the city about its more well known sister city in the US, which is strange I thought. So many places in the US are named after cities and towns and even counties in Britain that I thought a monument somewhere in one of the many public gardens in Boston might remind people that this Boston is where a lot of the ‘founding fathers’ set off from. After all, they took with them Lincolnshires famed haricot beans, then added tomato sauce to them, and came up with ‘Boston baked beans.’ ‘Oh we have American tourists come through here,’ a waitress at the Skirbeck Cafe told me, ‘and they are surprised themselves there is no link of any sort.’ At nearby Fishtoft there is a small minor plaque that commemorates the departure from these parts by the ‘Pilgrim Fathers,’ but you’ll be hard-pressed to locate it.
From Boston I headed north through the flat lands of Friskney to Wainfleet All Saints. This is fen land, once called the ‘Hollow Land’ because of its marshes and long wind-blown reaches of sands and dunes. It’s very much like being in Holland around here, but it’s mostly used by duck hunters who love to decoy the birds in, then blast them to Kingdom come!
Skegness. Many a soft warm night was spent in my youth walking along the holiday packed streets with gaudy lights flashing their wares. The smell of fried onions, the call of the cockle & welk stall holders, the candy floss, and finally that aroma that will always remind me of this town - fish & chips! The Hippadrome boasted Dickie Valentine one year and Dusty Springfield the next. Accents abounded from Scouse to Yorkshire and Geordie. There was never a shortage of London accents, and now as I roamed the streets once more it seemed that London had moved north.
Skegness is still saturated with beach huts and caravan parks, and long sections of the coast are all concrete barricades against an often unruly North sea. Days can be full of sun that blows in from the sea and giving one a very quick sunburn, but the days can change to gloomy and grey, with windswept blown sand, and as Tennyson once noted this whole area can fill one with a dread of isolation and an odd sort of fear. But this is my county, and I know her moods and her seasons. Already I was thinking of how wonderful it would be to be back where the beginnings of my life beagan.
PART FOUR.
Enough about the fascinating history of Lincolnshire with all its well known characters from John Smith and Pocahontas, to Tennyson and the Puritans, let’s dwell more on my purpose for being here. My life began here, and in a Tennyson sort of poetic way I am considering it end here. I like to think I’ve come ‘home’ to retire, but first I have to get 35 years of being in Australia out of my system. I even talk with more than a nasally accent, and a local was quick to ask, ‘what part of Australia are you from?’ Listening to their unusual and only familiar to a knowledgeable ear, Lincolnshire accent, I was amazed to find how much Australian and even American lilt there is to it. Is it possible the American accent had its birth on the flat marshes of Lincolnshire, even going as far as Australia? Wherever those accents came from I’m sure some part of their sound comes from these parts.
Alford, the market town that at times is used to film outside locations for Dicken’s films; it being that old in parts, is gracious and restful. There is only one of the two windmills by Alford that is still working and it is all of five storeys high with five sail blades. But it is here in this peaceful old town I was born, all of 65 years ago. We lived in three different dwellings during the first 18 years of my life, with two remaining and one demolished and now with a collection of shops in its old location. The house of my birth is still the same structure but having had additions to the side and rear (conservatory) and all the windows are no longer creaky up & downers, today they are double-glazed and modern. The present owner seemed uninterested in letting me in.
The reluctance of that owner, a Mrs.Tate she advised me, is perhaps typical of the Lincolnshire character. Coming back to my homeland and birthplace is not all about being shocked by the changes but more about being reminded about how England can vary from town to town, and most definitely from county to county. Lincolnshire people have not changed since John Smith set sail in the 1600’s to set the stage for the expansion of the American colonies.
Lincolners are reserved, adept at staring a lot whilst you talk to them, not so much out of interest in what you are saying but more out of interest in who and what you are. They watch your affectations and afflictions. They trust the mouth more than the eyes, the latter they say are hardly the window to the soul when they’re tired and bloodshot. They pre-judge a lot. Your dress, walk, looks, and the interests of the individual tell them all they seem to want to know before you utter a word. Once you speak - you’re doomed! You are then labeled, filed, and put in your place! And coming back to Lincolnshire brought all this back home to me.
Aussies are a lot less picky. They’ll give you some ground, your own space, and they’ll allow for your imperfections and affectations. When they say ‘mate’ as they do to everyone it’s not always a throw-away line like ‘have a nice day.’ Aussies really mean it. You’re a ‘mate’ until you prove otherwise. Back here in Lincolnshire it’s a whole different ball game. Call anyone ‘mate’ here and they look you hard in the face and ask, ‘do we know each other?’ As they say in Yorkshire, there’s nowt as queer as folk.
PART FIVE
My personal get re-acquainted tour of Lincolnshire had brought me back to Alford, the town where I grew up in before I left for Australia some 35 years ago. And after several weeks of visiting the places I once knew so well I was arriving at a decision, that in itself, was not surprising. I had returned to Lincolnshire ostensibly to look at the possibility of returning for good, and as the weeks went by I was becoming convinced that this place, my homeland, was to be the place I should end my days. I had worried that my long stay in Australia had changed me, but it hadn’t. I had thought that I had out-grown my English roots, but I hadn’t. I had thought I would feel out of place back here in this ‘old country’ where things appear to change but deep down they don’t. All the encouragement I needed was around me. I must retire to Lincolnshire.
Alford, still old by many standards has changed enough for me to want to be close to it, but not in it. Just a few miles northwest on the coast is a small town named Sandlands, a summer tourist haven that lives upto its name with miles of glorious sands, where beech huts abound and caravan parks and camping grounds are to be found from nearby Mablethorpe (a lovely friendly town with great seafood restaurants) all the way south to Chapel St.Leonards. I decided on Sandlands as my place to take up residence, and I began looking around for a suitable property, not too far from the sea but far enough to be out of the way of visiting holidaymakers. The choices were many and the prices were exceedingly favourable. In just four days I’d put in an offer on a small bungalow close to a village by the name of Hannah. It was a delightful, red-bricked house with yellow edged bay windows either side of a porched doorway. There was a driveway from a double gate that lead into a wider than usual garage, all decked out with shelving inside. I had two bedrooms and one small spare room, with a large front room in front, one side of the entrance, and the larger bedroom on the other side. The kitchen was quite large with an ‘island’ and the bathroom was about as modern as you can get these days, even by Aussie standards. I told the agent I had to get back to Australia to finalize things there, so I needed to know if I had a deal. The days dragged on. A week went by, and I was about to give up when he called to say it was a done deal. I signed the papers, wrote a few cheques, and told him to get everything completed because I had to fly back to Australia in two days.
Back in OZ I wasted little time in getting the house on the market, and indeed sold. I got a moving company to pack and ship a couple of crates, and I moved into a hotel by the airport. My plane was due out the following afternoon so I had plenty of time to do a most heart-wrenching thing I had to do - to say goodbye at Erica’s, my wife’s graveside. We came to Australia together, we had good times, and Australia was good to us but after she died my loneliness enshrouded my whole life and I had to get away. The next day I put a bunch of red roses at her marker, said a few words, and shed a few tears. I checked out of the hotel and checked in at the airport. Soon I was on my Qantas flight for London, looking down on the city as we sped skywards. Goodbye love. I’ll miss you.
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