Fresh Air and February

 "Fresh Air"

Filey Daughter with once small boys now large boys still manages to get them out for Fresh Air every weekend , whatever the windchill in Filey . They often go to Cayton Bay or walk to Hunmanby Gap but this weekend Filey Country park was as far as they got. It was so cold. 

I am remembering how every Sunday afternoon in all seasons  our father would walk us up East Carr Lane to Fewlass's farm . At the time it seemed a monotonous dreary walk , a gravel farm lane , a few Windbreak trees only at Mr Baston's small holding  but always the promise of Sunday tea round the fire from the tea trolley.

 Sixty years later I am remembering the Yellow hammers and Skylarks, and occasionally the excitement of the tractor going past, but very rarely . Sunday was the day of rest . Sutton Golf Course was at one side of the lane as we walked over the bridge of Holderness Drain, but that held no thrall . Father walked slowly and we three girls were dutiful and polite, no running around , just a sedate stroll as we stopped occasionally to listen to the Skylark and guess where it would land . 

If one approached what one thought  was the nest site the lark could pretend it had a broken wing and hop off in a direction far a way from the nest . We could only walk in the field when the gate was left open, but we seemed to spend what seemed like hours standing and watching , trying to spot where the Lark had got her nest . 

It all seems so  magical now with hindsight . 

I am reading a delightful book which recalls all walks down the lane, and later all the walks in the Cotswolds near Cotswold Farm , where we stayed so many times with our small children in the 70s and 80s, watching Barn Owls and listening to noisy hedgehogs.

 The book , Meadowland : the private life of an English field by  John Lewis-Stempel is a delight , and responsible for my private delightful recalls . I could never describe East Carr lane to you , or Haycombe cottages nearby fields, enough to delight you the way John Lewis -Stempel does. That is why I am a humble blogger and he the 2015 winner of the Wainwright Prize . 

Grandsons will thankfully remember their fresh air walks when they are my age, beaches, cliff tops , and bracing wind:lots of it. They go home to tea too, to a log burning fire and warm beds , and like me probably late remembered Sunday Night Homework . Here I remember Your hundred Best Tunes with Alan Keith ,the BBC radio programme of Sunday evening choice for me , sitting in isolation in the dining room .with my Algebra and Latin verbs  .

Today I took a stroll to the Allotments , walking spouse to the Doctors for a  scan , I  had an hour alone before walking him back . I was glad he chose to walk, I would have taken the car , but he tried out pushing my Aged parent's Sholley on the icy pavements. I carried on with it to the plot , the Sholley being laden with heavy water bottles for hot drinks , prior to the Taps being on again. I loved being the first person to tread the snow. 

It too was a magical place. No rat footprints into the shed thankfully after my recent infestation, the Asparagus beds all snug under their straw , the temperature in the greenhouse at minus 1. 

I had hoped for the hot beds to be HOT but all my reading, planning and preparing has come to nothing . I shall have to try again . My friend Nigel has got his hot beds up to 47 degrees . I'm envious, but its Lent so I am going to learn from it.

Posts within Posts, Self Promotion without shame

View North Saltshouse Road from Newlands 260  c1965

View East from Newlands 260 Saltshouse Road  1965

History is happening in Facebook groups . I belong to several Facebook groups where people post photos of the places they remember and talk about them . Mu own experience started when our plumber started the group Photos of Filey Old and New . I am not a Filonian , and have only lived here for 23 years, but I do like to know about the houses and streets around me  and the characters that have given a place a certain Identity, real or imagined.

Cover pic of 'The Hull Connection' 

 One never knows if heresay is correct, and so the most people who discuss a place or an event , the more likely there will be agreement as to  the accuracy of the   remembered records of the past. I know that even though I was not born here I know a great deal about the recent past of 25 years, because I am part of it. I remember well now because I am not yet too old . 

Its very important to me that shared experiences are recorded for posterity if they are of common interest. I am enjoying the Listening Project on BBC. That too is recording History , not of facts about places necessarily , but about how that nation engages in talking to one another. 

And so too I am enjoying all the photos shared on another Facebook Group called Old Hull. A Hullesian I most certainly am. I was born in the Inchgarvie Nursing home in Albert Avenue, and we lived in a flat In Marlborough Avenue until 1953 when my parents bought some land from Mr Baston of Sutton and had Sewells build a house for us. Today Mike Savage posted an old photo of Saltshouse Road. It showed all the 1930s Houses built just North of Sutton Annexe Hospital.
 It has a link with Filey too, as Im sure that when the Princess Royal came to open the Annexe it was about the same time she opened the Royal Parade in Filey. We stood outside our house in Sutton and waved at her, and thought of our friend Margaret Spooner who would be giving her the bouquet at the hospital,  privilege of being the daughter of the builder no doubt .

I left home to go to college when I was 18, and never again
lived at home, a sister still lives in Sutton Village, and my interest in the history of the village and of Old Hull has never flagged. As Hull heads for it City Of Culture status its so important it realises not only where it has come from but why it is the way it is.  I have had such joy from a book of Poetry I picked up recently called The Hull Collection.

A list of my Sutton on Hull and East Riding blog posts;

Hull Blitz

East Carr Lane 

Crisps and Chips

South Riding 

Philip Larkin

Hull Hell and Halifax

Felix Mendelssohn,His part in my life

A city on the East Coast