My little bit of the world part VII

Coming ‘fucking’ home (part III).

.......At the last moment I changed my mind and veered off right down the little ginnel by the Craven Herald. It had been a long time since I had seen the canal. All those romantic walks after school, holding hands with boyfriends. Kissing behind the old Dewhurst’s Belle Vue mill where they made the ’Sylko’ thread well known once to generations of women.

Ironic that now much of their output is deemed politically incorrect. Some days if we were feeling especially naughty we would walk even further along the bank to Skipton Woods. Skimming stones, feeding the ducks the last of my sandwiches before I went home, the memories continued to flood back.


Today, there were no working barges just mobile holiday homes. As my youth reared up and enveloped me I paused to admire a beautifully decorated old coal barge.


Further along the canal a couple were taking a post-breakfast breather on the aft deck. He looked pleased with himself as he mentally stripped me; she on the other hand carried the demeanour of a woman who had been seriously short-changed.




The barge hire business seemed to be doing well....




....and I cut up behind the new brassy chip shop and back onto the Broughton Road, pausing to admire the Cock and Bottle and its old pub sign creaking lazily in the breeze. Yes ‘Cock and Bottle‘ seemed an apt description for what went on in there some nights I mused. Round the corner and back into the High Street heading for Rackham’s department store.

The Women’s department was still upstairs. Some things hadn’t changed ‘Principles,’ ‘Alexon’ etc still aimed themselves unerringly at the blousy, middle-aged market, but having said that, they at least had begun to recognise there were now younger people with money who wanted to look like they didn’t always dress at Next. With a wedding in October coming up, I soon found myself a classy skirt and jacket…. the downside was it was going to swallow my fee for the two-day watercolour course. Oh well I reasoned, I could be dead tomorrow… and what were credit cards for anyway?

Casually swinging my glossy designer bag, I made for the restaurant. I was contemplating a scone with jam to go with my cappuccino when a familiar voice drew me up short.

‘Saffron!!!..??’
Instinctively I quickly put down the plate I was clutching with a clatter and spun around.

‘Yes Miss!’ I responded in what was a long-forgotten, conditioned reflex.
‘How are you keeping young lady?’ My still stern-faced Mathematics teacher enquired.

‘Very well Miss! And yourself?’

‘Can’t complain young lady! What are you doing these days’

‘Working as a photographer and a painter Miss.’

‘Sorry!’ My old teacher's expression suggested she was far from ‘sorry’ and was more redolent of someone who had just trodden in something unmentionable.

‘A photographer and a painter! I’ve always……….’

‘You’re joking!’ her eyes had become the size of saucers.

‘No Miss!’ I decided I had to stop calling her ‘Miss’ After all I was now a woman in my own right. Somehow, I seemed unable to convince myself of the fact.

‘My best maths student!!!’ Her look of incredulity had taken a turn for the worse.
The sinking feeling returned. I began to feel coming back to Skipton was a bad idea.

‘Oh Saffron!’ Then as though I might have missed the exclamation, she repeated it. ‘Oh Saffron!’ Fleetingly she reminded me my girlfriend. Nope! Somehow this was different. ‘Oh Saffron! How could you? What a waste!!!’

‘I’ve always fancied working for myself,’ I mumbled. My pioneering entrepreneurial spirit was clearly having no impact whatsoever.

‘Our best maths student in years. Oh Saffron! What a waste!’ She shook her head sadly.

‘I really enjoy what I do,’ I offered lamely. Clearly personal happiness didn’t count.

‘Oh Saffron! What a terrible waste. You could have gone far…’ Unexpectedly she seemed to brighten. I don’t know why, but it made me feel even more nervous. In fact, she’d always made me feel nervous when I was at school. Her smile began to expand. She was staring down at my left hand clutching the tray.
‘Thank God that’s one mistake you haven’t made.’ Briefly, she laughed in a dry, cracked sort of way before expelling a cloud of dust. Briefly she laid her hand on mine.
‘I would have given anything for a brain like yours,’ she mused more to herself than to me. ‘Good-bye Saffron! I know you’ll come good in the end.’ She added reassuringly.

‘Good-bye Miss’ I watched her disappear into the bulging clothes stands of Alexon’s finest and then found myself a window seat where I could drink my coffee. Christ! I must have been mad giving up my job as a scientist to do this!!!!!!

I sat and looked out the window forlornly hoping I might see one of my old friends. Prior to the department store being called Rackhams it had enjoyed the delightful sobriquet of 'Brown Muffs.' A name that was still stamped on the old EPNS cutlery. I sniggered into my Cappuccino and continued to look out the window. (to be continued)

ginnel = narrow passageway between two buildings