My little part of the world part VII

Coming ‘fucking’ home (part II).

After parking in the car-park, with a mouth on me like a gorilla’s arm pit I headed for a reet good cuppa in the old café. Briefly I toyed with the menu but they had little for a girl with a weight problem. Later, thirst quenched I cut up behind the town hall and headed for the High Street. Initially it appeared unchanged. Reassured I headed up towards the Castle and then left onto the Grassington Road.


I knew exactly what I needed to salve my hunger – a Stanforths pork pie! Into the olde worlde shop where I used to queue with my friends on my way home from school. Scanning the serried ranks of warm pies I spotted one that took my fancy and after sharing a words with the girl behind the counter about the weather, I headed back to the High Street. Carefully nibbling my pie, my tongue toyed with the succulent jelly and I felt I wanted the sensation to last forever.


The rain was beginning to slacken to an intermittent drizzle; catching my reflection in a shop window, my hair was beginning to look like a bag full of rat’s tails somebody had stamped on. Not particularly enamoured with my bedraggled look I decided the best place to dry out was the Craven Herald Bookshop - my old home from home. Alas no joy! I checked and double checked, but it had gone, to be replaced by a Thornton’s Toffee Emporium. Books had been such a central part of my life as a child and young woman - all those hundreds of hours I had spent there browsing ! Now all gone!

I sighed and wondered again if I should have come back. Was this such a good idea? On reflection, I decided I had little choice. The water-colour course was only four miles up the Kendal Road. The bottom line was I could hardly avoid coming through Skipton. Either way, it seemed churlish not to stop and say hello to my birthplace. The town looked familiar and yet so different; it had become yet another ‘lost high-street‘. Like everywhere else in England the little local shops were vanishing to be swallowed up by the ‘big names’ and charity shops, at a stroke consigning proud historical towns to the slough of uniform blandness.


Fred Manby’s the ironmongers with the mahogany counter where I used to go with my dad to buy nails loose out of a sack, had gone, taken over by Phase Eight the purveyors of expensive clothes of doubtful quality. All that was left as a reminder of those halcyon days was Fred Manby’s clock on the wall. By now, I’d reached the bottom of the High Street having cut down through Sheep Street.



I was stood outside the Woolly Sheep, which seemed to have undergone a facelift - there had been a few times we had baled out of there legless. I toyed with the thought of a quick Timothy Taylor’s, but decided it was too early in the day. Besides, three hours from now I would need my wits about me if I was to be doing a watercolour demonstration. It was months since I had last held a watercolour brush…. not that I was panicking.


It was market day and despite the inclement weather, there were plenty of people milling about, although from their attire and grim, fatalistic expressions most looked like holidaymakers. I decided it must be the lurid T shirts and plastic sandals that gave them away. Nevertheless, I still hadn’t seen a familiar face. I crossed over the road and weaving my way through the markets stalls on the setts headed for the old Victorian colonnades of Craven Court.

‘Saffron!’

I executed the pedestrian equivalent of a handbrake turn, to find what Paul Simon once called a roly-poly, bat-faced girl, with rat-tailed, rain-drenched hair pushing a two-seater baby buggie.‘Yes!’ ‘It is you,’ she opined sagely wrinkling her freckled nose. I could do little else other than nod in agreement. It certainly felt like me. Despite racking my brains, I hadn’t a bald clue who she was. Surely this wasn’t one of my friends. Not unless they’d undergone major surgery? She must have been reading my mind.
‘You won’t remember me. I was in the year below you, but I remember you. Well I guess everyone remembers you,’ she added. Unsure what that meant, I opened my mouth, but it seemed futile. My erstwhile school companion was clearly in mid-flow.
‘Have your family come with you?’ she enquired.

‘No they moved away ages ago,’ I replied unthinkingly.

For some reason, she had a silly grin on her face. It was far too smug for my liking. ‘I meant your husband and children!’
One of her children ejected its dummy with a loud ‘phuttttt’ reminiscent of a bottle of badly corked wine. I watched as she retrieved it, wiped it on her sleeve and plugged it back into the gaping mouth.

‘Ermm I have neither,’ I advised, feeling suddenly incomplete.

‘Oh!’ she responded a tad too condescendingly for my liking. ‘Have you never fancied children? You’re older than me!’

Yes! That seemed to be the clincher. I felt like saying: ‘well that’s one of the problems of having a left-hand thread tha knows.’ but instead I simply shrugged.
Inexplicably, I felt I had let the side down. I suddenly knew what it was like to be a barren spinster. Her eyes took on a pitying look. She’d clearly got me down as a Jaffa. Thankfully, one of the snot-nosed children started bawling rendering further conversation pointless.

‘Nice seeing you after all these years,’ she shouted above the din.

‘You too!’ I responded. For the first time I understood why so many people phoned the Samaritans.

I watched her trundle away and the sinking feeling began to subsume me. Well, I consoled myself, at least my arse wasn’t as big as hers. If that’s what kids do for you, you can stuff it I mused. What I needed was some retail therapy. I continued up the High Street heading for Rackhams………….. to be continued

For those over The Pond.
dummy = comforter
Jaffa = seedless orange ie someone who is infertile.
Samaritans = Crisis help line for potential suicide cases.