Mike Priestley: Who's Counting?

I was plunged into reflective mood the weekend before Christmas when my wife and I made a foray down into the local woods in search of holly. There weren't many berries about this year. What there were, though, were lots of memories.

These were the woods of oak and holly in which both of us had spent a lot of time during our growing-up years. We had played here when we were children. Later, we had done our courting here.

We had brought our children to picnic and to play in a special part of the wood during their young years. Here, as we strolled along the other day in an almost futile search for flashes of scarlet berries among the dark greenery, scenes from our past kept replaying.

In years gone by, cattle used to graze in this part of these ancient woods, keeping down the undergrowth by nibbling off the small shoots.

There was a large clearing where we used to go with the children on summer teatimes. It was a clearing flanked with holly bushes and guarded by two majestic chestnut trees which always dropped their fruit well before it had matured. In the middle of it was a large boulder and at one side a leaning tree with its trunk bent like a crooked elbow.

We used to run around this clearing, and jump on and off the boulder. My son, aged about seven, etched his initials on the bark of that malformed tree. For years afterwards, on every visit to the woods, we would go and seek it out.

It grew as he did, the letters becoming larger and less distinct with time as the bark shrank away from them.

The visit last week was the first for some time for the Priestley parents. With both our son and our daughter long gone from the nest, we decided to visit our special clearing to see what grandson Sam would find if we ever get round to taking him there for a picnic.

It was a clearing no longer. The cattle had long since stopped grazing in the wood. Every open space had been colonised by birch saplings which were now protecting the slower-growing shoots of oak and holly.

The boulder, sitting now in the middle of a birch copse, looked small and insignificant. But the crooked tree was as it had always been, growing parallel with the ground from its base before turning at right angles to reach for the sky.

We scoured its scarred trunk for our son's initials, but time and the weather had altered them so dramatically that we failed to recognise them.

The changes didn't destroy the memories, though. They are as clear as ever: of two young parents with most of a lifetime ahead of them, and two children shouting with excitement as they chased round a sunny clearing, clambered on a solitary boulder, or played hide and seek behind the holly bushes.

Both my wife and I have stayed close to our roots. Sometimes we have wondered whether we did the right thing, or if we shouldn't have moved off years ago to make a new life in a different place, leaving the baggage of the past behind.

But if we had, we would have denied ourselves the strange and satisfying feeling, though tinged with sadness, that affected both of us during that pre-Christmas search for holly along those familiar footpaths.

It was a sense of familiarity, of being as much a part of the ongoing, ageless history of that wood, in a very small way, as the trees that grow there: of us having made an impression on the place just as it had made its permanent mark on us.

It was, I suppose, a sense of belonging. And that, to some of us, is worth a lot.

The drawback, of course, is that it makes it all the harder when you feel you have no choice but to move on from the place where you have grown up and spent your life. But we'll face that if and when we get to it.

l Sorry about going all melancholy and mystical on you. It just sort of swept over me.

It just remains for me to wish a Happy New Year to the Who's Counting? crowd. Many thanks for your letters and your support during 1998. And that goes for Mildew, too.

I Don't Believe It!

Bushes which are allowed to grow out into pavements annoy reader Mrs B German, of Eccleshill, who has the honour of having the last moan of 1998 in this column (last except for Mrs Mildew, that is).

"I am dismayed at the thoughtlessness of many people who allow their hedges and large plants to overhang and even block the footpaths outside their homes," she writes. "I can only assume they step out of doors, into their cars, and never walk outside their own perimeters.

"We on the other hand do not have a car, and therefore walk to most places within reasonable walking distance.

"As an example, a journey to Morrison's store at Five Lane Ends takes us up Norman Grove, single file most of the way and even walking on the often muddy grass verge to allow people to pass, then down Norman Avenue, which is reasonably trouble-free and which permits me to have a conversation with my husband.

"Although we have been married over 50 years, I am sure the people whose homes we pass in single file believe we are not on speaking terms. Unfortunately the worst is yet to come: Norman Lane, busy with heavy traffic and the pavement completely overhung at one point by a huge honeysuckle bush which even in winter can scratch your eyes. Here, the only alternative is to walk in the road.

"Is there not some bye-law that can be put into force to prevent these dangerous obstacles? Or must we suffer an accident because of their property and then take legal action?"

I might be able to help you there, Mrs German. Some years ago Mrs Mildew and I allowed a hedge at the side of our house to overgrow into the snicket. We were sent a letter from the Highways Department saying they'd had complaints about it and asking us to trim it back. If we didn't, they'd do the job for us and send us a bill.

Needless to say, we promptly trimmed it back. So I suggest you ring the Highways Department and tell them about the problems on your route.

Mrs Mildew, who seldom rides when she can walk, has a complaint of her own about pavements. She gets really angry in winter when the Council rushes out to grit and clear the roads as soon as it snows but never does anything at all to the pavements. She reckons they're left in a treacherous condition until the thaw clears them, forcing more people to make short journeys by car instead of on foot.

Good point, Mrs Mildew.

And that's it for this year's grumbles. We've had a good, mixed crop of them. Please keep them rolling in during 1999. Drop a line to me, Hector Mildew, c/o Newsroom, T&A, Hall Ings, Bradford BD1 1JR, email me or leave any messages for me with Mike Priestley on (44) 0 1274 729511.

Yours Expectantly,

Hector Mildew

Enjoy Mike Priestley's Yorkshire Walks

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