Home is Where the Heart is

In the sunshine of Tuesday afternoon, I decided to go for a walk.  Nothing unusual there, of course; I try to get out at least once a week, maybe walking to the shops or to sit in the park for a few minutes before walking back; on this occasion I decided to go to the Common.  It's quite an extensive 'lung' in the middle of the Garden City, and its history goes back many centuries.  In one part the ridges and dips that can be seen are understood to be evidence of a medieval strip cultivation system.

My walk took me into an almost totally enclosed 'meadow' area, with a couple of trees in the midst.  Although quite close to the backs of houses that surround the Common, and within earshot of the open-air swimming pool, visually, I could have slipped back into a long-bygone age.  Peaceful tranquillity only partially describes the feelings I experienced.  From there, my chosen way home took me past the fragrant gardens of some of the early Garden City cottages, built just before the First World War.

Along the road, I noticed a sign I hadn't spotted before, indicating the presence of a playschool for the younger children living in that locality.  Alongside thoughts of frenetic mums trying to occupy their children during the long school holiday, my mind went back to my own early childhood on a housing estate, and the variety of things that might have occupied my own early summer days.  I muttered to myself as I walked along, 'Where is my home?' and then came the answer, 'Home is where the heart is.'

Perhaps it was with these thoughts still in the back of my mind that, the next morning, I realised that it would have been 75 summers ago that my uncle Charlie - whom I apparently closely resembled, as I had often been told as I grew up - had died while working on the Burma Railway as a prisoner of war.  Something made me check the actual date of his death - 21st August, 1943.  Tuesday was the 21st ... the anniversary.

Those walking thoughts now went back to a home that was a happy part of my childhood, not my own home, but that of my grandparents.  I would often be taken there - their house was just round the block from ours - and I came to look forward to such visits because it was quite likely that my cousin would be there as well, and we were often left to play together, while the grown-ups, our two mums and their mum, would get on with 'adult business' ... which was, of course, the real reason for the journey.  I believe that expression, 'Home is where the heart is' was originally '... where the hearth is'.

And Nanna's hearth was always a homely and welcoming place.  Beside her armchair was the wireless and above that, fixed to the wall, some bookshelves that could be accessed by climbing children willing to risk adult wrath!  Such exploits were sometimes rewarded, however, by being allowed to have some of the books down to read.  Although little of the contents would have been understood or appreciated by our young minds, the ability at least to read them was of no small benefit when we went to school!

As I look back I realise that, little more than ten years on from his death, there would still have been many memories in that home of our late uncle, plucked by the war from its midst in his early twenties.  One I clearly recall was a fretwork picture that he had made of RMS Queen Mary, although I don't remember where it used to hang.  He had built a cabinet for all his woodworking tools, which found its way into my teenage after the grandparents' home had been cleared.

Although Charlie died long before his sisters married, and many years before I was born, I can't remember a time when I was unaware of his existence.  The great loss they felt when he didn't return with his comrades at the end of the war was possibly prolonged because the three had been so close.  In a sense, he was still a very real part of their lives as I was growing up, and I'm sure that my physical resemblance to him played a significant part in my early life.  I have often said that my life began some years before I was born!