Where we lived as children

We were travelling in the company of a friend a while ago, and talking about where we lived as children and growing up. I was born and brought up in Cambridge the population of which has always been inflated by the number of students living there for a good part of the year. It wasn’t/isn’t just the university, but the large number of other colleges and language schools which has always made it a busier place than the number of Cantabrigians would suggest. Where we lived was then on the edge of the city, the countryside a short distance away, and we were as near to some of the villages as the middle of town! There was some light industry, mostly very light industry when we were children, but the city was not that much different from the market town it had been from the middle ages.

Our friend had lived in the Midlands, not that far from Birmingham, and there was a lot more industrial processes of various sorts happening not far from where he lived. He spoke of looking out of his bedroom window at night, looking along the canal behind his house and seeing the fiery glow of furnaces in the darkness. We looked out of our bedroom window and saw stars, and a distant gentle glow of the city lights.

A tow path ran along beside the canal and horses pulled the laden barges along. He and his friends would walk along and then out into the countryside, walking for miles, with some snacks in their bags, and catching a bus home from wherever they got to. At one point the canal entered a tunnel and went under part of the town; the horses would be unhitched and led along until they reached the other side and met their barges again. The boys would do the same, the barges, meanwhile, passed through the tunnels by manpower; the men would lie on their backs on  top of the boat, and “walk” them through, their feet on the sides of the tunnel. “They took the ‘osses round while the bargees legged it through” he said. We had a tow path beside the River Cam, and many, many, many years ago, goods were brought up the river and taken down the river on barges pulled by horses – but this was way back before my grandparents were children. For my friend it was during his childhood, not generations before.

Our friend was very active and sporty as a lad – walking, running, football, the usual boys’ games and activities. I was too – cycling everywhere, to school, to swimming training, out into the countryside, exploring the villages. As well as cycling I swam and I canoed. Girls and boys played different sports – I think now I would have enjoyed cricket, I wasn’t bad at throwing or catching, I could run in short spurts, but of course it was largely unknown for women to play cricket. Our friend enjoyed footie, but only as a kick-about in the park. There was a proper pitch where they could play, until one morning they found it had collapsed – fallen into old eighteenth and nineteenth century coal mines. Thank goodness it had been at night, no telling how many lads might have gone down with the pitch if it had collapsed during the day!

My featured image is not of the Midlands, but the Fens.