Sunday 19th April - Holcot, Northamptonshire

This is where my grandmother lived in the sixties and seventies.

Back in those days, there was a chain-link fence between the garden and the "gitty", one of the little footpaths that connect the streets in the village, so everyone going past could see in. I'm not at all surprised that this has been replaced by a tall wooden fence, so this is the only picture I took of the house.

On several occasions I stayed there for a number of weeks at a time; when my parents were abroad, and when I was getting over a bad dose of measles, or was is chicken pox? I usually slept in the room to the right, under the tiled roof, with the window in the gable end. It was furnished with a single bed, chair, and an ugly sixties cocktail cabinet which I thought made a very special desk. I expect there must have been other items in there as well.

The beds were covered with Indian print cotton cover; hand-printed? Probably. I wonder where all those went when she moved?

The window under the thatch was Oma's bedroom. Sometimes she had her bed at this end, sometimes under the window at the other end of the room, opposite the church.

I used to lie in bed and listen to the church clock chiming the quarter hours.

That's the old school behind the tree. It closed in the seventies, and Oma ran a youth club there for a while. The telephone box has become a book exchange.

I was surprised at how well I remembered the church, after nearly forty years. I remember Bert, the Churchwarden, having a battle with one of the candles on the choir screen at a Midnight Christmas Communion one year. It insisted on slowly revolving around its spike throughout the service.

I have played the organ. Back then it had a tracker action (probably still does) and an incredibly uneven and cranky keyboard. You needed strength and determination to play. They keyboard is only about four octaves.

I didn't know about the wall paintings behind the font, and I had forgotten about the crooked arch behind the Lady Chapel. 

There you have it.