The past returned

Recently I was in Norfolk, at the village where we used to live (the house has been sold, but my eldest brother and his family still live in the area). We had a big old flint farmhouse (half falling down and bought for £3,000 after the Second World War). Mostly we just used it at weekends and in the Summer, but I did live there with my grandparents for about two years when I was small and my mother was ill for a long time.

It was there that I first started school, going to the local Church of England infants school (flint building with two classrooms, thirty children, two teachers). A couple of weeks ago I was in the village, and happened to see a side door to the school was open – this was late in the evening when everyone was gone except for the cleaners. I asked one of the cleaners if they minded me having a look around, as I hadn’t been back since I left.

It all seemed very different – brightly painted walls, new furniture, carpets on the floor. It was only when I went out the back, to the gloomy entrance corridor, that the past returned to me with a force I was unprepared for. The corridor was completely unchanged – tiled floor, row of coat pegs (ridiculously low to the ground), picture of Jesus with the children of the world.


When I saw these coat pegs I felt I was six years old again.