South Riding 11: Horsham

When I lived here it was not surrounding by all the fencing and keep-out notices. It is the old gatehouse to Denne Park and when I was there it stood open to the world beside the pathway. Now it is a closed-off private space, a privileged enclave.

Of course there was no way I could have ever afforded to live in such a place - except it was a shared rental. My wife and I rented the ground floor rooms but it was not self-contained.  The front door and hall were common with the person who lived upstairs and our rooms were just as open as any ground floor in any single occupancy house. Luckily the arrangement worked fine and it allowed us to live in an interesting building

I remember the 1976 summer of the heat and the drought and how lucky we were. Because of its thick stone walls it was always cool. Surrounded by open fields yet only a short walk from the town centre, it was the perfect place to spend a long hot summer. It was also here that my son was born and so it has some happy memories.

When I wrote about Sutton I mentioned my daughter was born in a large hospital. It took-over the birth: all monitoring machines and medical staff, with me banished to the waiting room. Horsham was very different: a small cottage hospital with just a midwife in attendance. I can remember two things very clearly. The first was indigestion: at lunch time the midwife had told me it would still be some time  so I should go and get something to eat. I went home and was half way through some sardines on toast when I got a call to say “come straight away!” Bike out, cycling at top speed, it was not long before I started to taste those fish again. The other thing was the oxygen. When my son was born he did not cry immediately so had to be given oxygen but the valve on the new cylinder was very tight and the midwife did not have the strength to open it. That had to be my job and probably it is the most direct contribution I have made to the births of any of my three children.

Horsham was also the place where I got back on a bike. I had not cycled for a number of years (since a previous bike had been stolen) but here I bought a new one specifically to commute to Crawley. I could have carried on with the train ( it was a perfectly easy journey) but I thought cycling would be more fun. I almost gave up though after my first ride, as I felt nauseous with the effort after such a long lay-off. But I was not put-off because I had experience to fall back on. The first training session of the season or hard ride after a lay-off had often left me feeling green. It soon passes though and I tended to think of it as an initiation rite into getting fit again. It was the same this time and the journey soon became routine.