South Riding 8: Salfords

This was an odd house: a semi detached with the two halves built at different times. Ours was built in the 1960s and attached to a much older cottage.

The original house was on an enormous plot of land that was divided in two, as a result we had a very long but thin garden, big enough to be divided into several areas. We had a rockery with alpines, a small pond, lawn, flower area, and vegetables. The trouble was both my wife and I were working, with commutes, and did not have enough time to look after it properly, so it gave both pleasure and dissatisfaction in equal measure.

But the dissatisfaction loomed large when we moved house as we were very concerned not have too large a garden. We were too conservative about what we could manage and as a result our present garden is a little bit too small. So this house is one part of a moral lesson: when making decisions do not over compensate (in other words put your concerns in perspective).

When I think about the garden I also think of a couple of accidents: me on unstable steps, trimming the hedge and falling gracelessly into the pond. No serious damage was done so I emerged damp, rather sheepish and acutely aware of my dumb streak. The other was my wife being speared by a long shard of thorn that lodged so firmly it hung from her hand like a dagger. We went to the the nearest A&E and then waited for hours. People came in after us and were treated beforehand but we still waited. When we were seen the doctor was surprised to see half a branch hanging from the hand and the extent of the injury. He remarked that the admissions nurse described it as a splinter and so it had been given a low priority. Sometimes forget how much the health service has improved over the past 10 years.

There is also a lesson in that experience: definitions matter and you have to be vigilant when being defined by someone else.

Not only was the house a bit odd, Salfords itself is not easy to characterise. It seems one of those places identified as being between other towns or en route to somewhere else. Sometimes all the traffic stops and then it feels very quiet. I remember this sense of stillness in the aftermath of the great storm of 1987. For several days fallen trees stopped the trains and road traffic was also badly hampered. I used to go to the footbridge over the railway just to listen to the sound of emptiness. Luckily our house wasn’t damaged and so my main memory was how it brought the street together. We were all outside looking around, talking to each other, trying to make sense of what had happened. As the electricity was down, those with gas cookers offered to make tea for those of us who totally electric.

The devastation was great and the surrounding woodlands and forests lost a lot of trees. I can remember a load of people on the television and radio getting hugely sentimental about the trees. But every so often things need to be cleared and renewed. I actually think places like Ashdown Forest were improved by the storm.

That is another moral: every so often things have to be cleared and renewed and that applies just as much to habits and attitudes as it does to landscape and structures.

Wow three lessons from one visit! I had no idea that this house would be so instructive.