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.

South Riding 3: Colliers Wood to Sutton

The next stage from Colliers Wood to Sutton may only have been a few miles but it represented a gap of 19 years and a separate world. When I lived in Sutton I was in my 20s, married, with an infant son, getting in on with work and my own nuclear family. I never thought of visiting the place of my childhood, even though I was close, mentally it seemed very remote. It might be a sign of age that I am now going back, trying to knit together the different phases of my life, whereas when I was younger I was only concerned with what was in front of me, immersed in day-to-day life. Changes and continuities, both personally and in general, now fascinate me. It is for example one of the reasons I love running by my canal because along it I can see the traces of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Anyway if I am looking for threads on this journey this section has one so thick it is the size of a cable: St Helliers, Carshalton, was the hospital where both myself and my elder daughter were born. This would not be unusual in fixed communities where generations of families stayed put; but we had moved about. It is almost random chance we share a birthplace.

As I cycled nearby I wondered how my father got there to visit my mother during her stay. At the time he had no car, so he must have gone by bus but it would have been an awkward journey and I don’t know how long it would have taken or how he managed his work day. It is a small detail but one I will never know. I do know that at the time the National Health Service treated new fathers almost as if they were a nuisance which had to be managed. St Helliers is a big hospital and the maternity unit was round the back, via a convoluted route. Fathers were allowed only one hour visiting time, strictly enforced, but timed not from arrival at the ward but from when the front gates swung open. All the new fathers used to gather outside and then run to the ward so they could spend as much of the hour as possible with their wives and new babies.

It is in such details that we can see some of the big changes in social attitudes.

My parents are both dead and I can no longer ask about the details of their lives: neither their lives before children nor the things I didn't notice as a child. I regret I did not ask enough, was not interested enough, when I was younger. I regret they both died comparatively young.

These thoughts washed over me as I cycled this section of my route. A wave of sadness on an otherwise an enjoyable day.