By

Craig Ennew

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Thirteen: Jumping at the Cupboard Knobs

This week : Craig states the grim reality of Austerity in its gaunt face

Janus am I; oldest of potentates; / Forward I look, and backward, and below / I count, as god of avenues and gates, / The years that through my portals come and go.

From January by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Janus: god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, choices, duality, doorways, passages, endings.

Mortgages are agreed, estate agents twitch, solicitors procrastinate: the slow grind that is our move from Salisbury to West Lulworth rumbles on. Will we ever get there?

I find myself, Janus-like, looking back with nostalgia whilst looking ahead with more than a little excitement.

Before our time in the centre of Salisbury, we lived six miles north in a village called Upper Woodford. The Woodford Valley lies along the tourist trail between Stonehenge and the medieval city – a maze of country lanes that creep across rivers, past quaint thatches and Norman churches. Ours was a modest eighties barn conversion adjoined to four or five similar properties. Here, my wife fostered a loving relationship with both of my daughters; from here the two of us stepped out and got married. It was a time for regrouping, for finding ourselves, rather than one for reaching out to others. My younger daughter, now grown up, tells us still that she wished we’d stayed in Upper Woodford.

The party after the storm: the Salisbury house during Platinum Jubilee celebrations

Like its siblings, Lower and Middle Woodford, ours was less a village, more a scattering of houses and pubs along a winding road.  There was no hub, hence no strong sense of community.  The local pub, The Bridge, was more a stop for passing tourists rather than thirsty locals.  The only neighbours we knew were those in the adjoining barn conversations – most of them three, even four decades our senior.  We would step outside to discuss changes to waste collection days or the cost of emptying septic tanks.  On the odd occasion, Nancy and Selig – the octogenarian eccentrics next door – would have everyone over for an afternoon tipple on the grassy banks of their garden.

Everything changed on the day we moved into our house inside the right-road

When we moved into the centre of Salisbury, there was sense that we had not left much behind. But everything changed on the day we moved to our house inside the city ring-road. Growing up in North Wiltshire in the seventies, I’d lived on a housing estate made up of eighty, maybe a hundred houses. I could still tell you the names of the families who lived in each one – and most of their dogs too. Until we moved into Salisbury, I’d thought those days of community were long gone.

Within a week of moving, we knew the names of everyone who lived in the road; within two, we were on friendly terms with most.  I discovered that I was teaching the kid who lived next door (I had to turn a blind eye to the plumes of smoke that wafted over the garden fence) and the guy who lived in the house at the end of our road became our plumber.  The speed of acquaintances was such that, in the first few weeks, the guy a few doors down even helped us break into our own car when we locked the keys inside.  Coat-hangers and magnets were involved if you’re curious.  Things got more interesting, though, when the kids came along.

The Boy had come into our world in the Spring of 2013. Official adoption papers were signed just months after moving in, and our lives were to be changed forever by a very unique little bundle of energy. But first, a word about our location. Despite being central, our street is one even long-standing residents of Salisbury have rarely heard of. It runs behind the gardens of another road to loop back round again. Hence, it’s rarely a through-road, more an anonymous pocket of the city that remains quiet and curiously undisturbed.

So there was a time, about five or six years ago, when three or four families with similar-aged kids moved into our street and the one adjacent to it. It says something about Fate that, during this period, I happened to meet a new neighbour who was walking her dogs, only to find out in that inaugural chat that they were to be living on the same street with a son about to start the same school as The Boy, who was also adopted, and who was born in the very same week. The four of us and the boys remain special friends.

In the evenings after school and over weekends then, kids between four and fourteen would pour out onto the street, with barely a car ever passing through. Often, we’d leave the side gate open and just let them get on with it. When I stepped out check that The Boy was keeping out of mischief (rarely), it often struck me as a curiously old-fashioned scene: road surfaces crawling with garish chalk hopscotches; battered scooters and random sticks spread across pavements; grubby kids hurtling helmetless down the long incline of road towards a brick wall. There was something quaintly Victorian about what was, ironically a Victorian street. Modern life in sepia.

Invariably, kids together bring adults together. This was no truer than during the dark depths of Lockdown. When Anne Marie Plas imagined ‘Clap for the NHS’ – the first one being 28th March 2020 – I wonder if she knew just how much streets and local communities would come together each Friday at 8pm. After a couple of relatively po-faced trial runs and self-conscious rattling of pots and pans, it quickly became more of a social affair: away went the pans and out came wine coolers, firepits, camper chairs. We’d laugh and rib each other into the night – often with the kids still running feral around us. Everyone was out: young, old, infirm – for us it was a complete tonic in those dark days of Covid-19. Celebrations extended to street parties: the Platinum Jubilee two years later, the Coronation Bank Holiday the year after that – a blaze of patriotic bunting, raised glasses and Cool Britannia playlists that evoked the spirit of The Blitz. I don’t think many of us were particularly Royal-leaning – we just enjoyed the craic. In times of bleak uncertainty, with our wonderful neighbours by our side, it was good to be alive.

But kids grow up, neighbours move out, Time’s mighty cavalcade rolls on. We are lucky to have made some wonderful friends from those times – those whom we count among our closest now – special people we regularly share a bottle of wine or two with. We know that these are friendships that we will treasure however many miles may fall between us – friends with whom we’ve shared our fears and plans, with whom we’ve laughed and cried. We will have one more street party for them all. After that, we extend an open invitation to West Lulworth hoping that in return, we can occasionally visit our old stomping grounds.

In the meantime, like Janus, we look ahead. We are not churchgoers, but I might wriggle my way between the pews in the parish of West Lulworth to find new friendly faces. For sure, we’ll certainly seek more at the three or four drinking holes that the village by the cove has to offer – after all, not to do so would be unsociable.

There will be new friends to sit alongside our old ones, bookending happy lives.

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This post is dedicated to all of our cherished neighbours and friends. We’ll miss you, but we’ll keep in touch.

Frugal: Sharkey

©Craig Ennew 2024

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