I enjoy the company of others, just as most people do. I’m also ok on my own too – I have to be as a writer.
I always was able to amuse myself all on my own – by ‘amuse’ I mean get myself into trouble…
Down Sherwood Street, right at the bottom, just before the railway cutting, there were a number of fields. Sometimes horses and ponies lived there and that was always a massive draw to me.
Sherwood Street was made up of mostly terraced houses, with one large house at the bottom of the street with a big back garden but in need of repair.
When I was 18 I kept my own horse there for a time.
This story happened before I was 18 – a long time before then.
The first field you came to at the bottom of Sherwood Street was a field with a steep slope and a stream at the bottom of the slope. The area around it became boggy quickly and wasn’t fun to play in.
Keeping to the top of the slope, the next field along opened out into what we called ‘humps and hollows’. In our dialect, that sounds more like ‘umps an’ ollars’.
Exploring those dips and rises, speculating on the cause of them was always fun. Some of the dips were big enough to hide in, some were big enough to hide us all.
Top left corner, you can see the dimples of some of the dips.
Paths and tracks couldn’t go straight because of the terrain but kids didn’t need to bother with tracks or paths. The fastest way to the pond beyond the field was straight over – up and down, through long grass and over short.
The pond, in spring teemed with frogs and frogspawn and, of course, tadpoles.
I can’t remember a year when I didn’t take some of the little creatures home with me to watch them grow, either in an old, discarded fish tank or in the little fibreglass pond we had.
Sometimes I’d catch tadpoles, but mostly, a handful of frogspawn made its way to my house.
I remember a story I read at school. The lad was dared to fill his wellyboots with frogspawn and walk in the squelchy mess.
That story fascinated, yet horrified me. What happened to the tadpoles in that frogspawn? Surely it must have hurt them?
Beyond the pond, a massive mound stood. It had been there for as long as I remember but we never played on it, it was too dangerous (even for me).
Sticky, clinging mud lay on the top of that mound, even in hot summers it was damp and sticky up there. If ever it dried out, the first drop of rain replenished it immediately. I suppose it could have been a spring or more likely, a burst pipe.
One day, I wandered down to the field and I was playing in the pond. Now don’t get me wrong, this was no idyllic willow-framed oasis, the pond was a filthy dumping ground for mattresses, car parts etc and it was slowly rusting down into the mud at the bottom.
The standing dare was to make it across to the clump of trees in the middle. Not many made it across there and the results were usually a thrashing from mum for getting so wet and filthy.
I was playing on the edges of the pond when I heard, “Help us!”
I looked around but saw no one.
“Help! Help us!”
I stood up and still couldn’t see who needed help.
The plea sounded like a couple of kids younger than myself.
I looked around some more and listened for the call again.
It was coming from right at the top of the mound.
Two little kids had decided to play on top of the mound and had become stuck in the mud.
I clambered to the top of the mound, keeping to the perimeter. Two little boys, quite a lot younger than me, both stuck.
What did I do? Did I run and fetch help?
Nope, they were only little, I was strong, I knew I could pull them both out.
I pulled ONE out. But then I was stuck.
My wellyboots sank into the mud faster than theirs did because I was heavier.
I got the smallest kid free and made him stand on the edge of the mound, where he was safe.
Trying to grab the other kid, I couldn’t reach him and my boot was stuck. If I’d pulled my foot out, I would lose my boot. So, I did what I should have done in the first place, I sent the little kid to go and fetch help.
The kid was frightened to go back home alone; they had just moved there and he wasn’t sure he knew the way. Luckily, they lived on Sherwood Street and he only had to remember the number of the house.
He didn’t like going past the big house at the bottom and it would appear his older brother had just about forced him to go past it on their way in.
The little kid had clambered down the mound and was just off up the field when it started raining.
So, there we were, on top of a mound of mud, with rain coming down on us. We were getting wetter and colder by the minute. The kid was crying and knew he’d be in so much trouble.
“Don’t worry, kid, your brother has gone to fetch help, we’ll be rescued soon.”
Not exactly ‘soon’, but rescue did arrive. The kids’ mother ran down the field with a spade in her hand. She managed to dig out her kid and sent him off up home. Then (thankfully) she prised me out of the mud – which had, by that time, gone up past my knees. She dug out my wellyboots too – bonus!
We all wended our cold, soaked-to-the-skin selves off up the field to her house, where she dried her kids, thanked me for trying to save the boys and gave me dry jeans to wear home.
What would have happened if I hadn’t been there that day?
The boys would certainly have been soaked to the skin. They would have been there a lot longer than they were.
No one passed us in the time we were there and it was starting to get dark by the time she freed us both.
By the time she missed the boys, it would have been dark. Getting help to look for them would have taken time. Hypothermia was a very real possibility.
They might have died.
Was I a hero? No. I was stupid and I was lucky.
I should have gone to fetch help, not get myself into danger.
Life lessons…