A very Shopshire lad lost in a caravan park

I'm just gonna dip into this subject off an on in the blog over time, because I don't want to appear self indulgent, but is a kind of therapy for me that other readers may find interesting or amusing.

I noticed when I turned forty, almost like flicking a switch, the past really became not so much 'another country', as a vast continent inhabited by strange flora and fauna.
This sounds counter-intuitive on the one hand, the past should appear a bit stale, lived up, rinsed out, dulled and discarded - an old painting that is fixed forever.
But with middle-age I find my past is more like a huge old book, full of real prose, metaphor and symbolism - weird little synchronicity's and many angry and unquiet ghosts. Nothing is or was 'cast in stone', the past has become for me the most animated and movable of feast's. (Apologies if that last line sounds a bit cheesy.)

As I get older I have become a real scholar of this book, this is my project. The object of this ongoing exercise is to find out who I really am...or rather, how many persona I have been in the past, and is this me now, the final model?

I feel like I can't really know anything unless I can get a good interpretation, a decent grip on my past. I never felt the desire before, but then again, when you get past 40 the past starts to outweigh the future by sheer statistical volume like a melting iceberg - there's more underneath than on top. I guess I'm beginning to roll over!

I was born in a little wide place in the road, just outside Bridgenorth Shropshire. My paternal grandparents ran a little roadside cafe, caravan site, and Garage. It was my grandfathers mother who built the business up though, a strange, eccentric and rather formidable woman who died when I was about 6 years old.
The cafe and caravan park were situated on a natural plateau, a very lumpy rolling landscape of pink sandstone, thick scrub and woodland.

My grandparents house was built onto the side of the cafe (or rather the other way round), my uncle,aunt (my dad's sister) and cousin lived in a large pink pebble dashed house around 200 yards further along, and if you hopped over my cousin's garden you'd find yourself at a medium sized stone clad bungalow - the Tao of Dog family home. Everybody I knew worked in the various business's along with a few, very un-loyal, poorly paid staff.

The caravan site wound its way around the back of the large hill at the back of our houses, like a horseshoe shape, the front windows of a few vans could be seen glinting in the sun, like little beacons on the horizon.
Opposite, across the main road and the field was the Severn river and the hills behind it.

I know, I know, it sounds like a cross between a bucolic idyll, a 'Deliverance' style banjo strumming commune for the inbred and a bargain sun-seekers weekend getaway - it was actually all three in a way, but without the sexual incest, I think, I hope!

My father worked on a small free holding breeding pigs that daddy had set up for him on the land he owned near the bungalow, I think mostly to keep my dad out of trouble and use him as a slave - someone to own and whip when you're feeling a bit inadequate or drunk.

There was a lot of drinking. Actually, the quantity of drink seemed to be in direct proportion to the lack of money. It wasn't poverty by any means but there never seemed much cash flying around, everything was used up until it fell apart, make do and mend,no fancy holidays: we used to get a week in another tatty caravan park in North wales every year, a busman's holiday so to speak.

It was a strange childhood and better than a helluva lot of other kids I appreciate that, especially for the late 60's, early 70's.
That was the greater part of my childhood, surrounded by caravans with an ersatz holiday feel in a cold climate with no central heating, and the smell of ale and chips.
But this is my older self being more cynical and objective. Back then I was a total naive subjectivity, immersed in this odd world of fair weather transients, customers and 'tourists'.

The boy didn't really notice the smell of pigshit from the free holding, the reliance and addiction to drink that was the subtext of so many of the adults there, the dark depressions of my father and the 'still' unfathomable absences of my mother.

But there were so many things about that place that were magical also: The landscape and the freedom to roam ,fascinating and eccentric characters, and a feeling of being between worlds, being a watcher, waiting again for the summer season so the carnival can begin.

Future installments: The Flying saucer incident, 'OMO' the mythical killer pig,'my little Everest' and the seven trials of Action man!