Gratitude...............................

Most of my adult life I have been grateful. First off I was very grateful for an almost idyllic childhood. If I put aside some of my feelings of inadequacy, maybe that's not the right word, lack of confidence. For example going into a strange place and someone laughs, I want to run and hide because I always feel that's something is wrong with me. Maybe too self conscious or self centered? I had no confidence whatsoever. That was not a part of what made childhood great. I spent a good deal of time on my own. Me and my Poodle pal Poppett. Our very first Poodle.

We would walk for miles, literally miles over the fields. No danger that I knew about back then. The village was small, a farming village lazy and quiet. During my childhood it began to change as they tore down the Tithe Barn and farm to make room for Londoners. They came to work at Vauxhall and other car factories, escaping the bombed out places in London and finding new lives and new work. That was not my concern at that time. It was "behind" the village itself and that remained unchanged.

When we moved to Bidwell Hill when I was about 4 I started to make some friends. My first was Jennifer Bright. She lived on the Hill too and was the same age. At that time there was an elderly couple living next door, Mr and Mrs Thompkins but later they moved and the MacDonalds moved in. Dawn was around my age, a little younger, but her bedroom was next to mine. We could tap on the wall or shout out the window and see each other. We even tried the cans on the strings thingie for a telephone. She loved to walk over the fields too so we were often together.
We were fortunate I suppose because farmers said not a thing to kids who would traipse through their fields. We knew though, we had been taught, you stay on the footpath and never ever damage crops. You shut gates and watch out for electric fences. I remember our first encounter with one of those. Mr Greens field of cows. So we stood and looked at it. Saw the box ticking, but we wondered what it would be like to touch it. We first got a stick, nothing happened. So I grabbed it in my hand, nothing......1 2 3 4 5 and bam. OK so it was not continuous it pulsed. Did not really hurt but gave a good jolt, enough to not want to repeat the experiment. I remember that same field of cows when one day I was there with Mick Bird and his little dog who shall remain nameless. Well we were walking through the field coming back from who knows where and the cows saw the dog. Cows being curious creatures started to run to us. So Mick and the dog ran and dived under the barbed wire fence and prickly hedge.................dive under he yells. I ran and ran, and the cows no doubt thinking I was running from something ran after me. The thundering herd..........I did run closer to the fence and eventually found a spot I could get under. Back then we wore dresses and I can only imagine the state I went home in sometimes.
Bluewaters

Mick and I were good friends until he reached the age when he was interested in other things and I was just a kid. So then Dawn and I did more together. I have said it often enough, back then my best friend was Margaret and we would hang out down her farm, Grove Farm. We had the run of the place and I learned so much about nature and farms and so on and yet.......we remained innocent of what actually went on with the animals once they left the farm. We figured they went to another home after the sheep were shorn and the baby cows got bigger.
It was the hens that gave us the most fun.
Grove Farm from the fields


Me in the hay with Poppett who went everywhere with me

Well, I probably lived a childhood much like my father and his father before him. Same village and not a lot of change. We went from gas lights to electric street lights. The one at the top of the steps that went from Bidwell estate down to Bedford road was always broken for some reason.

Well I won't tell but now know who did that. We have a page on Facebook that I run called Houghton Regis back in the day. My neighbours across the road had 4 boys and they had friends and you know how it is boys will be boys and that there electricity was new and all that. It is a wonder they grew up.
There was an old Mill in the village up behind Top School. It was just a relic in our day but I think every kid in the village tried to climb it. Then the Bluewaters, and abandoned chalk pit our most favourite place to play. The Baulk another favourite place with a river, actually a marsh from underground springs. All those places we made dens and were outside dawn to dusk. So many memories although I must say I didn't do half what my Dad did when he was a kid, if only I had known then.

As we got older my parents started to take family vacations with Ray and Dot (now Liz) to Norfolk and Margaret came with us. We had by that time discovered boys. That was about all we though about. One year we stayed in a cottage on the river Bure and it had a little summer house at the end of the garden on the river. Margaret and I stayed there. I wonder if my parents heard the smack of oars when boys would row by and maybe stop for a chat. We were a bit young to realize that it was probably not OK, but we were innocent then. We had some good vacations and always looked forwards to summer romances.
Me and Margaret by the summer house.

Mum, me and Margaret probably a year later than the one above.

We left school and started work, Margaret a year before me and because of that I didn't want to stay on at school and go for higher education. I had no ambition and no idea what I wanted to do. I was done with school and wanted to move on, no one discouraged me. I started work just after my 15th birthday. I met lifelong friends there over the years and for those I am forever grateful. Margaret and I and a new friend from work, Sheila would go out every weekend to the Cali (California ballroom) and we saw all the up and coming groups there. We went to concerts and when we wanted to stay out overnight we would stay at a married friends house. I still have all those same friends except for those who have passed on. To me friendship has been the very most important thing in life. They are a source of much gratitude for me.

The guy on the left yawning, was the one who wrote "the crying game"

Later after Margaret and Sheila were married and I had gone to London, I had Laura and moved back home. Then again my friends were all there for me. When Laura was probably about a year and I had been working for awhile I started to go out again and get my life back. When we started to go to the Airman's Club at Chicksands it was probably one of the happiest and most fun parts of life. I think all of us who went there feel the same. We all married Americans. I eventually moved to the States although my children were born in England. We always intended to go back but that never happened. Probably my only regret although, again, I met good and lasting friends here over the years. I do not like American politics and attitudes but love the country itself. I am always a nature girl and will always love the outdoors. I must say that England is much more friendly than it is here. We can not "roam" free like we did at home. So many restrictions.
Michigan is a beautiful place, at least it is up here where we live and again I am grateful for that.

I had never really wanted to come to the States, I had two other boyfriend who asked me to marry them but I didn't want to live in Pennsylvania or New York (State), I didn't want to move. Maybe had I known I would end up here I would not have married but we intended to live in England. It just didn't work out that way. The Lord knows what is best and I trust Him in that. Maybe had I stayed in England I would not have found my love of the Lord, the one who has seen me through troubles and trials that I could not have got through without Him in my life. So there is that and I do not believe in regrets............a waste of time. I just enjoy what I have without wishing and wanting more. Oh I have goals, dreams and plans but if they don't happen that is fine by me. Material things are just things, even though I am grateful for them. they say Gratitude makes what you have enough. I believe that. Look at the world and what is happening to people in Syria............I am so grateful to have lived when and where I have. I just wish others had been as blessed, although I do believe that attitude is everything. Life is a lesson to prepare us for eternity.
I am also grateful for my family, that really goes without saying. Although maybe not, a lot of people do not get along with family. I love mine. I do wish I could spend more time with my family back home, I do miss them and miss that I did not have a relationship with my cousins. Still Facebook has made it easy to stay in touch and again I am grateful for that. This is dragging on so maybe family will be another story.