A walk, memories and a dream.
Yesterday, after work, I decided to go for a little walk around the block.
The walk took me past a farm (well, where I live, all my walks do). As I passed the cowshed, I got a whiff of that cowshed smell.
And, with it, a flood of memories.
My Granny and Grandpa used to have a farm in Constantine, Cornwall.
Everytime I go past a cowshed, I have a vivid memory of watching the cows being milked and of seeing the young calfs.
Now, accordingy to my father, Grandpa sold his farm when I was 9 years old – strange that I should have such detailed memories.
Last night, I had a strange dream. Normally, I don’t remember my dreams but, this one is still with me, now – many, many hours later.
The dream started with me in the garage of the bungalow that Granny & Grandpa built after they sold their farm. I could smell the unique smell of Grandpa’s garage (for it was very much his) – a sort of mixture of Castrol engine oil and chicken feed – strange in that they didn’t keep chicken after they sold the farm.
Grandpa had a workbench in his garage and, as a boy, I was allowed to make things there. I’m not sure that I made anything useful out of the offcuts that I was allowed to cut up and nail together but, I do remember passing many happy hours trying.
In my dream, I saw the jars of old screws and nails that Grandpa had collected. It was only in the dream (30 years after the last time I had played carpenter in his garage), that I realised that the reason that all the screws had burred heads and that all the nails were bent – was because Granpa had rescued them from bits of wood that he was going to burn. No wonder those nails were so hard to hammer in (for a young boy, 30 years earlier) – no wonder none of my creations ever came to much!
I left the garage and went into the utility room. This was a small room that connected the garage to the bungalow. There was a coal scuttle there and cold, tiled floors. The steps were roughly rendered and my young boy’s legs often had scratches on them, as a result. It’s strange, the things that you remember, isn’t it? Granny used to grow her Geraniums in this room and, even now, just the sniff of a Geranium will take me back there.
Still in my dream, I walked into the bungalow and straight to Granny’s kitchen. Just as the garage was Grandpa’s, the kitchen was definitely Granny’s. Here (and now, aware that I was dreaming), I was assaulted by a seies of smells and tastes. First the smell (taste?) of over peppered bolied potatoes, the smell of pasties cooking in the Aga. The granny smell of Granny and the feel of her soft wrinkled skin. I could, somehow taste her Heavy Cake and her Saffron Cake, as well. I could, once again, taste the wonderful ham she used to buy, with a thick fatty edge (the sort we don’t get today). Her Coleman’s mustard (made from powder) and that big, blue mug of milky tea.
Finally, I walked into the living room and the fire was burning. I was alone in the bungalow but the fire had been lit. The crackle and the smell were just the same as they had been when I was a boy – nothing had changed. On the sideboard I could see all the family photographs (just as I can see them now) – the wedding photographs from the sixties, those horrible Christmas cards that my father used to make – all of us (brothers and sisters) wearing identical jumpers (knitted by Mum) – always taken on a Sunday morning when we had better things to do than line up for a painful photo (hoping that none of our friends would see us in our matching jumpers).
I knelt down in front of the fire (just as I would have done, 30 years before) and felt the warmth of it. And then I woke up.
It wasn’t a bad dream, it wasn’t a dream that worried me whilst I was having it and it doesn’t worry me now.
I just wonder why it happened. Perhaps all people have detailed dreams like this. I shall definitely be going for another walk past the farm, next week – perhaps I’ll go back to Constantine (in my dreams), as well. I do hope so.
All the best
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