Remembering Royston

REMEMBERING ROYSTON

Remembering Day’s bakery and its pork pies, coffee cakes and tilted trays of fresh bread just off High Street and in front the haberdasher’s nook full of yarn and needles, then a mere mortal shuffle up Market Hill past Kennedy’s auction yard stands the school where I was infantile.

Across the market place, Norman Newlings unapostrophied undertaking. Norman’s apostrophied top hat and tails lead their handsome, if weary hearse down many a sad farewells’ memory lanes, both carriage and casket adorned with flowers from Pigg’s nursery and attended by Mr Green - part time fireman, pallbearer and owner of the High Street Toy shop.

Mr Green had born many up the Parish church path for a final sorrowful parting to later be reported in the Crow - a life become part of a list, so many words aged and dated allowing Mrs Kirkham to raise her eyebrows as she read of such passings behind the counter of her family’s Sweet Shop to then retell it as gossip to the neighbouring Kenzies prior to them unlatching the door of their Chippie for the lucrative lunchtime trade.

I was born and raised on a farm near Royston, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom, Planet Earth. My father was a Swansea contemporary and admirer of Dylan Thomas. Thomas is thought of for the most part as a poet but he also wrote radio plays and books as well and somehow my reminiscing here is a distant echo of those times up on Flint Hall Farm overlooking Royston when Dad would take it upon himself to rope in family and friends to record readings of Thomas’s portraits of parochial life in Wales such as Quite Early One Morning, Return Journey and Under Milkwood.