Can one go to visit another decade? Can one get in the car, shut the door, slam on the stereo and time travel?
Today, I did. My eternally youthful husband and I travelled half way round the M25, the UK’s London orbital road, and as we drove, two decades fell away like so many unsubstantial dreams.
For it is twenty years this weekend since we moved to Tonbridge in Kent, land of oasthouses, orchards and hop fields, and began an eight year odyssey. The novelty of living with a like mind was endless and the adventures we got up to seemed, at the time, never ending.
Two extremely substantial realities were accompanying us. One is ten years old and one is seven, and while they were part of the sequel, volume one is a mystery.
We had no idea, as we arrived in a clanky red citroen with not two pennies to rub together, that it would be the start of a love affair with a place we made all our own.
Our first stop: Tonbridge High Street, a totally Kentish mixture of the profound and the fatuous. Its shabby upkeep belies the historical spine of the place.
Alongside the two-bit nick-nack shops and newsagents stands a stolid Norman castle, a Domesday diva built with golden stone. It presides over the Medway River; a humble waterway which never once swaggers despite the admirable access it has provided to the English Channel for friends and enemies alike.
Half way up the street is the celebrated ladies’ clothiers Dorothy Perkins, who have me to thank for a complete redecoration and electrics overhaul.
We were young, we were naive, and we had never really owned a washing machine before.
The flat above Dorothy Perkins was a find. At £375 per calendar month it suited our shallow purses, and as long as we ignored the story about the old gentleman who startled staff by dropping dead on the living room floor a couple of months earlier, there were no skeletons in the cupboard. It had many pluses.
It was close to every pub imaginable. If you leaned out of the window during the Christmas procession you could swipe Father Christmas’s hat. And Phil could walk the one minute to work in his slippers, which he did one one occasion.
One day in the holidays between teaching college terms, our new washing machine arrived.
Culloo cullay! Domestic appliances still had that shiny new Doris Day preppiness for me, because I had never owned any. Insanely, I was all eagerness to try the new arrival. The years of domestic slavery ahead were not even a twinkle in my dazzled eye.
But you see, there was this pipe.
I was unsure what it was there for but it seems sensible to estimate that water came out of it, probably after a wash had been completed, probably grubby, especially if the smalls had been part of the equation.
I pondered, deliciously. What to do?
It was not long before I had a simple solution. drape the pipe over the sink! Ingenious! I congratulated myself. You, my girl, come from a long line of engineers, and this solution is a clear example of this, I assured myself.
And then I put on the smalls, and, unbelievably, I went out.
I had a lovely time shopping. I mooched happily around the motley Tonbridge merchants and returned a spell later.
To find the shop girls from Dorothy Perkins were rushing in and out of my front door with soaking wet towels. My soaking wet towels. I blinked, trying momentarily to imagine what possible scenario could have ended in the staff of Dorothy Perkins, in a tizzy, in my house.
The Manageress filled me in. The washing cycle had ended, the smalls were pristine and the water made its excuses and left.
A force to be reckoned with, water, one that-naturally- moved my clever pipe diversion within the first seconds of flow, from the sink, to my floor. And my floor was DP’s ceiling.
Whoops.
The Manageress should have been irate, but she wasn’t; she was lovely to these two wet-behind-the-ears youngsters just starting out in life together. we’ll get a whole new refit out of this, she assured me, just you wait and see.
And they did.
It is just the first story with which we regaled the children, standing in the busy street, feeling for all the world as if we still lived there.
The tales of Doug the Hamster; of the day I came home to find my husband boiling roofing lead to make coins, using a rubber cats-eye mould; of my hen night, hours before my Berkshire wedding, when I lost the car keys and marooned us in Kent; well, they’ll just have to wait for another day….
Kate Shrewsday 
Visit another decade?Those of us in our early 60’s can do that. My generation is unique in that that experiences of my parents in the pre and post WW2 eras are with me, being exposed to films and music an personal anecdotes. I can also have a foot in the decades of my children having been a child of the 1960’s and not a fuddy dudd and can relate on a par in language understandable despite an alleged generational gap . The gap is narrow. But they have no interest in my past or the past of my parents and the past of history because they live only in the now of instant gratification. As a history teacher I can live in the past, the present and in the possibilities of the future simultaneously. From Cro-Magnon to Star Trek Enterprise, I am there.
History runs in the blood, Carl, does it not? Wonderful comment, Carl,, thank you. We are very lucky: Phil is a history grad, I adore history and the H-gene has passed on to the kids, who can’t get enough of it 🙂
The years flow by . . . faster than the swiftest river, don’t they, Kate?
Poignant memories remain, reminding us of the steps we’ve tread, but time herself has long since made her way down stream.
Glad that you enjoyed a flash-back with the “sequels.” 😀
I think time goes very fast indeed when one is happy, Nancy. It’s the only drawback to leading a charmed life.
children find these stories about their parents fascinating. now i feel like one of your children 😉
😀 Regaled with tales, Sidey…nothing like totalling a store to get the kids listening.
Haven’t we all flooded our homes at some time or other? Precious story for your children to store.
If only it were the only unmitigated disaster we have experienced, Cindy. The children will require memories like sponges…
Lovely reminiscence! Poor Dotty P
(Makes we want to visit Boston LIncs for a trip down memory lane.)
Time to get in the car, Pseu!
So you can go back.
Loved this; want more 🙂
😀 we’ve stayed overnight in Maidstone,’ Tilly….Wonder what today will being?
What a delicious story. I have been harking back myself, and writing bits and pieces from the past. ‘WHEN’ I start a blog, which I intend to do soon, I hope that the grandchildren, in particular, will find them of interest. Hopefully it will give them an insight into our lives and the society we grew up in.
Rosemary, I am looking forward to the day you start your blog – please let us all know here when you take the plunge! It’s such a good way to record memories.
Addictive, though….
Thanks for sharing the memory – lovely story.
😀 Unless you are then managing director of Dorothy Perkins!
I remember being gobsmacked at tales of my parents as regular people 🙂 Goodness knows what our wee ones will think of us in years to come!
I suspect they’ll be writing about us in their own blogs:-D
Those were the days, Kate! 😀
They were, Adee 🙂 I expect we’ll go back there to live someday.
You tell a story so well, Kate, and that they are so personal makes them all the richer. I can just imagine the scene of you returning to your nest to see shop girls running about with your towels.
My family, especially my dad, were prolific at telling family stories, of which there were many. We did the same with our girls, ignoring their rolling eyes and sighs of “yes, we’ve heard that one”. The funny thing is that, now that they are grown, they ask for them to be be told around the table and have started to tell their own versions of our lives. ’tis good.
‘Tis good indeed, Penny. I love it when you post some of your family stories which have an almost folkloric feel to them. To us on the other side of the pond, a Greek family growing up in the suburbs of Chicago is an occasion of endless interest. I hope one day your stories will be available to more than just your daily blogging visitors 🙂
Oh gosh, now I’m on pins and needles waiting to hear the rest of those stories! The washing machine saga had me in stitches…
I can look back at it and laugh, as they say, Ruth 😀 The van must have been outside that shop for three months afterwards, stripping and refitting!
How wonderful, Kate to take these trips and for you to take us with you in this way 😀 re the washing machine mishap – LOL in recognition
Glad you could come along, BB 🙂