I drove here via Great Ouseburn, the village where my mother grew up. I have many happy memories of the place from my childhood, and wanted to take a last look at it. I doubt I'll have the opportunity to visit it again in the future.
I'd have loved to have walked through it, rekindling fond aspects of when I was a boy staying with my grandparents in the summer holidays, or spending the days around New Year's Eve in their snug little house. I didn't have the tine to revisit the village, though, just to drive through and take a look at the seat we put up in memory of my grandfather.
It's been there since 1989 and is getting shabby. It needs to be refurbished. Last time I visited, I emailed the council offering to pay, but got no response. Maybe I'll have to write an actual letter and send it through Royal Mail. I did pay for a refurbishment many years ago, which they undertook, but it needs sprucing up again.
The village is still basically as it was, but much has also changed. Pubs are houses, the old corn warehouse, which before that was a workhouse, is now houses. The old blacksmith's forge is now a house called "The Forge".
Places I'd have walked to if I had time: the metre-wide Tom Lane, next to the church wall that we were told 60 years ago was on the brink of collapsing (but never did); 8, Carr Side, where I lived for the first year of my life and have never seen since then as it's off the main road; the spring where the River Ouse starts, which is in a marshy area called the Seggins; the places where two shops used to be near the school, that aren't shops any more.
It was good to get a glimpse of the village, anyway. It's sad that I'll probably never return to it.
Sigh.