Visiting My Home Town

I've had a few days off sick because of a cold that seemed more than a cold and more like bronchitis. It's gone now. Yesterday I took a drive north and visited my home town, Stockport, stood on the spot where I was born. walked the field of my youth, drove roads of my paper round and looked down on the old mills along the Mersey river. I felt nothing but gratitude for my parents and the sacrifices they made to lay a path for my future. Filming was pleasure for me because the evocative fondness I had in feelings there just flooded in one after then other.

Stockport is not so pretty. You can't say it is, but though it has no redeeming prettiness it's the child's perspective of good that cuts through to the core beyond the bad. Standing, riding, walking, running, listening, smelling took me into pockets of silent appreciation and then the arm-raising expression of visible thanks of the goodness expressed in your growing years that matter. In Stockport I became a woodworker equipped to start a life so enriched I would never have thought it possible. My background was poor in many ways but so rich I doubt that many would see such richness in their lifetime.

There were people there that really impressed me. Young people. A car park attendant showed me how the system worked and told me things about payment I never saw before. Two graduates from university who were very kind to me told me about their work as an outlet providing markets for dozens of other graduates working in the same building to sell their new designs. A woman stopped as I was filming on the spot where I served my apprenticeship. We talked and I explained who I was and why I was filming. It was nice telling someone who knew nothing of me about who i was as a furniture maker. Cobbled streets and cast iron posts I remembered great detail of from my boyhood but that spot where i received instruction; now that spot meant something to me as did looking at the house where I was born and thought about my very first woodworking days.

Anyway, I did vlog and I do think I will be sharing soon.