RUEFUL REPOST: MEDITATIONS On BEGINNINGS & ENDINGS...

It may come as no surprise to any of you, but from a very early age I was much given to looking back on the past.  My remembered past, obviously, as I wasn't interested in or capable of reminiscing about events which pre-dated either myself or my ability to recall them.  When, aged five, I moved from one house to another just a few short minutes away, I made it a point to return to my previous street on a regular basis so I could re-experience the nearby woods in which I'd once played and again take in the expansive view from the top of the hill.

Over the years (and houses and neighbourhoods), I always found it comforting to return to the places of my youth and reconnect with them from time to time, and for almost the first three decades of my life, most of these hallowed haunts remained essentially unchanged.  Each time, the experience was akin to the hushed awe and reverential atmosphere so exquisitely described in The PIPER At The GATES Of DAWN chapter in Scottish-born author KENNETH GRAHAME's beautiful book, The WIND In The WILLOWS, first published in 1908.

It was almost like returning to the dawn of creation, when everything must have seemed magical and mystical, and from which every living thing derives its strength and power.  Revisiting the environs of my early childhood recharged and revitalised me in some way, but it also somehow made events from even only a few years before seem like a far-distant era - at the exact same time as making them, paradoxically, closer than a lover's kiss.  I suppose, to a seven year old, three years is more than half one's remembered life, and perhaps half one's life seems just as long or as short at any age.  Does that make any sense?

   

Then things started to change.  First it was lampposts being supplanted by newer, thinner models, placed on the inside of the pavements instead of at the kerbs.  Then it was the paving stones, replaced with tarmacadam, dark and dismal in the gloom of the night.  Next, it was building on fields and green areas, and the removal of swing-parks, resulting in open, spacious, well-planned neighbourhoods being transformed into crowded, claustrophobic, concrete ghettoes.

Earlier this evening I decided to retrace a certain route to my first primary school.  Sometimes, as children, we'd take a detour into a swing-park and then through some woods which led to the school.  The swing-park is an empty space and the trees were cut down some years ago, the fallen giants now littering the overgrown trail they once used to shade.  On previous occasions over the years, visiting the area was like a pleasant journey into yesterday and a salve to my soul.  That these places could always be relied upon for the same simple welcome seemed like one of life's unchanging truths, but, alas, that is no longer the case.

I'd always thought, in my declining years, the locales of my boyhood would still exist and I'd be able to revisit them one last time, and find solace in the fact these spots would yet be around for future generations to enjoy similar experiences to my own.  I'm now only too well aware when my final bedtime comes, sadly, that won't be the case.  The only hope left to me is, should I awaken on 'the other side', I'll find all those familiar places waiting to greet me and welcome me home.

Night has fallen and the daylight seems a long way off.  Is that my name I faintly hear, carried on the whisper of the evening breeze? 

REVISED REPOST: HERE'S JOHNNY'S...

Once upon a time, in a mystical, faraway land called 'The Past', there existed a magical place of wonder called JOHNNY'S.  Nothing to do with anything you got in the barber's 'for the weekend', I assure you, but rather a shop in Gallowflat Street in Rutherglen, Scotland.

My grandparents (who I irreverently referred to as 'Grunt' and 'Grumpy' - shame on me) lived in Rutherglen in the early 1960s, and it was our well-established custom to visit them every Sunday.  We had to pass through Gallowflat Street en route to their house in Hamilton Road, and we invariably stopped outside Johnny's on the way.

Johnny's was a newsagents, confectioners, tobacconists - and, as well as other sundry items that such shops always stock, also sold toys.  Oh, what treasures teased, tempted and tortured both my brother and myself from within that toy and trinket-bedecked window display.  It was there (around 1963 or '64) that I first saw an AURORA PHANTOM Of The OPERA model kit, built and painted in all its blood-curdling, gruesome glory.

I well remember being fascinated by the desperate prisoner staring out pleadingly from behind the bars of a basement window on the model's base.  Deep lacerations in his arms had exposed the bones, and blazing red blood weeped from the wounds. What four year old boy wouldn't be captivated by such a gory and macabre sight?

A few years later (if memory serves - and why shouldn't it?  I pay it enough), Johnny's had moved to bigger premises a few doors along (The Hospice Shop, I think - in the 2nd photograph from the top), and it was there I obtained my second QUERCETTI FIREBALL XL5 parachute toy in 1968 or '69 (or even '70) for a mere 2/6d.  A bargain if ever there was one, because the one I got for Christmas back in 1962 or '63 cost 10/6d.  (Now it would cost far more.)

Ah, dear old Johnny's... now sadly long gone.  It must have been around the mid or late '70s it closed its doors for the final time, but I don't know for certain.  In 1964 or '65, my grandparents moved to the town in which we lived to be closer to us, and that late '60s visit to the shop was the last I can remember.  (Might've paid it a visit around 1971, but can't be sure.)

The featured photos were taken a good few years ago, when the original Johnny's premises were a flower shop (and may still be). The reason I took them was because 'Johnny's' name was still clearly visible under the painted green board above the new sign.  At least, in real life it was clear, it's a bit harder (but not impossible) to see it in the close-up photographs.

So, if you're around my age and are familiar with Rutherglen, you may well remember this legendary landmark.  Click on the pics to enlarge, click again for optimum size.  You should just be able to discern a hint of the name of that long-gone, much-missed shop from childhood, when, I wager, each of us used to think we had forever.

Here's to Johnny's... and to us.