No 163

Today has been one of those bitter sweet days. With my wife, I have driven back to my childhood home in Wiltshire, the first time for eight years in fact since my mum died.

Today was to say goodbye to an Aunty of mine who was a lovely lady.

This house with the green door next to the white one, was where I lived together with my grand parents and my mum until I was 17 when I left to join the Royal Marines. During the next nine years my life changed and I only went back again occasionally for leave, then I married had a family and settled down here in the west country.

After the service the family gathered and apart from one or two people I knew no one and a walk around the town which I no longer recognised made me realise that for one reason and another it was no longer the home town I had known

The last thing I did before leaving was to drive up the road where I used to walk home from school and stopped outside my old home and took this picture.

The drive home over familiar roads was quiet until my wife started to remember our journeys back to Devon and soon every gate way could tell a story.

My childhood home now only exists in my memory.