Signal failure

There was a time in the late nineties when I was working in Edinburgh and on a Friday afternoon I would drive south to pick up my daughters from their mum's before driving them down to the house I was renting in Beetham. Often I'd be quite tired by the time I collected them and, as our route took us very close to a child-friendly pub called the Old Station Inn, we'd sometimes stop there for tea. Milly and Izzy would disappear to the little play area, Charlie would stay and chat to me, and Hannah would do a bit of both.

This evening, I was early to pick up Dan and Abi from their mum's so I went for a little drive, exploring the lanes, and found myself by the Old Station Inn once again. It's been closed for a few years now and I pulled up in the car park, which is now overgrown and ornamented by bits of largely unidentifiable junk. 

I tool a little stroll 'round and took a picture of this old signal post. I spent a while working out where the old railway line can have run before deciding the post must have been moved here as a feature for the pub. (It did look very well bedded in, though.) It was funny standing there, overlapping with the past, remembering the girls scrabbling excitedly out of my car. What a shame we can't come back for old time's sake but sometimes you just can't, can't you?