So, now the challenge is closed I can say:
The picture is my sister Victoria. In the summer we went back to our childhood home — Oatlands Park in Weybridge, Surrey.
The mini roundabout and silver birch were just outside our old house in a cul-de-sac. I’m 51 now but the base of that tree has been Endor for my Star Wars figures as a 7-10 year old, and base for my Lego Space. It wasn’t ‘our’ tree but it felt like part of the family to the 3 Bean kids.
It’s been the start and finish post for many of the games we and the neighbourhood kids played in the 70s and 80s and is very special.
I took the pic on a midnight walk round Oatlands, which was Henry VIII’s hunting chase, and at one point his palace, and has countless local folktales about ghosts. The three of us experienced some odd stuff as kids there — some ghostly, others more Fortean and the midnight walk with Victoria was very special and we did a bit of crying. (I never wanted to move).
I say all this because without Oatlands I wouldn’t have developed the writing tastes I have; I spent my youth on the banks of Broadwater which is round the corner where I developed a love of Nature; particularly fish, birds and trees. In our back garden was a Boundary Stone and on Rogationtide the village would come to the house, through the garden to the back where the boundary stone was, and beat it with a stick. Called Beating the Boundary it’s an old old tradition that was aimed at setting the parish boundaries to ‘remind’ people where they were. In folklore, children were said to be held and banged on the stone (it looked like a miniature gravestone, just like those old milestones) but of course that never caught on.
The tradition had stopped due to earlier owners of the property but when we moved in in 1975, the church minister approached my parents and asked if they could resume the tradition. Which of course they did.
Some rambling musings for you.
Anyway; I’ve been sending your stories to my sister as they’ve been posted. When
@The Judge told me they’d chosen that particular picture of the ones I’d sent, she was delighted. And she’s really been touched by them. She was diagnosed with several forms of cancer and has been feeling low for the past two years ago so it’s been lovely for her to read these.
You wouldn’t think she’s ill. We went to the opening night of Madonna’s concert and we dressed up (duh, obvs) — this is her on tube (bewigged—she’s blonde really).
Anyway she wanted me to say thank you.
View attachment 111828View attachment 111829
