Anywhere...

More by accident than design I’ve been wandering around old haunts. The long, straight, tree-lined avenue, between Harewood and Collingham, where we used to collect conkers. The village hall in Pool, where I was a cub (“dyb, dyb, dyb, dob, dob, dob”), and where I won first prize in a model-making competition by entering a boat built by my old friend Howard, while he was on holiday. I still feel (a bit) guilty about that. The cricket pitch - ‘Bedquilts’ - near Adel Church, where I spent many happy summers playing cricket for Cardigan Road Methodists Cricket Club (which, on a show of hands at one AGM, became, simply, Cardigan Road Cricket Club, once the last Methodist had hung up his boots). We used to play a few other church teams: the Moortown Baptists and the Stanningley Satanists are two whose names spring to mind. 
 
The standing stone in a field near Yeadon, which dad took me to see many, many years ago. “From here", he said, "you can get to anywhere in the world”. I was stunned: "What? Anywhere?" "Anywhere", he confirmed, gravely. The implications were staggering to a young lad whose experience extended little further than house, garden and the nearby woodland that witnessed so many games and adventures. The world seemed to open out, like the petals of a flower, as my imagination took flight. The stone is still standing, though now it’s next to the roundabout at Yeadon Airport, long since re-badged as Leeds-Bradford Airport. At those moments when life seems to throw up more problems than opportunities it's good to remember that from here you can indeed get to "anywhere in the world”.

Clovelly, in Devon...