Goodbye to Houghton
In a couple of days I will board a plane with my wife and dog to start another life in the USA. I have lived in a small English village in rural Cambridgeshire for the past twelve or so years. It is hard to remain in a place for so long without it affecting you.
I know some things about this place. I know where the feral hops grow and fruit each September. I know where bees nest in the bole of a willow, where the trout haunt under the cool shade of a bridge in the heat of the summer. Where the deer sleep in the tall grass of a meadow, the low, shadowed haunts of the muntjac, the old railway bed where the ambling badger builds its set. Where the fox and her kits live. The old willow the Cormorants roost as they wait for the sun’s drying light. The three staccato cries of the green woodpecker as it panic calls across some open space. The crow’s caw, chuckle of the jackdaw and the magpie’s call. Where the two aspens are found, the single eucalyptus, the rare wild service berry trees. A few great oaks. Banks of nettles green and menacing in the summer reduced to white slivered stalks in winter. The great bend of the River Great Ouse where one is most likely to see the Great Gray Heron. The small trout stream with nesting swans and where the rush cutters come to harvest fresh rushes to weave into mats in the early summer.
And I know something of the people here. Our wonderful neighbors to either side of us whom we consider one great blessing of our time here. Our previous neighbors who moved to the neighboring town. We all formed a social circle and a book club that involved more wine and conversation than book discussion. The ex-RAF Scotsman who with his childhood friends navigated abandoned mines with candles, torches, and a ball of string to find TNT and naturally the subsequent attempts to detonate it. A wonderfully warm and storied gentleman. Another man from London who seemed to me to be the village racist, I met him bleeding from a tangle with the barbed wire of the pasture.
Mollie’s dog walker so warm and caring of dogs, left in tears when she walked Mollie the last time. Countless small interactions and conversations in the village lanes and roads. The various dogs and their owners, Sherlock, Ozzie, Hudson, Oscar, Viking, Rusty, and uncountable other of Mollie’s playmates.
Here I was introduced to the peculiar institutions of English village life. And this is to say this was the celebration of quiet and interesting lives. The village fete, called feast week. A wedding anniversary in a marquee in the shared yard of our neighbors who were the celebrants. The last Guy Fawkes night for the neighbor who was dying of cancer, who bore the knowledge and affliction with such touching grace. A small celebration with fireworks with some of his family, a glass of wine on a cold damp November night surprisingly the mood brightened for no plausible reason but the congress of friends and family and a familiar comforting ritual. My first English funeral for the same great man whom I miss to this day. Sombre and dignified in the village church where this ceremony has been conducted uncounted times over the centuries. (My struggles with unfamiliar hymns.) His vast capacity for energy and engagement. Later the wedding of his wife to a lifelong friend of theirs. This new couple whom we would stay with out of their kindness and generosity on our last night in England. A tearful thankfulness for their provision of an island of normalcy in the chaos of an international move.
