Upminster & Stock

Slideshow

I watched the commuter walk past, not giving one of the finest examples of a Smock windmill dated 1803 still remaining in England, a second glance. Why would she? I too had seen this very sight ever day during my teens as my then home ran alongside it and my convent school in front of it. We would play hockey on the freezing grounds on which the windmill sat during the bleak winter months wearing our short hockey skirts and long navy socks. That was, when we weren't wearing ties. Two strange things about Convent life.

I sheltered from the drizzling rain with the boys in St Laurence's Church just down the road from the windmill and the rain then fell harder once we were inside and kept us longer, looking at the Stations of the Cross and the headstones nestled in the cold walls of the Grade I listed structure before the short stroll to the windmill. I have no doubt Mum and Dad were worried about the boys becoming soaked, and perhaps me too since I was wearing but a thin white cotton shirt, but the wee laddies were enjoying the sounds of their voices echoing.

The blackberries beyond were bursting to be picked and I relished them with vanilla icecream later that evening. So many simples pleasures of llfe in the garden suburb of Upminster which I've never before remarked upon and which now leave me aching for more history and grainy old photographs to pour over.

The graveyard of St Laurence's Church, Upminster, designated a conservation area

The endless fields and ancient woodland a stone's throw from my parent's home in Upminster

Country Life with my sister Geraldine on her horse, Ash, and the stunning Essex countryside in Stock, Essex

Jesse, Geraldine & Mark's new baby

Memories are running through my head of the days I spent with Mum and Dad, my sisters Geraldine with Mark and Anne-Marie, brothers Joe with Amanda, Pete and Nicky and nieces Corrin, Aurora and Hannah and so, in the same fashion do the photos now come back to me, precious mementos of what lies in my heart.

With 43 days behind me, the slideshow will evolve like the memories in head.

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