Distance bells

Subject: Distant bells.

There was a time not too long ago when boys and girls. Men and women were born to the sound of Bow Bells or the factory klaxon mounted on the roof of a mill. Ten or twenty perhaps one hundred  miles was the horizon of most lads and lasses between birth and death. The accents gave you away as did the church near where you lived, your life's compass encompassed people you knew at school and throughout your life and people  you called auntie but who you were not related to other than by the street you all lived in. The bonds of kith were strong, you worked and played alongside each other, you married the girl next door and your own children mingled with those of their age in the same neighbourhood. It wasn't incestuous but it did have the disadvantage of limiting the communication to the locality.

It could be argued that in this world today there’s too much communication, we are swamped by the goings on in other parts of the world where we have no foundation to form more sensible opinions. People now leave home and set up life in another country, often on the other side of the world splitting friends and family left behind. Those brave faces standing at the quay side watching their loved ones sail away amidst the paper streamers trailed between those on board and those left behind in so many ports around the world in the 60s, was the start of a tidal wave of evacuation from the old to the new.

It was also the start of a two way moment, those left standing on the quay witnessing the incoming boat with economic migrants changing forever what we called home with their incomprehensible cultures, many unwilling by custom and religious observance to integrate.

This culture transfer, when it did happen had its good and bad aspects. People leaving our shores  learnt to adapt and grow by exposure to new ways of living, appreciating a more open egalitarian  way to go about the business of life and generally they thrived in this new environment. The downside was nearly always the breakup of family and friends which usually effected the old who felt stranded not able to take part in this new experiment.  Children learning to grow up without the face of grandparents to ground them in old fashioned standards, children who's  new continuity was with mom and dad but without aunts or uncles to feel kin-ship.

The warp and weft of an extended family through marriage in ones new home, which I experience again today on my birthday, reminiscing with a South African friend over the place we had called home and the people we had called family was certainly cathartic.

So much of our lives are caught up in individual endeavour, the job, the house and of course your new family. He wash of events like the tide which comes in and recedes leaving no trace of the effort you put in each day to add some sort of continuity and security. It’s hard looking back and taking account of all those assumptions that you were doing your best to merge your old personality with the new demands made upon it. Not always succeeding you did your best and as you enter the final act of an exciting drama which has been your life story, you cherish the words of the classic Frank Sinatra “I did it my way”.