Essays and Short Stories

By Kathy Hansford

These stories are all part of my life, either fictional or factual, and have been used to tell stories to my family across the years. I have always loved to travel especially by train, and these tales also tell of places I have been or would like to visit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: May 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781493193547

Kathy Hansford

I am now in my eighty-sixth year, and my eyesight has now failed, and I am almost blind, and arthritis has caught up with me too. This last year has seen me go back to my beloved farmhouse, where I spent so many happy years working hard on the farm with my husband and raising eight children along the way. I now have a live-in carer, and so I am able to still visit family and friends with her support. I continue to dictate stories about my life and travels so that I am able to share these with the readers.

Book preview

HEXHAM

I went to Hexham on my own because I had to go home early from a visit to Durham to see my chiropodist, Linda, and she saved me having to go to hospital as I thought of my feet, which were hurting me.

I had been to Hexham several years before as my son was living there, but thought his digs were too rough for my husband and me, so my son booked us into a hotel.

This time I wanted to go to the same hotel in memory of my husband. All I could remember was the way to Hexham Abbey from the hotel, and I remembered that quite clearly. When I got there, I noted it had no south transept to the nave, and I was puzzled. I asked why, because they usually build south transepts before north transepts, and there was a north transept. I was told that this was because of the orders from the original builder, who always built in this fashion.

As soon as he saw my white stick, the man in charge informed me that I could not go into the area I wanted to visit. I replied that I would be going in because there was a handrail and I would use that. The man told me to ask another person there as to why there was no south transept, and when I did, he just replied as before that that was the way it was built at that time.

GOING DOWN THE A5 AT A ‘TON’

ZEN 024 was Sean’s first motorbike. He hadn’t been paid for eleven years by Mrs White. When he eventually left, his peer group said he should sue her for the money from the equivalent of the Farmers’ Union. It was, for him, enforced savings. He spent this on a BSA (big, sore arse!) motorbike.

Although I don’t like big motorbikes because they are so dangerous, my four sons and two sons-in-law have them, and I really don’t have a leg to stand on criticising them as I did my courting on a Norton 500 cc bike, which was the biggest bike at the time made in Britain. We have now exported all our industry to the Pacific Ring because of the clean air policy. Along with the heavy industry, we have also exported the dirt which it makes.

Most modern bikes are made in Japan at 1,000 cc, which is what my sons and sons-in-law have.

‘Yes, I did a hundred miles an hour in just a headscarf and reading glasses to keep out the flies, and Sean [my boyfriend at that time, later my husband] in a cloth cap and his glasses.’

I can understand the speed hogs as I was quite happy going at speed. It would be physically impossible going at 100 miles an hour, as well as illegal, as there are so many roundabouts on the A5, as it is a relief road for the M1.

The ‘long chute’ is the connecting road between Nuneaton and the A5,