Memories are made of these

Inspiration
I am certain that I wouldn’t have spent five years interviewing over forty people in Finedon, my mum’s birthplace, if dad James Hopper Nesbitt hadn’t died whilst still a young man. I wanted to know more about my paternal roots as our family had lost contact with dad’s kin; for years I was left wondering why!
It was in 1999, when most of the talk was about how the country was going to celebrate the Millennium year or how we would all cope with all the computers crashing down. I was coming to terms with the fact that I might never find my lost family and resolved to take another approach regarding celebrating other people’s family history. I thought that maybe someone would one day want to know more about their own past and if I interviewed the residents of the town where I lived it might help others to learn about their own roots as up to then I had tried so hard to do. It was whilst I was sitting quietly, as usual, at a Parish meeting, held in Finedon Town Hall, that I voiced my idea.
It was a bit of a gamble and even presumptuous of me to think that anyone would share their special memories with me or where my journey would begin; never mind end! When we are still being formed as people we don’t think to ask about relatives, where they work or live or gather photographs. When we have safety and security as children, if we are lucky enough to come from loving homes, we grow in that love and think it will be there until we become adults. During the earlier part of our lives our world was safe and constant. The fact mum read us braille bed-time stories and dad tapped around in the dark; always whistling or larking about-tickling the soles of my feet or throwing me up in the air seemed nothing out of the ordinary then.
The last time I was to ever see my Nana was the day she sat on my bed and told me that my dad had died in the night; he was thirty six. I can still visualise watching my Nana brushing her hair and how she braided and lifted it into a coil. I lay there wanting to ask the question, which I knew was coming, yes, he had died and left us earlier and wouldn’t be coming home again.
I said that I didn’t want to see him Laid out in the chapel of rest and I didn’t want to go to his funeral I didn’t think. I was scared about people dying and had been barely able to touch my dad’s forehead that last time I had seen him lying in his hospital bed but am glad I managed to kiss him that last time…of course I didn’t know it was to be the last time!
I recall how our home felt like a florist with flowers being carried up the stairs and spread out on the counterpane where we’d scampered and pestered our lovely dad only a few weeks before. We did ordinary things on this painfully extraordinary day like eating cornflakes out of plastic cereal bowls followed by diluted tea with our very quiet mum listening to the sound the water made as it rose in the cups-her fingers inside the rim. The radio didn’t play of course as we searched for lost plimsoll bags and books; excluded from the sad tones that felt flat and heavy and so we ran to school.
How could I know then that I wouldn’t see my Nana again? I wouldn’t be taken by dad to visit her in Coventry and feel that safe bubble of confidence as I held my dad’s hands; he wasn’t fazed by either the underground trains or heavy traffic but he was just my dad.
I needed to find a stronger identity with regard to my paternal roots but for many years couldn’t understand where these roots had gone or indeed why they had gone. I dreamt that one day someone would tap the door and say they had been looking for us. I kept my dream alive by writing to towns/area where I might find a link. I’d hung onto, by then, a shaky memory as to the features of the powerful man that was once my dad yet as the years flew by I used to think I’d made him more powerful and wider than he was but I didn’t forget his softness or constancy.
It was quite a chilly Sunday afternoon when I sat amidst a group of people in Finedon Parish Church; where decades earlier I’d married and walked down the aisle thinking of my dad and where only a few years later we followed the coffin of our beautiful mum who had gone through so much but hadn’t been able to beat cancer of the gullet.
I again shared my ideas about recording town’s folk’s lives and it was agreed that I should continue and see what I might manage to bring together in the following year-as long as I didn’t mind doing this by myself. As I walked back through the Lynch gate and past the old maids cottage and passing gravestones of people who had once walked in the space where I then walked and dreamt of things they wanted to do with their lives I somehow felt connected to them.
I knew nothing about the man who designed and built my house, school, doctor or undertaker or neither of the women who spun lace in the yards or worked at Finedon Hall nor of the men who had been casualties of wars.
I coaxed my son James into designing a poster on my computer and outlined what my plans were then having distributed these posters I waited eagerly for the response but nothing happened. Perhaps people simply didn’t trust me enough to share their precious life stories with me. In fact my new opening came quite naturally and in fact expectantly whilst visiting a very dear friend who lived in a flat a few doors away from me and who knew what my intentions had been. Jean became my first contributor and this decision/offer of hers was where Memories of Finedon began. I have always felt indebted to these people; from all walks of life for it is their world which filled the pages that grew over the next four years. I don’t think I’d considered a book when I began my project but by the end of collective efforts I decided that I had to find a way of self-publishing otherwise these stories and many photographs would be stored away following the Millennium Celebrations which had been really well received.
I worked another day to cover the cost of publishing and learnt as I went about cutting/pasting/page set-up which was really quite a challenge considering once I’d been too scared to turn a computer on. A friend of mine Mr Peter Inn’s assisted me with the cover of the book and inserting photographs.
I eventually ordered five hundred copies and as Dale carried box after box from his car into my house I wondered first where I should store them and two whether I had really taken on more than I could cope with. I decided to give a copy to everyone who had shared their story with me as well as donating to various charities. Life was made a little more difficult when someone stole my car; it being discovered burned out in a nearby lane so I popped the books in the basket of my bike and cycled round the town.
I found a positive way of remembering my dad and his family…but my story doesn’t end there as magically I did find my lost family and feel more complete because of this and those first five hundred copies disappeared in only five days.