I Walked My Seven-Year-Old Self To School And Back

As we drove into the village there was a small group of people gathering around the war memorial and I realised that it was Remembrance Sunday! - How strange, I thought… I am here today to think about the past and remember, too. I drove on through the village, down the main Yarmouth road and parked up in a little lay-by just a few metres away from my old house. I got out of the car, plugged in a set of headphones that had an inbuilt microphone and hit record on the sound recorder app to capture the visit as a piece of audio.

The front of the house is a little obscured by overgrown trees but the building is still visible from the entrance to the driveway. The windows have been changed, as has the front door. The slate garage that blew down in the storms of October ’87 has been replaced with a much more flimsy wooden shed. I looked up to see my old bedroom window and remembered the large ammonite fossil that I found on a beach and had proudly displayed on my chest of drawers. I looked at the living room window to the left of the front door and remembered the floral couch where I would lay with my dad watching scary films that I was far too young for. The windows to the right of the front door looked into where my dad had ‘his room’ with his gardening books and his record and tape collection. I used to listen to music in that room too. There was a large coffin-like freezer in that room for a while - I remember climbing on top of it and leaping off into the air each time the chorus of Michael Jackson’s Thriller kicked in.

I didn’t want to hang around outside the front of the house for too long in case the current owners saw me and felt concerned by a strange man or the ghost of a child studying their home. On the way here I had rehearsed in my mind the idea of knocking on the door and explaining that I had lived here as a young boy and asking the current occupants if I could have a look around to see what details of my time there remained intact… but, it’s 2025 and I’m not in a film so instead, me and my seven year old self set off on foot into the village to find the school.

The road into the village is a main one and the cars are close and loud - I’m aware they might spoil my audio recording as I begin to speak quietly into the microphone. I told the seven year old boy about a memory of a nearby pond and the ducks who used to visit our front garden. We found the pond a minute or so down the road - it was swamped with reeds now, seemed bigger and further set back from the road than I had remembered, but it was still there. A new family of birds lived there now - you can hear them on the audio recording I’m sure. We passed the village church where I had once taken part in a harvest festival with my school. I noticed the blue clock at the top of the tower read 10:35 and I was pleased to see that the time was correct and the clock was still working. We passed an old lady and seven year old me stopped talking so she didn’t think he was strange. She wished us a good morning and gave us a lovely smile as if she recognised us both as locals. We passed the house where the argument over the bobble hat had taken place and became aware of the knot in our stomach. “Is this the house?” I said. “I think this is the house,” he said.

As we got into the centre of the village a larger group of people had congregated around the war memorial. It was 10:40 and they were all here waiting for 11:00. We gave them a wide berth and circled around the patch of grass where they had gathered, after I briefly nipped into the petrol station to use the loo that I was very relieved to find. We made our way over the road to the bottom of the driveway that led up to the school and I started to take photos. The road sign read ‘Private Road, Residents Only’.

The old school was still a familiar shape, although the windows had been renewed and the bricks cleaned up. I walked around the outside of the building and noticed gardens, car parks and the new houses where the playground had once been. I explored a bit and looked for signs of the past but most things had been changed or made new. The playground had gone, the outside toilets were gone, the dinner hall block was gone, the lunchboxes and all the other children, gone.

I think he must have gone inside to look around what remained of the old school while I walked onto the field towards the swings of the playground. There was an old metal bench with a plaque commemorating the jubilee years - long before we had lived here. I took out another more professional audio recording device from my bag, set it down on the arm of the bench and hit record. I wandered off and left it recording while I explored the park a little more, trying to remain silent. In the distance the faint sound of a trumpet playing the last post let me know the time. I was silent for a good few minutes after that - deep in remembrance.

I wasn’t sure exactly what it was that I was recording with the audio recorder that I’d left on the park bench. The birds? The cars? The distant trumpet? The distinct lack of school children now the school had become houses? Not much was happening and so instead of the ten minutes I had planned to capture I pressed stop a few minutes early. At this moment the original idea that had first inspired me to come back here seemed a bit pointless now. I walked back to the school and waited for my younger self to come out and join me.

We set off back towards the old house. The large group of people on the green had shrunk to a duo - two men deep in conversation, heads slightly bowed as if they were looking for something they had lost in the grass. As I got closer I noticed a section of map was displayed on a sign post. It showed the local area in closer detail than the maps that I had been collecting. It was old and mouldy and stained with rain but It looked beautiful and I took a number of photos of it. We reached the war memorial and then he elbowed me in my side and nodded his head and so I read out the list of names carved into the stone monument along with the roles they had performed during their service. He stood by my side and listened.

As we walked back down the road I once again acknowledged the house where the argument over the bobble hat had taken place - I took off my backpack and withdrew a new hat that my wife had bought me for my last birthday, pulled it onto my head and said, “This one is definitely mine. My wife bought it for me as a birthday present. It doesn’t have a bobble, and it’s blue rather than grey, but it’s mine—and no one is going to tell me otherwise”. Seven year old me was happy and we both shared a smile and carried on down the road together.

When we reached the church, he suggested we go in and look around the graveyard. It was new territory for us both, something we had never done before. As we walked up the slope I noticed through the windows of the church that there were people sat in the pews; a remembrance service was taking place at that very moment. No one saw us and so we carried on exploring. I quickly became aware that this was no small burial ground, it was vast and went back a long way. We discovered a large tomb half-buried in the ground - it housed members of the local Lacons family who I assumed to be the wealthy land owners of the village. The tomb was marked with a symbol of a falcon, standing proud over the palm of a hand—a family emblem perhaps? At this moment, for some reason, we decided to turn around and make our way back to the road, rather than exploring the graveyard any further. I wondered whether the ghosts of the soldiers carved into the war memorial had made their way back to Ormesby or had gravestones here.

As I got closer to the church I heard music — the congregation was singing. After a few seconds I recognised the piece of music and tears began to flow. It was a hymn called ‘Make Me A Channel Of Your Peace.’ “That’s amazing!” I whispered. This piece of music is very special to me - it was my grandmother’s favourite hymn and I had intentionally sought it out in the last year as a way to connect with her memory. And here it was - it felt like a gift from the ghost of my younger self who somehow knew to guide me into the graveyard and then turn me around at the exact right moment to be close enough to the church so I could hear it being sung. I walked around to the front of the church and sat down on the bench in the entrance to be as close to the music and as far away from the noise of the passing cars as possible. It was truly a beautiful and magical moment and I thanked God, Grandma, and the little boy sat beside me for this beautiful moment we had all shared together.