How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Banbury
I was born and bred in Banbury, and in the first 21 years of my life, grew to loathe the town that had seen me through my formative years. I vowed, with fervent determination, never to set foot in the place again.
I grew up in a small semi-detached house in quiet, central to town, Dashwood Road. The quarter-hourly chimes of St John the Evangelist echoed down our street, never letting us forget the continual passage of time. The property opposite our house's conjoined twin, was a stately looking home, with a grand orchard, surrounded by a well-maintained fence, through which I would stand on tip-toe, trying to see the beautifully manicured lawns and topiary. That orchard was like a forbidden, almost mythical, zone to me, as if it were the domain of pixies and fairies. Not once did I ever spy a human upon that plush green grass, though I suspect my cat Calvin enjoyed many a hunt in that prim jungle.
I endured the social rigours of playschool at the church's hall. I vaguely recall a small plastic yellow slide, a truck I could sit in, nap time, and a very large lady who I presume was in charge. Memories of my early childhood are poor, VHS copies of copies taped of the TV, and desperately vague.
The house was always good to us, coping with two parents, and three children, despite itself only containing three bedrooms. The back garden was big enough for badminton and bowls, the front big enough for my sister's cartwheels, and was chock full of daisys for chain making, another popular past-time of young girls. For an extra dimension of excitement, access to the wasteland behind our house could be gained via the broken fence at the wild, seemingly wooded end of our garden, where the monsters would hide at night. The wasteland was a grand, health and safety free play zone, especially when the winter came, and puddles iced over, and huge dagger icicles dangled precipitously from abandoned building edges.
Primary school was originally Dashwood School, but after two years of successfully avoiding having to stand and read the times table, I was moved to Harriers, up on Bloxham Road. I never did learn my times table, never advising the management of Harriers of my compentency at avoiding the subject. Harriers were probably my halcyon days as far as education was concerned. In Dashwood I would entertain myself with my magic, invisible spy watch, dashing about the playground solving crime like a mini, un-caped Batman. In Harriers I had friends, played sports, and even had a successful, semi-pro career in kiss chase for a couple of years. Only thing was I never truly understood the rules, and would often actually escape the chasers.
Banbury School was my secondary education, and it was my friends who got me through, and frankly that's all I feel I need to say on that matter. Banbury School was akin to my Saigon. Anyone who has seen Apocalypse Now will know what I mean. If you haven't seen it, stop reading this blog and go watch it. Not the Redux version, the original please.
So on I went to the North Oxfordshire College of School and Art, now named something else, having already been re-named at least once since I left. These were good times. I studied a BTEC Diploma in Media and passed with distinction. I was going to be a film maker!
Which led me directly to Blockbuster's on the High Street. Brilliant! My career was soon to be launched. Indeed, I was ever so close to being the next Spielberg or Tarantino, honing my craft by becoming manager of a video rental shop, watching obscene amounts of movies at home, and travelling to Birmingham once a week to watch at least 3 movies at the multiplex. Somehow, despite such stellar training, my career did not launch, and eventually a seething, somewhat irrational resentment at Banbury, and life in general popped a little vessel in my head, and I decided to move to Sheffield.
Sheffield contained my best friend, who had also fled the town in outrage at its sheer awfulness. Surely Sheffield had more to offer than my backwater hometown? Sure! It had a healthy dose of reality. Rent, bills, taxes, debt, shower mushrooms, freezing cold to scalding hot morning showers, leaving the curtains permanently closed for fear my hi-fi would be nicked, and a random gang attack that lost me my hard earned Die-Hard saddlebag.
Everything changed when I got myself online, and to make a long story ridiculously short, I fell in love, moved to Cardiff, married, visited Banbury, discovered it was actually a pleasant place to visit, and moved back to be closer to my mum, who still lives in a village nearby.
What had I been so outraged by? What had Banbury done to me that had filled my heart which so much bile? It's possible it was teenage hormones, spilling into my early twenties, that had blinded me. It was undoubtedly my secondary school experience that traumatised me to a great enough degree to somehow sully the otherwise innocent town in my eyes. But I think the greatest contribution was my own crippling shyness. I didn't integrate well. Therefore I didn't really have a community to which I belonged. My best friends had all left to go to university, starting a new chapter in their respective lives, whereas I had not moved on, I had no new chapter. It was me who was, in effect, rotten.
My first return visit with wife Geri in tow, suddenly enlightened me to the town I had blinkered myself to for so many years. Had it been improved? Had the town centre been renovated and invigorated? Perhaps there were a few new buildings, but I had gone through more changes than the town could have in the 7 intervening years since my exodus. It was I, not the town that had been reinvigorated, by love, by life in other places, and by travel. I now understood that there had never been anything wrong with the town. My experiences were unique to me, taking place solely in my mind.
And so we moved here, to another town based locale, on the opposite side to Dashwood Road, almost within sight of the other iconic church in Banbury, St. Mary's. Now, whenever I return to Banbury after a trip away, the friendly, familiar sight of that malachite green dome always lifts my spirits.
Very quickly, both myself and my wife found Banbury to be full of a warm, inviting community of smart, funny, kind folk, who embraced us both into their lives, and without whom life would now seem unimaginable. It's for this reason that I had the idea of starting this blog, about the lifeblood of our community, the people, those who strive to share their talents, their passions, and their skills with the great and varied populace who comprise Banbury and the surrounding areas.
I have offered out this blog to various enterprising locals and have a good few lined up. I'll write a short preview blog post in the next week, to explain what I will be doing, and to list who I am going to be writing about first. I feel very excited to be starting this fresh project, and I can only hope it helps anyone reading it to learn to love the town I once disowned, and now love.
