Going Back to My Roots
- katietrinder
- Aug 13, 2024
- 3 min read
Last Saturday, I got the chance to go back to my roots and I don't mean a mucky shade of blonde!
When my mum was a little girl, my Aunty Flo (one of my gran's sisters) took her out for the day. They ended up in Westhouses, where my gran and her brother and sisters had grown up. My Aunty Flo decided that she wanted to look around her old childhood home, and being a fearless soul, she knocked on the door.
My mum remembers her saying to the people who lived there, "hello, I"m Florence and this is my niece Pamela, I grew up here and I'd like a look around.'
Without knowing what to say, the couple let them in and they were soon wandering around with Aunty Flo pointing out where various significant incidents in Beauchamp family history had taken place.
My gran went mad when Aunty Flo told her, telling her she was irresponsible to take a small child around a house where there were strangers and anything could have happened.
My Aunty Flo had zero f***s to give about the situation as she'd got to have a nosey around her childhood home. I'd always admired her tenacity for havign the courage to do that, because surely we'd all like to have a look around the places where we once lived and see what they've done with the place?
So when Lucy and I got the chance to go back to have a look around our old childhood home, we were hardly going to say no were we?
A few months ago, I received an email at work from the man who had bought our old childhood home. He listened to me on the radio and said it made him smile every time I told a story about growing up there. He asked if we me and my sister Lucy would like to go over for a cuppa and a look around.
We eventually found a suitable date for us to go around.
I won't lie, I was a bit nervous at first. I haven't been in the house since my dad sold it in 2011, a few months after my mum had died.
We had all loved living there, we'd moved in, in 1982, Lucy was 2 years old and I was 5 and I lived there until I was 27 years old.
It was a very happy home, lots of laughs, fun times, Trinder Christmases, birthdays, family get togethers. Friends coming over to play, Lucy's footprint in the fresh concrete my dad had just laid in the driveway. The photos every year stood under the flowering cherry in the garden. Various Trinder pets laid to rest in the garden. Sneaking in, drunk in our teenage years trying to avoid my mum and dad hearing us. The party whiulst mum and dad were away, where sangria ended up all over the cream carpet and sofa.
Two Dozen (as my friend Liz'a dad always called it was a very happy home full of love.
I was worried I'd walk through the door and burst into tears and that would be an embarrassing way to say hello to someone you've never met, even if I had bought some lovely cakes to take over .
I needn't have worried. Tony has completely changed the house so as soon as you walk in there's now a large open plan kitchen, which was amazing and totally changed the look of the house. It's obviously been re-decorated and there were new floors, so whilst it felt familiar, it was also very different.
We spent a lovely afternoon sharing stories about the house, looking at photos of how it had looked and gossiping about our old neighbours and laughing.
What was apparent was that Tony loved the house as much as we had, it still had the vibe of a home that was very loved and happy.
I have friends who are psychics and they talk about buildings absorbing the feelings and emotions of the people who've lived there. For example if you go in an old prison you can feel the sadness and fear of those who were imprisoned there.
I like to think that our childhood home has absorbed all the Trinder love that we had for each other there and that in hundreds of years to come, the people who live there feel that love and they are as happy as we were there. I might even choose that as my place to haunt so I can make sure they're happy.
It was an incredibly kind and special thing that Tony did for me and Lucy allowing us to go back and have a look around and athoughwe didn't cry on our way in, we had a few happy tears on the way home.
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