Re-Visiting the Past

SerimalB in a Pickle "Pickles" just months old, she will be 7 years old next month

This weekend I seem to have been guided back into my past. I am not sure why because I tend not to look back and I certainly don't have any regrets in my life. I think that my trip into Wrexham town with the boys might have started the process, as we walked around once familiar streets, streets I have walked for over 40 years, remembering, thinking, mourning the changes.

I decided to pay a visit to John and Ruth, the couple I used to groom for over 30 years ago. They gave me my first pony Shilo who was a rescue and I later had my last horse Mac there. I went to many shows with John over the years and helped him prepare the ponies for classes..... Cadenza and Opal. I saw little Pickles when she was minutes old and helped back and school horses for him. Happy, care free days.

May 26th 1983 - English Class, Ysgol Dewi Sant

I particularly remember his goat "Gruff" and this one day, John left a cardboard box full of vegetable peelings near to him. Gruff ate the box and left the peelings! I still giggle about this decades on.

Topsy

It was quite a sad experience returning there because John and Ruth have grown so old and the puppy I last saw is now an old dog with cataracts. I still feel as though I am 19 but facing my past I have to accept my mortality.

Harry Llewelyn

Chirk Castle gardens, me, Harry and Joe looking for fish and dragonflies

I have spent alot of time thinking over the last couple of years and wishing things had been different. I wish I hadn't had cancer because the long treatment which made me so ill, robbed me of my childrens youth. One minute they were 7 and 9 and the next minute they had grown up before my eyes. I feel as though I have missed out on a vital part of their lives.

My past has shaped me into the person I am today. The people who come in and out of my life at various times are the ones who have enriched me.