Every year about this time I get up before dawn to drive our neighbours into the pretty town of Dole on the river Doubs where they catch the coach to take them to the Costa Brava for their annual holiday. Even today, it's still possible to find little country roads which will take you almost into the heart of town without having to go through the ghastly ribbon development which afflicts so many French towns. Towards the end of the 40-minute drive, and still in open country, I go down a steep hill and under a railway bridge barely a minute from the town centre.
I think it must be this close juxtaposition of town and country, as much as the hill itself, that brings memories flooding back of the time when, as a little boy, I caught the bus into Cochester from my aunt's house on the Essex-Suffolk border to attend a convent school. Quite why I should have been staying with my aunt, and how long I stayed at this school - would it have been as long as a term or only a matter of weeks? - I cannot now remember. Of the school itself I recall very little, apart from the fact that we wore brown blazers. But how strange that, whereas I have relatively few memories of those far-off days of the early 'fifties, these bus journeys should remain so vividly fixed in my mind!
I think it must be this close juxtaposition of town and country, as much as the hill itself, that brings memories flooding back of the time when, as a little boy, I caught the bus into Cochester from my aunt's house on the Essex-Suffolk border to attend a convent school. Quite why I should have been staying with my aunt, and how long I stayed at this school - would it have been as long as a term or only a matter of weeks? - I cannot now remember. Of the school itself I recall very little, apart from the fact that we wore brown blazers. But how strange that, whereas I have relatively few memories of those far-off days of the early 'fifties, these bus journeys should remain so vividly fixed in my mind!
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