A woman named Courtney contacted me last week and we’ve been trying to figure out if maybe we met as children. Our dads were stationed at the same base in England, and our time there overlaps by two years. It’s been a great trip down memory lane, remembering places and events I hadn’t thought of in years.

From her I learned the hill that we’d slide down on flattened cardboard boxes near the baseball field was actually formed by a bomb dropped during WWII. We used to jimmy the door at the back of the manor to get into the snack room, apparently fueling rumors the house was haunted and the ghost had a sweet tooth.

Courtney’s original question still has me smacking myself in the forehead. What was the name of the manor house in which all personnel stayed when arriving or departing Greenham Common Air Force Base? Everyone who knows anything about England knows that all their old houses have a name, from Donnington Castle to Waverly Cottage. It hadn’t even occurred to me wonder about the name of ours, a house that I featured in such loving detail in my first completed still-under-the-bed-where-it-belongs manuscript. When questioned, my mom drew a similar blank.

Since I was working on my taxes, naturally I had to immediately do a Google search. The first search result was my own bio page, which is how Courtney found me. After that, not much luck. I did find a site that mentioned the base was returned to its natural state in the 80′s after the whole debacle of our government wanting to store nuclear missiles there. Greenpeace was still camped out at the front gates when my dad went back for a visit in ’92.

On the plus side, I found www.PicturesofEngland.com and thought I’d share a few memories of Newbury with you. (Where are my pics, you ask? Haven’t a clue.)

On Saturdays, this car park downtown is an open air market with vendors’ stalls selling everything from cabbage to paperbacks to clothing. If the camera panned left, on the back row you’d see a toy shop that sold wonderful wooden toys. Directly behind the photographer is another row of shops, including a bakery that made marvelous walnut whips — a cone-shaped chocolate confection I haven’t found here in the States. A few doors down is where we bought my absolute all-time favorite pair of shoes, a pre-teen version of the platform shoes that were so popular at the time, in purple-black leather with chunky high heels. I’d never felt so tall. If you didn’t want to cook and didn’t want to eat in a pub, about the only other option was the Chinese take-away across the street, or the fish and chip shop up a couple blocks.

England’s canal system has been a smooth ride for getting fragile items to market for hundreds of years, especially in the days before Macadamized roads or asphalt. Our class took a field trip on one, going up and down many locks. We didn’t go far since most canal boats have engines of one horsepower – an actual horse, who walks along the towpath. The lock pictured here is the same kind of technology that gets massive cruise ships through the Panama Canal.

The Kennet River runs through town and every year they hold the Crafty Raft Race, pictured here. Notice everyone onboard is wearing a life vest – these are mandatory since many of the rafts turn out to be less than sea-worthy. The guys in my dad’s unit often competed and most years completed the course before their raft, er, encountered technical difficulites. We had an excellent view of the race since we had friends whose garden ended at the canal’s edge. I don’t remember any house boats parked by Mr. Ball’s garden gate, though.