Bird’s custard hat, scarf and mitts

I’m standing on the doorstep of our family home in St. Alban’s. I’m not sure what year it is but I’d say sometime after the Queen’s Jubilee but before the wedding of Charles and Diana. Small raisin eyes peer out from my pale round face, my lips upturned in a satisfied grin. A helmet-like custard yellow knitted hat covers the top half of my head, ears and most of my forehead, my straight mousy brown hair fans my shoulders. My arms are clamped by my side but if you look carefully, you’ll see my left-hand clutching more thick yellow wool, my right hand warm, hidden in the pocket of my air force blue wool coat, buttoned to the neck. Behind me a light reflects in our partially glazed front door.

It’s the satisfied smile of a young child whose thrilled with her knitted Christmas present, a present that rates as highly as the Girl’s World also received that year.

“Mum, look. Have you seen what grandma knitted for me? Look, there’s a hat, a scarf and glo…no they’re mittens…no, but where do my thumbs go?”

I don’t care that there isn’t a place for my thumbs and when mum ties the scarf around my neck it reaches down to my navy clad knees and matching navy wellies.

I feel that same warmth more than forty years later. The youngest of four children and mid-table in the league of cousins in this sprawling catholic family, I’m more used to mum calling me into the kitchen to check out the latest delivery of plastic bags stuffed with hand me down clothes. The very thought that grandma had decided to make this just for me was exquisite.

The dark afternoon light and a faint feeling tells me this was a Sunday afternoon maybe, and that dad took this wonky photo, mum more likely to take unposed photos. I think I’d been playing in the back garden and asked him for a photo to show grandma.

It’s more than knitted wool that warms me because this house is where our family makes sense and where my sense of belonging and home is rooted. We lived there for six years: mum, dad, Louise, Virginia, Matthew and me and I felt safe in this solid white house with its sloping green lawn, football goal, climbing frame and tear-shaped flower beds. We’d pull the full-length Sanderson fabric curtains to block the sun streaming through the sliding French doors and lie on our tummies to watch TV.

It was also the steady stream of grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and godparents for conversation and laughter filled family gatherings. It was the revolving front door on a Saturday morning, our violin teacher taking over dad’s study and putting a stream of young Suzuki violinists through their paces while sitting at our upright family piano. World map on the wall with pins marking out the countries dad had visited for work, the desk and phone where mum would sit and chat for hours with her sister in Yorkshire.

I’d ride my bike up and down our long tree lined road, knocking for friends so we could pedal to the newsagents and spend our pocket money on comics and sweets. Mass on a Sunday morning where I’d tick off the school friends, family friends and relatives lining up for communion and listen to mum and dad chatting with friends on the church steps afterwards, deciding who was having who round for coffee.

Our too-soon move out of this house barely three years later marked the beginning of our family’s slide. A dismantling of our six-strong unit that would have happened anyway with the natural progression of older siblings heading off to college, university and work, but that was hastened by dad’s drinking and our financial collapse.

I think I’ve been trying to regrow a family life from those bare roots ever since and set about creating a new St. Alban’s in our home in Bath, where Andy and I married, and our children were born. Our old family piano moved to a wall in our dining room, my photo albums filled with images of family gatherings. Our living room strewn with Christmas wrapping paper, Ginny and Louise on the sofa chatting with dad, a baby Saskia on his lap while Matthew helps Charlie to build Lego at a dining table covered with half eaten plates of food, glasses of wine and water.

I relished welcoming my family into this home in Bath where we slipped into family life, the rhythm of shared school runs, the children knocking for their friends after school. And I loved the clunk of the solid wooden Victorian door as it closed behind me.