Once upon a long time ago, a time near to the day when Nellie took us both to Sunday School, but on a different day of the week, I was feeling a little sad and lonely again. It was just after the mid-day break - 'dinner-time' we called it then - and Nellie had gone back to school, complete with skipping rope and another clean handkerchief pinned to her pinafore. She wore the pinafore to be "clean and tidy, thank you", and to protect her dress from the ravages of chalk, pastels, dust from slate pencils, and from 'plasticene' - which Nellie insisted never got dirty - even if it fell to the floor. Nellie told me of all these things and made me a hungered. I was outside the garden gate and feeling restless and irritable - four o'clock seemed an awful long time away. I trod on endless lines on pavement flags - and avoided them on the returning, as far down as Rigby Street. No person had passed me or even been seen on the way. Mother had been busy and I had deliberately ignored Grandma. I fell to thinking about Grand-Dad and how he made me work for my Saturday penny (Dad always gave us our Friday one without imposition); and for my bonus 'acid drops'. I had to bring tools exactly as he ordered - so I knew what a quarter-inch wood chisel was - long before I knew a quarter of an inch was a measurement. A favourite tool was an oil-can - shaped like Aladdin's lamp - and nearly as magic.

If ever Grand-Dad was clipping the front hedge (with me in proximity to catch and bag the clippings) no neighbour's (or stranger's) bike, barrow, pram or pushchair could pass if it had even a whisper of a squeak. Grand-Dad was always the engineer, with overalls, shirt and jacket of the same dark blue. When doing jobs about the house, workshop or garden, he always dressed thus and anticipated the Denim age by more than a generation or two. He always had this slow, certain dignity, the checking and wiping of this joint, the tightening of that nut. I have been with him, when I was a little older - and watched him inch a cage (lift) down a mine-shaft and so finely had he calibrated it that, when fully loaded with men or material, it would hurtle down the shaft at terrific speed - and then wait quietly at the bottom, for the opening of the gates and bars. Horizontal steam, gas, or oil engine, at mine or mill - fairground, show or cornfield - muddy sites or dry pumping stations - he had an empathy with these engines. He was a man of many hobbies - but always an engineer.

At the time of which I write; on the approach of the squeak he would stay his clipping, look at me, raise his eyebrows, command me to "fetch the oilcan (there was no time for 'please' or pleasantries between working men) and a ritual was performed and the wheels and axles found a peace that was like that in the blessing - passing all understanding and could never be likened to anything else.
I would even have welcomed the tedium of a hundred-and-one oilcan-fetchings rather than the boredom I was experiencing. Grandma sensed my mood - she came with my pushchair wheeling whisper-quiet from between the houses.

Grandma lived at '19' - we at '17 High Street' (a misnomer if ever there was one).
"I'm going for a walk! Coming?" I glanced the wheelchair and she saw my glance - "for you to sit in when we get there. It's easier for my handbag too! We can put your hat on it when you get hot, and we might see the tank-loco!" It all seemed logical. We went!
I hadn't any form of cap, either school or any other. It was a hat - a very pale, blue ribbed velvet one, and could be rolled and put into my pocket if we (Uncle Fred and I) went into his friend's house - or any house for that matter. Else it could be, and more often was, hung or flung anywhere. Walking the whole way down Sandy Lane at the anxious-to-be-out-of-town pace made me warm, and the billy-cock hat was carefully placed in the pushchair and we crossed the road and began walking to the start of "down the line".

As soon as you crossed the road you sensed the difference - the leaving of the cobbled road, the walk on to the compacted black peat-soil path puddled in wet weather, and the rapid approach of brambles, briars and open fields and sky. The sound of birds became more manifest, as did the humming of telephone wires and the tangling of the wind in trees and higher bushes. The wind rattled too, in the seeming truncated pylons - holding the wind vanes.
The vanes steered the wind to work on the little pumps, dotted here and there to prevent the ditches from overfilling or to change the levels. Grandma and I had several paths and lanes for choosing, Grandma always chose wisely and well. She did this day.

At right angles from the line proper there shot off another path - a long straight one which led us back to High Street via Stormy Corner. There were diversions and interests along the path - trees and flowers for Grandma to name - and me to remember, though she never tested me on my knowledge but assumed I knew ( and again I left the "truth unsaid") until I did know, remembered, and have remembered to this day.
I grew tired and was sat on a grassy embankment and Grandma was talking - and I was sleepy. I heard new strange sounds as well as her voice - including a few mechanical noises from the neighbouring windmill, and from it I thought, a trembling sort of whistle which I thought might herald a squeak - and "fetch the oilcan" sprang into mind, and the vane high in the sky, and a long ladder, and Grand-Dad having to do it all without me - me being forbidden to climb. I was sat with my head on Grandma's shoulder, it must have been somewhat muffled but Grandma heard. "The sound is NOT from the windmill - it is more to the right, nearer to Stormy" - and she steered my face and eyes to the tiny 'speck' in the sky, and from this dot showered such lovely sound - like gentle rain would have chosen could it have had a voice! And though I loved it, it seemed never ending, I sat squeezing Grandma's hand.
I sat squeezing her hand until the long, sweet song ceased, and the small bird - a skylark Grandma told me - dropped like a stone and the breeze turned cooler.

Grandma draped my hat on my head and I screwed it down firmer. We hurried back to Stormy Corner - talking all the way - and then turned and headed towards High Street - and an oilcan that looked like Aladdin's lamp but which hadn't been needed.

Years after, I walked with Kath and paused just as a skylark rose from almost beneath my feet and both of us sat - reclined really - on a nearby rock, cushioned by young heather, and we heard the skylark's song in completion, and I both remembered and enclosed that moment too, within my inner heart and in my mind's eye and ear for as long as I live.

Now Kath and I listen to tapes and records. I have a love of and affinity with the music of Vaughan Williams - particularly his "Lark ascending". We each have our own mind-pictures, one is a mountainside with a small bird throbbing his heart out - almost near enough to see, but I have another - a speck of a bird beyond a windmill, and a Grandma who squeezes my hand and smiles - letting again the truth be "unsaid".
Too, a few months back, an organist at our church played - so very beautifully - as a voluntary "The Lark in the clean air" - a lovely folk tune I have loved for many a year.
It sounded so very lovely and made a trinity of music, memories and me. Perhaps not so holy a trinity as, only just before I had said my little private prayer about 'thoughts and eyes wondering' - and here they were because of the music - back to Kirkstone Pass, overlooking Brothers Water, and Kath, then Grandma and me - sat on an embankment in Skem enjoying, for me, a new exciting experience and emphasising it with a handsqueeze to signify we loved it.

Years later than both of these experiences, my mind was wandering around paradoxes and things of a similar nature - and one line of a hymn I had not sung for years, if at all. kept recurring in my mind... "And things are not what they seem!"
I forgot the context and the other lines, but the one persisted. "And things are not what they seem!"

No more are they - whether they be fears, worries, dreads, or squeaks or squeals!!! I have found this to be true throughout life!