Atherton

WE ARE viewing the third of the kitchen designs and my impression of it is of something of excellent build quality, but rather basic. Somehow, I expect something more than wooden boxes with shelves, no matter how well made.

The designer's a pleasant enough chap, though. He's moving house shortly and I ask, by way of conversation, where he's moving to. "Atherton," he says.

Atherton!

The very town where I spent the first ten years of my life! And they do say it's a small world!

Of course, the town I remember is a far cry from what no doubt exists today. I've not visited the place in nearly forty years.

Long gone now are the brick-built cotton mill chimneys on Mealhouse Lane where my mother used to work. Gone now, too, are the foundries whose furnaces used to so fascinate that wide-eyed boy, staring in through the open doors.

No doubt the cornfields we used to walk through on long summer days to get to Daisy Hill Park have been turned into housing estates, and Brickfield, where the wakes - the travelling fare - were held, is probably now a car park.

But my goodness me, how the memories do flood back at the mention of that one word! Atherton!