For me the death of Osama bin Laden will not resonate, have the same sort of memories associated with shock, as did the deaths of John Kennedy & Princess Diana. Perhaps that just reflects age – you can have only so many memories like that – or perhaps the fact that, for me, Osama has always been an almost mythic character, like the man who sat stroking his cat in that James Bond film, never too sure if he wasn’t just a figment of the imagination of spies.
At least for just today my memories of this event in Abbottabad are strangely linked to a very precise smell & some water colour pictures.
The smell, of old railway carriages, is made up principally of coal dust plus the musty fusty smell of upholstery that has hosted myriad tweed-clad human backsides.
These were old-fashioned carriages. In a train without corridors each had its own narrow slam-door with a dumbbell-shaped brass handle & a window which could be opened via a broad leather strap like a belt with holes to hold it open to the required depth. Passengers sat side by side on long couches under an overhead luggage rack made of string netting. Above the back of each seat was a poster showing a yellowing water colour poster of a local scene.
This was the London Midland & Scottish Railway service from Millers Dale to Buxton, a local service which linked with the main line service from London’s St Pancras to Manchester & which I used to take to visit my grandparents – often travelling & changing trains all on my own.
I loved those pictures, would pore over them in detail, was disappointed when the carriage didn’t have them.
Millers Dale was also a popular destination for one of our Sunday picnics, especially when the weather was sunny. There was one particular spot, the site of a derelict stone mill which we could scramble through & over. I always rather assumed it must have been a cotton mill, but now think perhaps it might have milled wheat. Probably been turned into a highly desirable holiday cottage by now.
Millers Dale, Monks Farm, Abbot’s Abode, Abbottabad.
