Childhood

Childhood. I read, in a newspaper, with following black white & photo of children used as slave labourers many years ago, I was one of them, but I didn’t share the misery described. I was sat with my little suitcase on a bus that trundled through a flat landscape, told to sit there until a man called my name. It was a small farm and the farmer’s wife gave me a thick slice of bread with strawberry jam on. Then I was shown my room a tiny loft span with straw mattress and it was bitterly cold. I started work at six next morning, with a glass of milk and a slice of bread, my job was to muck out the cows shed shuffle the residue down a hole in the wall, the manure was later used fertilise the land. School was every other day and a bit bothersome till I hit one of my torments with a brick over his head and poise of fear was restored. I quickly got the hang on the farm work, got on well with the farmer and was spared the dirtiest work. Years I spent on the farm, but then my mother came home from sanatorium I wanted to be near her; apparently it was not legal to just leave like that but I left anyway. One day many years later, feeling nostalgic I went back to the farm, it wasn’t there anymore, had been turned into a housing estate. Poverty, struggle, need and were all forgotten incidental as life itself, but I owe it to them, after me there will be no one left to tell the story