We had already disgraced ourselves in one Leicestershire village when we moved to Fleckney. After leaving the leafy suburb of Stoneygate when my parents divorced, we had a stint in Countesthorpe, a village south of the city in the district of Blaby (of Lord Lawson fame) with more than its fair share of amenities, including the largest garden centre in the Midlands, which smelled of geraniums and sold single cigarettes.
Practically the first thing my siblings and I did in Countesthorpe was have a chip fight in the street. I squirted my sister with a warm Ski yoghurt – inedible, having been displayed on the shelf above the fryer in the chip shop (I wasn’t going to eat it, so what else was I going to do with it?). After that my mother went on the prowl for men and drove too fast in the village, and soon our name was mud.
We had gone down in the world by the time my mother’s boss at Initial Towel Supplies made her pregnant and we moved to the nearby cheaper village of Fleckney. The new house was a bit cramped for seven and had cardboard walls and doors, but it had fields behind it, and a line of trees on the distant skyline. It was the year of the infamous drought; a hosepipe ban was in effect and our new stepdad was dismayed at having to start a new life with an unwashed car. My mother had a baby boy (her fifth child) and fell out with a competitive cousin over it, but no sooner did she step outside with the pram than a neighbour popped up to make friends (a thing we thought we’d never see in a village).
Fleckney became industrialised in the late 19th century when hosiery companies fled the city. Rowley & Co, whose Leicester works had been stormed by weavers in riots in 1885, built a factory on Saddington Road. Its red brick design included a high wall along the street for protection in the event of further unrest. This wall (itself now protected) reinforces Fleckney’s identity as working-class compared with its more cottagey neighbours. Leicester’s second best pop, Furnival’s of Fleckney, was still bottled in the village when we arrived; Thorn Lighting had a factory there and the new industrial estate was home to Pukka Pies, where my brother worked part-time during his O-levels – and was once locked in the freezer for being pretentious (he was reading a book).
Like most young Midlanders I dreamed of the sea and I loitered with friends by the duck pond – a flooded clay pit dating back to the 1700s. Like teens before and after us we congregated there to smoke and gossip. We didn’t talk about the pond spilling into the brook that feeds the river Sence, and eventually, via Soar, Trent, and Humber, flowing out into the North Sea, but it was in our thoughts. My baby brother and his Fleckney-born friends recently had the outline of the duck pond tattooed on an upper arm. Maybe I should do the same, because though it is 300 miles from where I live now, when I say I’m going home, I mean I’m going to Fleckney.
• Reasons to be Cheerful by Nina Stibbe is published by Viking (£12.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p on all online orders over £15.
