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Sue Hembury-Kellow (nee Chalmers) was born in 1954 at Taunton, Somerset, and was educated at Milham Ford Girls Grammar School, Oxford.
My grandparents lived in the Somerset countryside, at Creech St Michael, not far from Taunton. When I was about five years old, I had moved with my parents to Oxford, but at least once a year we would return to my grandparents' home for our holidays.
I knew every mile of that car journey, every landmark. There were no motorways then, and the 120 miles would take a full day to complete, but we always took a picnic lunch, and usually stopped near the huge standing stones at Avebury in Wiltshire; here we would eat our limp egg sandwiches and drink lukewarm tea from a tartan-patterned thermos flask. It used to taste wonderful!
Just before reaching Taunton, the distant silhouette of Thorn Hill would come mistily into view. Merely a green hummock with what looked like a crown of trees on the top, this hill was crucially, almost mystically, symbolic to me as a small child, an omen that we were almost there, and I used to stare worriedly from the car window, nose pressed to the glass, anxious for that first glimpse.
The relief when someone spotted Thorn Hill was explosive. I must have been unbearably 'hyper' for those last couple of miles, and my father would throw despairing glances over his shoulder as I kicked my Clark's sandals excitedly against his precious car upholstery!
Nan and Grampy were always at the gate to meet us. I think Nan used to watch for us from the kitchen window, and would see Dad's old Ford as it turned into the lane.
The next hour would be a whirlwind of events as I rushed from place to place, checking that everything was still as I remembered it -- the dressing-up box in the spare room, the old, out-of-tune piano in the dining room, Grampy's well-tended vegetable garden, the elderly pony that lived in the field behind the house.....
By bedtime of that first day, both I and the long-suffering adults around me must have been aching with exhaustion, but I don't remember that bit. I do remember the tiny bedroom that was always 'mine'; the high, feather bed with its crisply-starched sheets smelt of soap and sunshine.
Freshly-scrubbed from my bath, I would snuggle down into the snowdrift of feathery warmth, listening to the distant drone of adult voices downstairs as they chatted over their late-night cups of tea.
Too excited to sleep, too tired to stay awake, I would close my eyes and savour the blissful feeling of being really happy. I had come home.
Sue Hembury-Kello, 2002
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