Heart to heart

I spent a very happy boyhood at Hythe, on the western shore of Southampton Water. In those days - the `40s and `50s - Hythe was a small `village by the sea` with distinct boundaries, beyond which we seldom strayed. When we did, it was to visit the New Forest or, more often, Southampton - maybe for a bit of shopping, or just to make a change....or maybe to go and watch Southampton FC (`The Saints`) play at The Dell.

Southampton and Hythe were - and still are - linked by a wonderful ferry service, which plies between Southampton`s Town Quay and the pierhead at Hythe. I still go and watch The Saints play at their sparkling new stadium (St. Mary`s) despite living in Kent. I often choose to drive to Hythe, park there and get the ferry over rather than struggle through Southampton`s traffic. Of course, going back to Hythe may be to try and recapture those boyhood memories, when life may have been a bit austere but was safe and secure in that enveloping small community, but there are other more compelling reasons for my pilgrimages.

Hythe has changed a lot - perhaps too much - and is now a bit of a sprawl of commuter estates which have sprung up beyond the boundaries we used to obey. But the centre of the village - it`s heart and its soul - remain; improved if anything from how it was all those years ago, with an `atmospheric` pedestrianised High Street and, just completed, a new promenade overlooking the ever changing seascape.

I love my football - I love my days going to St. Mary`s - and I love going back to my boyhood roots. The ferry is the link between the two and has been for all these years, the same journey, the same timetable, the same sea-smell in the air, the same Solent breezes, the same `feel.` Safe and sound once more. The ferry takes me from one of my personal havens to another - truly a heart to heart journey.