WHAT IF ?..

The short, cold, wet days of December are not the best for visiting interesting places but yesterday I went to Southampton with my eldest son, where we picked up his daughter, my grandaughter, from University, had a nice lunch and then wondered what we might do in the remaining hour or two until darkness fell.

In the late 1940s, I lived with my parents at Hythe on the western shore of Southampton Water.   My father worked for BOAC at their flying boat maintenance base at Hythe and we lived in a cottage with a garden that went down to the sea.   I don`t know how he managed it but my father bought a car - a black Ford Popular (I think they were all black in those days) and I can even remember the car`s registration - CHY 624, which indicated that its first home had been in Bristol.

Anyway, on Sunday afternoons in high summer, we used to go for little rides either to seaside places such as Bournemouth or around the New Forest and I vividly recall that when I was about eight we drove to see the Rufus Stone, deep in the forest off the main A31 road from Southampton to Ringwood.   In those days the roads were very quiet and the forest seemed very mysterious to a small boy and I remember being almost spellbound by the significance of the Rufus Stone and the tale it told.

Years later, when my own sons were very young, we took them to see it too and at that time, possibly 40 years ago now, the location still retained its air of seclusion.   Yesterday, I went back there again on a bit of a whim but also with the excuse that as my grandaughter is reading history at Southampton University then perhaps a visit to a historic location might be forgivable.  Read all about the Rufus Stone here - http://www.new-forest-national-park.com/rufus-stone.html

So here we were on this cold, wet, drab winter`s afternoon just fleetingly visiting a place of historical significance and by no means doing it justice.... and a couple of things occurred to me. The first was the stark counterpoint between this historic location   and the endless noise throbbing down the forest glade from the traffic on the A31 - ancient and modern almost coming to blows.  

The second thought I had was to confirm the extent to which chance shapes people, lives and history itself.   What if Sir Walter Tyrrell`s arrow had not glanced off that oak tree and struck King William dead all those 900 years ago?   How different the history of England might have been and how different we all might now be as a result.   If we would be here at all.