THE DELL

dell n. a small, esp. wooded hollow.

It's quiet now; no sign of anyone, maybe now is the time to do it? I have spent months planning my escape from this infernal place, planned every step, every last detail, for I will only get one chance, one chance to gain my freedom.

My breathing becomes more heavy now, beads of perspiration stand upon my forehead and I keep drying my sweaty palms on my trousers. I sit looking at my first obstacle, the barbed-wire perimeter fencing.
Only a short dash from where I am sitting, but the fence is so much taller than I am, and I must get over the top as soon as I can, before I am spotted.

"Now!" I say to myself.

With my heart thumping I make the dash across the open area to the foot of the fence and, almost fly like, scramble to the top of the fence and leap over, to land with a thud upon the ground. Up I jump and, without a backward glance, run in a zigzag course for all my life is worth.

The first piece of cover, although only a short distance from the perimeter-fence seemed to be teasing me, seemed to be slowly backing away from me as I ran towards it. Panic was now setting in and tears of fear came to my eyes; expecting any minute to hear someone behind me shout, "Halt!"

The cover finally relented and quickly engulfed me in its welcoming arms. I lay motionless for what seemed hours, until I slowly, very slowly, opened my eyes one by one and turned my head to look back at the endless (or had seemed) chasm separating me from the fence that had imprisoned me for what had seemed an eternity. No one is there. I have done it! Only a short distance to go now until I reach my goal, which, although it had been the cause of my confinement, was a very important part of my life, The Dell.

With a smack across the backside and a stern, "you are not to go down there again!" my mother banned me from visiting Utopia, Heaven on Earth, The Dell.

All I had done was ripped my pants, trodden in a cow clap and got my shirt dirty. What was a 7-year-old lad supposed to do when playing out?

The Dell, an abandoned sandstone quarry, which the locality had in abundance, was situated across the field at the back of the house in which I lived. The house was on the perimeter of a housing estate, which was ringed by a barbed-wire fence to separate it from the adjacent farmland.

Out of use for many years now, Mother Nature had now taken back what was rightly hers.

The stone now covered in moss and grass, trees and bushes, self-sown, were
in abundance, flowers, when in season, were everywhere.
A pond with jelly-like frogspawn, birds of numerous species, rabbits, a veritable haven, yet only separated from the main railway line by a dry-stone wall.

Just getting to The Dell was an adventure in itself. Although there was a stile into the field, that meant a three-minute walk, so the scramble over the barbed-wire fence was the easiest, and usual, option of getting into the field. Then there were the cows, to a 7-year-old, monsters. Large black-and-white beasts, with big slavering tongues, that stopped every few minutes, lifted up their tail, and deposited large slimy pools of smelly stuff that were treated as landmines and were to be avoided at all cost.