For the Travellers the word ‘My’ is a net woven by time and love. From the beginning at Oak Lane I became used to Jean leaning out of her trailer, calling out across yards - ‘My Vivianna! My Richard!!’ or Jeany leaning across to her tiny granddaughter and saying ‘Now, my girl’ in her leathery brogue.
Quite often when I talk about them I notice that I call them ‘My Travellers’. It is to distinguish them I suppose, different as all families are. I worry that it isn’t right. That I am taking possession of what is not mine to hold.
But for 15 years now I have gone to them, often when I’m weary, no matter where they are. First in their home at Oak Lane, and then when they were forced to leave it, on the road.
I could not count the times I have got out of my car to the familiar comfort of small voices, then no longer so little, shouting my name. Jean will call me in, and l will mould myself into plastic covered seats as the kettle is put on, soaking up the smells of cleaning fluid and boiling potatoes, and before long someone will always say - ‘well how are you my girl?’ gentle and familiar as Spring.
I thought, writing this, how I went down to see them for a handful of photographs one day but how intuitively we now know each other, and that we have come to belong to each other. And how they were there waiting for me again this week as they always have been, noisy, chaotic, full of life and hope, and that it is ok, they are my Travellers, my families as I am theirs, and this is our story.
