#realstories
The Road That Made Me
***
Cavendish Road,
my street, my home.
My first memories—
Stanley Road school, then Westdale Juniors.
The training started early,
walking that steep hill on Cavendish Road,
age six,
legs burning on the way up,
freedom flying on the run back down.
Back in the ’60s,
the road was our playground—
full of adventure.
Through twitches and alleyways we ran,
racing push bikes from the Cavo Pub to the hilltop,
then tearing back down—
no helmets, no pads,
just bare skin and courage,
scrapes and bruises the prize.
The good old days, we say.
Knock knock on doors,
everyone knew everyone—
and it didn’t take long
for Mum and Dad to know.
And back then,
it wasn’t a soft talking to—
body armour was comics
down the back of your pants.
Wednesday nights were swimming,
and in summer,
Brickyard ponds.
Pirates and Redcoats—
until we lost George.
He just disappeared.
We didn’t understand.
Time and resilience brought us back,
but we never played pirates again,
never swam those ponds.
The teenage years came fast.
Off to Cavo secondary—
good years.
Not much time in class,
always somewhere else—
gymnastics, trampolining,
cross country running.
Anything but sitting still,
writing page after page
about history, science,
or the English language—
something I’m still learning.
I liked the girls though.
Then came a time
they liked me.
What a street I lived on—
everything I needed.
Life was full.
At fifteen,
I joined the Army—
Junior Leaders Regiment, Royal Artillery.
A life of its own.
Coming home on leave,
back to my street—
at first, nothing changed.
Then slowly,
people I knew moved away.
Years later,
back in the Cavo Pub—
the Cavendish, to give it its name.
Old school friends,
old times,
banter, darts, pool.
But shock hit hard—
so many of the lads and gals
lost to drugs of every kind.
I loved my street.
I loved what it taught me—
love, joy, pain, loss.
But life moves on,
and so did I.
A new home,
twenty-six years lived—
but the games were real now:
real pain,
real fear,
far too many losses.
Still—
resilience,
and the pull of memory,
brought me home.
I still love my street.
Cavendish Road—
my foundation.
still that boy,
from my street—
with a life of poetry within.
By Paul Baldry (LongJohn)
Mar 31
Mar 31, 2026 at 6:47 AM UTC
People say every parent hurts when they lose time with their children.
And they’re right.
But what people don’t understand is that my story started long before I became a mum.
I was eight years old when I first learned what it meant to take care of someone else.
While other children were playing outside and learning what childhood felt like—
I was helping my mum, looking after my siblings, learning responsibility before I even understood what childhood was supposed to be.
I didn’t grow up dreaming about the future.
I grew upholding things together.
Then at seventeen I became a mum.
And suddenly all that caring, all that protecting, all that loving—
had somewhere to go.
Four years later-another little life needed me.
Five years after that my third.
By then being “mum”wasn’t just something I did.
It was who I was.
Because I had never known a life that wasn’t built around caring for someone else.
Six years later my fourth child arrived.
And that’s whenever thing went wrong.
Not with loving them.
Never with loving them.
But with being forced to live a life without them.
People say other parents go through this too.
And they do.
But many of them had years before their children.
Years to build themselves. Years to learn who they were.
I didn’t.
I went froma child caring for others to a mother raising children.
So when my world changed—when my children were no longer in my arms or running through my home—
it didn’t just feel like losing them.
It felt like losing the only life I had ever known.
Because when your whole life has been built around loving and protecting and raising others—
you don’t just lose time with your children.
You lose the part of you-that only ever existed when they were there.
Mar 16
Mar 16, 2026 at 2:11 PM UTC