My Dear Cousin - Walking Pony Girl

22^nd  May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

Every time I write you now I go over the letters that I wrote and now and then a memory comes up of an interesting anecdote. Back around the tenth and eleventh I talked about losing my job. One of the windfalls of that was that I started walking with (Pony Girl).

(Pony Girl) had been diagnosed with hemorrhoids and walking got her business moving. Every now and then she would need to take off running to use the restroom. It’s a thing I can laugh at now, but it made a positive impact on her health.

I do recall that people were telling her that she looked thinner, but that she didn’t lose weight. In truth, had I followed this up with good diet I would have changed her life, but I was still ill myself and knew little about health.

We took the same walk we used to when going to grade school. The school is about a half mile from the house, and there are two ways of getting there from where I live. One way you walk up and down a hill and the other is flat land. We would go there on the flat way and come back by the hill. One night we did this ten times. (Pony Girl) even tried to get her girlfriend walking but she wasn’t much of a walking partner.

The telling event that came from this is when I talked about changing jobs. I didn’t want to go back to security. The only thing that really brought me joy back in high school was theater and I mentioned that I wanted to go into acting.

This really pissed off (Pony Girl) and she started by screaming at me that I wouldn’t get any overtime working as an actor. This is actually not true, but you normally don’t work at night as an actor. I could have done it for extra money but not as a job.

(Pony Girl), however, demanded we stop talking about it she was so mad. Mind you I had just put her up for two years as she finished college and she was refusing to pay me back.

Looking back I think this was very telling of how she saw me. I was a means to an end and she was basically a parasite who felt I lived to make her happy. I’ve lived a life with that woman eating me financially, and that hasn’t changed.

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal 

My Dear Cousin - Phone Call

23^rd May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

In yesterday’s letter I told you that my family had given me a basket of cookies as an olive branch. Rather a way to say, how about we just forget all the harm we did you and move on. As I said, when I showed no interest in these they found their way to the trash, and I’m not the one who put them there.

 I overheard (Pickle) on the phone with the aunt that made those cookies and heard her say “Is he still mad?” Given the fact that I was expected to pay two hundred thousand dollars for a car that they sold for four hundred bucks they probably would have asked for one of my kidneys in a week.

If they tried to make amends it would have cost them money. I would have expected my family to give me money for college as they did for my (Pickle) and (Pony Girl). I would have expected compensation for my pain.

Honestly, I think what they wanted was for me to spend the rest of my life looking after (Pickle) and they wanted to give me nothing for it. I was in school for the arts and there is no limit to how much I could have made but no likelihood of me making money. It was a gamble but so is most of life.

Further, the old man made it clear that he didn’t want three children, and I think he resented having to look after me. If he could have he’d have kicked me out when I was eighteen. The only reason he didn’t is that it’s my house I live in. He said as much back when I was in high school.

Then, they’ve been trying to take that away from me for years now. I don’t know why those folks were so dominated by greed. I had to live to make them happy, and I was never expected to be happy on my own.

Some would say that my family owed me nothing. Just because my siblings got something did not mean that I had to get the same. That could be true, but why should I suffer for those who don’t care about me?

Best, 

 

Richard Leland Neal

 

 

 

My Dear Cousin - The Third Olive Branch

22^nd May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

I have now told you of the first two of three gifts that my family gave me as peace offerings after they told me to leave and never return. The first and second were checks for two hundred and one hundred dollars respectively. The last gift they gave me was a basket of cookies.

To be fair, no one gave this to me. It showed up on Christmas in my home with a tag that said “Richard”, and I paid it no mind. I figured that (Pickle) would eat it sooner or later. Whenever there is something sweet in the house he tends to eat it in short order.

I also mentioned to myself that I’m not the only Richard in the world, and that they could have been for someone else. A few days past and they were in the trash. I figured that it was for the best. If (Pickle) wouldn’t eat them they must have been some bad cookies.

It’s crazy to say, but the family did kind of say a few times that they wanted me dead, and I didn’t think it was all that safe to eat anything they gave me. They had harassed me to the point where I was ready to die to get them to stop, and then they just wanted to pretend it never happened.

If they were ever to be a part of my life again they needed to make it clear that they understood that trying to force me to do things against my will simply wasn’t right. The situation called for honesty, but if they were honest they would have lost any control they had.

As it was, they thought giving me a beat up old car gave them leverage over me. What I had suffered demanded compensation, and there was no way I was getting that. When you need something people can force you to do a great many horrible things. I learned that working in security.

I had seen these people bring my home and my life to ruin. Now I was to forget all about it over some cookies. They say that the people you love the most are the people who can hurt you the most. It’s so very true.

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal

 

Cotswold Way - Tormarton

 Continuing on a flat landscape, I passed the village of Wortley and diagonally crossed a pasture with grazing sheep. There are numerous breeds of sheep in the UK, however, one breed special to the area is the Cotswold Sheep. Known for their long wool, they are thought to be descendants of long wool sheep introduced by the Romans in the first century AD. They became an important part of American farming in the early 19th century until they were replaced by Australia’s merino sheep. On the decline, the breed joined the ‘rare breed list’ until recent renewed interest by spinners. Yielding 15lb (7kg) of wool per shearing with fibres up to 20 inches (50 cm) long has turned the tide on their numbers. The fleece is described as lustrous and sometimes referred to as “poor man’s mohair”.

I entered a narrow yet densely wooded section, with little light filtering through, yet oh so delightful and exited on the outskirts of the small village of Alderley. As the trail meandered up and down the hills, I enjoyed a combination of narrow earthen paths with overarching trees providing shade and single-lane roads lined with hedges and a smattering of cottages.

About a mile before Hawkesbury, I came upon the Somerset Monument, a 100ft (30m) tall tapering stone structure with a viewing platform at the top overlooking the local area, as well as Bristol and on a good day even as far as the Welsh border across the Severn River and Valley. Built in 1846, the tower was dedicated to Robert E. Somerset, a British soldier who fought in the Battle of Waterloo.

Hawkesbury is a small hamlet with St Mary’s Church at the centre of it. A simple church of Norman origins, it was built on the site of an earlier Saxon church whose incumbent, Wulfstan, a parish priest elevated to Bishop of Worcester, became the last surviving pre-Norman conquest bishop. A social reformer, Wolfstan was a strong opponent of the slave trade and nearly succeeded in stopping the trade between nearby Bristol and Ireland. In 2021, St Mary’s Church installed a ring of eight bells in the tower with the largest one weighing 1,322lb (600kg) and named it in honour of Wolfstan.

Across the street from the church, up a hill, are two old walnut trees marking the location of the abandoned Hawkesbury Manor House. Owned by Charles Jenkinson, 1st Earl of Liverpool, the house is where his son Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool was born. Robert was to become Prime Minister of the UK from 1812-1827.

A mile further from Hawkesbury, I came upon Horton Court, a National Trust property with history stretching back to the 12th century and thought to be the oldest vicarage in England. Adjacent to the house is St James’ Church, built around 1300 from Cotswold stone.

Passing through the villages of Horton and Old Sodbury, I walked through Dodington Park, laid out in the 18th century by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, a landscape architect who was prominent in the development of the English landscape garden style featuring rolling hills, lakes and groves of trees.

I ended this section of my journey in Tormarton. With my eyes set on a pot of tea with homemade scones, jam and cream, I'm off to search for a café serving it.

 

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My Dear Cousin - The Second Olive Branch

21^st May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

In my last letter I spoke of the first of the three gifts my family gave me as, what were they really, olive branches. Giving someone an olive branch is a symbolic way of saying ‘let’s stop fighting’. An apology would have meant more, but they wouldn’t have meant it anyway.

In any case, the second of these I believe was a birthday card from my grandmother with a check for a hundred dollars. This hits on the vary basic problem that my family believed that no matter what they did to me it had no ill result. At this point I was so damaged from the anger I felt that it was consuming my life. I had to learn to manage my anger.

As I said, this gift came as a birthday card handed to me by (Pickle), and I looked at it and said “what is it?”

(Pickle) said “she just told me to give it to you,” and I opened it wanting to just tear it in half but trying to keep the pain in check. I found the check and a card that said “here is a little something …” I don’t recall the rest.

The bottom line was that the old woman was toxic. I remember when I complained about her son she would say “there are worse fathers” or “you’re making me sound like a bad mother”. I would say that her mothering skills were the issue as she raised a man who would never take responsibility for his own actions and would listen to no argument other than violence.

For a hundred dollars this woman wanted to come back and destroy even more of my life. I just wasn’t going to let her. I handed the card and the check back to (Pickle) and said “you may return it”. That was the last I would hear from the old woman.

I think she was better off without me. She was better off without the constant reminder of what a man-child her son had become, and better off without whatever nightmare the family would have inflicted on me next.

The attempts to make things right were getting more and more feeble. To me they were saying “you’ll take what you’re given”, and I was done.

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal