Walking Home

Over The Fields

Mar 29, 2024

"Everybody you have ever loved is a part of the fabric of your being now" Ram Dass.

As you may have realised or seen via a couple of social media posts recently, my wonderful, brave Dad died in January. It was less than a week after my last Setting Sundays post back at the beginning of this year that he passed away, after living with cancer for over four years.

My beloved, darling Dad, Nicholas Charles Furlong, would have been 79 on St Patrick’s Day, 17^th March. He was born on Paddy’s Day 1945 in Elmdene, Tolworth to Wexford born parents. He was the best Dad – loving, kind, thoughtful, wise and so generous with his time and support. I was so lucky to spend all the time with him that I did, we had great fun and so many adventures together, including a trip to Wexford back in 2019, where he stood in front of the old Furlong family shop in Selskar Street, Wexford Town. He was back there for the first time in 60 years.

This photo is of him last year on his birthday, at The Ivy in Cobham, where he was quietly delighted with his chou bun. We all miss him so much. I wanted to do something on his birthday - even though he was never very bothered about celebrating it himself. So me and my husband drove to Richmond, where we lived when I was a child in the 1970s, and where Dad had an evening job at The Princes Head. We had just started watching Ted Lasso a few days before and lo and behold - The Princes Head is Ted's pub, The Crown and Anchor. Dad would have loved that.

I have not been able to write or post anything on social media since he left us in January, until now. They say grief is the price you pay for love – my Dad was so well loved by all of his family and friends. The tributes to him are still coming in. I will write more when I can but for now, but am trying to remember the good times and be grateful we had him in our lives for so long. We went to see the Pogues together twice with my sister Claire, so the song below is for him.

At Dad’s funeral I read two poems from the Over the Fields poetry map, published in 2015, which was a writing / walking project with my dad and my son, where we walked ‘over the fields’ in the local greenbelt, where generations of Furlongs walked, played and had adventures. These have never really been published online, apart from one, Hogsmill Tiddlers, which is taught as part of the Open University’s MA in Creative Writing. I wrote and published the map as a way of the three of us getting out into that space, so that I could record some of Dad’s memories, and so that my son could experience playing in that space.

It went on to be featured in the CPRE magazine, and I led walks and was invited to various places to talk about it and read the poems from it. Dad’s childhood friends, who also played ‘over the fields’ back in the 1950s also loved the map, an unexpected and lovely outcome of our walks, talks and my writing.

Here is one of the poems I read – and actually now, since making the map, this road has changed irrevocably. The paddocks were sold off, the land has been developed into housing, and this winding road, which goes back into the mists of time, has lost much of its ‘country’ feel and is, like everywhere else locally, becoming urbanised. This was another reason for making the Over the Fields map – as a way of highlighting the importance of the greenbelt, so much of which is under threat of development.

Back Road Drift

When we were kids we walked here

on Sundays. It reminded them of Home,

this rural ribbon connecting the past

to the present, connecting England to

Ireland, a time tunnel for furlongs of

Furlongs...the green wall once opened

on to gardens of a grand old house;

the Stagnant Lake, gnarled orchard bearing

light-as-clouds apples, a perfect meadow;

remains in walks, maps and memories.

Dad was a great walker and nature lover – when we were kids he taught us as we walked: the names of all the birds, types of trees and flowers and plants. He taught us as he was taught by his parents. Now I continue in his footsteps… and make new ones…