Living the Dream

Since I was a child, I always dreamed of one day volunteering for the National Trust.

The ambition began when we saw one of my parents’ friends on a family day out to a local palace, pointing to where the portcullis would’ve been, and it never went away.

I even wrote in to Jim’ll Fix It, but it never happened.

So, on a fine late-summer morning years later, I decided to just do it.

I packed up my bib, drove to the most local castle and got straight into it.

After assessing the site and studying the YOU ARE HERE sign, I stood in a spot where most people seemed to pass, the fulcrum for castle exploration. Not a single person passed that I didn’t greet. 

Once I’d settled in, finding my feet, I started to add things like, “You picked a good day to visit,” and, “Better than visiting on a wet day, isn’t it?”

The occasional passerby would try to spark up conversation, asking me about the history of the place and how it came to ruin. I managed to blunder my way through most of it, putting the blame mostly on the shoulders of the Romans, sometimes the Vikings, and, to one young foreign couple, Napoleon – who found that fascinating, as apparently Napoleon never even visited Britain.

But I insisted.

Veering the conversation to more contemporary history, I told visitors that Michael Jackson had once performed a fundraising concert here in 1989, which people were blown away to hear.

The actual King of Pop had been here?

Yep, I confidently replied. Two nights.

My experience as a volunteer did not disappoint – or it didn’t disappoint me, at least; a few of the passersby got in a bit of a huff with my sketchy knowledge.

At the end of my shift, I bought an ice cream and ate it while looking up at the old ruins. The ice cream was so good, instantly entering the list of my top 5 ice creams of all time.

Anyone else who stopped to ask me questions, I was forced to inform that my shift was over, sadly, so I couldn’t really help them.

Now that I’d invented a history behind it, I saw the castle in a completely new light.

Leaning there, I wondered if I’d inspired any young historians, who might also dream of becoming a volunteer.

While eating my second ice cream, I thought about the kid who Jim fixed it to work for a day in a milk bottling factory, and whether he ended up working in milk as a career.

vss #61

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