I remember vividly the minute that I heard that my family and I were moving to some place called Northampton as I decided to hide under the Habitat chair in our dining room and told my Mum and Dad that I wasn’t going. It was November 1978 and the whole course of my life was about to change forever.

It was an immediate reaction from a seven year old who had been born and bred on Merseyside, who loved living by the sea in a village called Hightown which had a beach, adored being close to his Grandparents who spoilt him rotten, loved the school he went to and his mates and who from August to May went every other week to Goodison Park to watch his beloved Everton Football Club. Why on earth would anyone want to leave that for some place in the East Midlands that he’d never even heard of?

But the die was cast, my Dad had been asked to move his job as a Sales Representative with Tillotsons from Liverpool to the East of England and having looked at other locations such as Bedford, my parents had settled on the market town of Northampton as our new home and a crying, traumatised nearly eight year old had no say in the matter.

It all moved very quickly. My Mum and Dad found a house on a newish estate called Langlands off the Billing Road East, my new school was going to be St.Gregory’s R.C Lower School and my Mum would teach at somewhere called Bective Middle School. Already Northampton was proving to be different as it had the lower-middle-upper school system whereas Merseyside just had primary and secondary. It would be the first of many differences. We came in December for a visit and I was made up to be getting a day off school and was very impressed with the very plush Westone Hotel that Dad’s company allowed us to stay in whilst Mum and I saw our new schools. Maybe this Northampton wasn’t too bad after all?

I really liked my new school even if it was a lot smaller than the one I was used. The Headmistress, appropriately called Mrs Head, seemed friendly if a little stern but I was disappointed to hear that ball games weren’t allowed in the playground like they were back home. Coming from a football mad city like Liverpool, this worried me as did the fact that the local football team were in the lowly Fourth Division of the English Football League and everyone knew them as ‘the Cobblers’ not Northampton Town. Despite this, it all seemed like a big adventure and I went back to Merseyside for my remaining weeks at school and the difficult task of saying goodbye to all of my mates.

Christmas came and went and then in the middle of something that the newspapers were calling the ‘Winter of Discontent’ we started our new life in our new town of Northampton at the start of January 1979. Only we didn’t completely…Our house on the Langlands Estate wasn’t going to be ours until February so the plan was that Mum and I would start at our new schools, we would stay in hotels and guest houses (The Saxon, The Grand and then The Langham) during the week and then we would spend our week-ends back in Merseyside. It was a chaotic time as in addition to our temporary living situation, the proliferation of strikes by the power workers and others meant that the schools were often closed and I had to spend the day with my Dad. This was good for me however as I got to see a lot of the town centre and its’ environs. I remember visiting the burgeoning Weston Favell ‘supacentre’ and marvelling at how modern it seemed in comparison with the New Strand in Bootle back near our old home. I also remember my Dad getting me a football top from Collins Sports on Gold Street and I remember seeing the market in all of its’ glory and thinking how nice it all looked.

At school, my newness and my Scouse accent meant I was a novelty and I got asked to say certain words by other pupils and teachers which made them laugh! It meant I made friends very quickly and I found the local Northampton children very friendly, even if I was bewildered by the way they spoke with a very different accent and with phrases like ‘watcha.’ I got used to not being able to play footie at Dinner breaks and instead joined in with the games of chase and our version of ‘British Bulldog’ called ‘Running Cock.’ It also helped that a few of the children in my class were also not born and bred Northamptonians with some having come from London and the South East to live on the rapidly developing Eastern District.

It was still difficult to settle in however with our temporary living situation so when in early February we finally got the keys to our new home on Selston Walk, Langlands, it brought a great deal of relief to us all. Suddenly we were able to enjoy Northampton at week-ends, be it walking in the nearby Abington (or Abi!) Park, shop in the very glamorous and modern looking Grosvenor Centre or go for drinks and pub lunches at the Abington or the Britannia on the Bedford Road – two pubs that I would get to know a lot more in quite a few more years to come…

And an immediate benefit of living further South came in early Feb when my Dad took me to Wembley for the first time to watch the England-Northern Ireland international in which my hero Bob Latchford scored. It wasn’t quite the same as going to see my beloved Everton every other week but my Dad promised me we would go back as much as possible. And a few months later he took me to the County Ground to watch (what even I called now!) the Cobblers play Crewe and I was amazed that we could watch the match on the cricket ground side from behind a rope, like you saw in the local park! And speaking of cricket, I had just started to show an interest in the game and I thought it was brilliant that we had a first class county team playing nearly on our doorstep, unlike in Liverpool. Soon the likes of Allan Lamb, Wayne Larkins and Peter Willey became firm favourites and I got to watch the County play at the County Ground during my summer holidays.

Like most children would do, I adapted fairly well to the change and I very quickly took to Northampton as a great place to live. It seemed greener than where we had lived in Merseyside and although I missed being near the sea, we had loads of excellent parks really near to us which gave lots of opportunities for open play. Being a Catholic, it seemed that Northampton was dead important with its own Cathedral and being of Irish descent, my parents loved being able to go to the Cathedral Club after Mass with its’ distinctly Irish feel. It also seemed to be a Town that was going places with the hub of new development all over the place. So much seemed ‘new’ from the afore mentioned Weston Favell Centre with a huge new Tesco, the Grosvenor Centre where we shopped most week-ends, Lings Forum where I learnt football skills and swam in the pool, the Greyfriars Bus Station which was great as it stopped you getting wet waiting for the Bus and Derngate Theatre, where I performed in the Gang Show in 1983.

Although I didn’t know it at the time, it was also clear that the population of the town was changing as well with the majority of native Northamptonians suddenly having an influx of (mostly) Londoners in their midst. Northampton also seemed more culturally diverse than where I lived in Merseyside with most of my friends coming from Irish, Afro-Caribbean or Asian families, adding to the general feel of a town going through a considerable transition from the sleepy market town of the past.

Although we went back to Merseyside regularly, I felt settled in Northampton very quickly. Of course I missed my family and friends but there was so much to distract me in my new adopted home that I never felt ‘homesick’ and as a family, we threw ourselves into everything that the town had to offer. My Mum had changed schools and whilst teaching at Thomas Becket RC Upper in 1980, a colleague of hers called Edith gave me a 7″ vinyl ‘single’ record as she knew I was mad about buying records even at my young age. This one was different however. It had a really weird front cover with an illustration of a woman’s green eyes and a spaceship flying over some buildings. The back cover however explained all – that it was a promotional single for the Northampton Development Corporation’s ‘Expanding Northampton’ campaign based upon a radio ‘jingle’ that had been developed. Edith’s son worked for the NDC so he was the source for the record.

The record itself had two pieces of music but it was Side One’s catchy ’60 Miles By Road Or Rail’ sung by the exotic sounding Linda Jardim that caught my young ears and I played it again and again, feeling smug that I had a copy of the record ‘from the inside.’ I then stopped playing it and went back to my Elvis Costello, Squeeze and Secret Affair singles and forgot completely about the record. For nearly 40 years…..

And as Northampton continued to expand with the Eastern and then the Southern District and the years went by, I grew accustomed to my adopted home town and was even proud to represent Northampton Townboys representative side on a football tour to the USA in 1984 and at Under 14 and Under 15 level in national competition. I then began to frequent many of the local hostelries and experienced the majestic delights of the Welly Road pubs, The Mail Coach, The Bantam Cock, Rumours, 40s, Top Of The Town, Cinderella Rockafellas/Ritzy’s amongst many others. I worked every summer school holiday at Nationwide Anglia at Moulton Park, played football with a great set of mates at ON Chenecks at the ON’s on the Billing Road and by and large had a great time in this old but new town.

But inevitably I moved away – firstly to go to University in Nottingham and then to start work in Berkshire and I ultimately ended up living in Amsterdam in the Netherlands for 12 years where my two children were born. I still kept in touch with all things Northampton as my Dad remained living there in Moulton and my in-laws lived in Kingsthorpe and on my trips back, I winced at how the Town Centre (like so many town centres in Britain) had gone downhill, how any decent shop chain seemed to be moving away from the town and at the stories of County Council financial mismanagement.

So it was easy to criticise Northampton and yet it was pointed out to me how much I should be grateful for moving to this town back in 1979. I went to some very good schools and had some wonderful teachers who helped me get the grades needed for a great University education and I made some wonderful friends who I’m still in touch with all of these years later. Most importantly, Northampton was where I met my wife of nearly 25 years, who I’ve been with for 33 years since our school days at Thomas Becket. She like me is from the North (North East in her case) and fate was on my side when she moved to Northampton in 1986 and two years later we started going out with each other after a night out at the fondly remembered Top Of The Town! So all these years and two wonderful children later, I certainly have Northampton to thank for it being the place that brought Michelle and I together.

We returned from Amsterdam a few years ago and now live in a village outside Northampton where we are close to our parents. And in 2018, when looking at the Derngate and Royal Theatre listings I suddenly saw something called ’60 Miles By Road Or Rail’ that instantly reminded me of that 7″ single from way back in 1980! I was intrigued by the planned show and was delighted to get my wife and I tickets for the performance on a Friday evening at the Royal. And what a performance! I was on the edge of my seat from the first minute until the last and being a voracious reader of social history and as someone who came to Northampton in the middle of the NDC ‘Expanding Northampton’ period, it was almost as if the play had been written for me! Even weirder, my wife and I nearly jumped out of seat when the names of some competition winners in the play were named as ‘Michael and Pat’ as they are my parents’ names and I might be wrong but I think it said they were from Liverpool which was even spookier!

The play was brilliantly written, staged and performed. It brought back so many memories of that late 70’s/early 80’s period for me personally but it managed to be evocative, sensitive, political with a small p, funny and meaningful, all in under 3 hours. The personal monologues of the actors in terms of their own personal ‘Northampton stories’ were extremely emotive and passionately delivered. What struck me the most however was the optimistic tone the play struck. It did not shy away by any means of portraying the countless missed opportunities, political shenanigans and financial mismanagement that has blighted the town and meant that the immense promise that ‘Expanding Northampton’ offered, had not been fulfilled. Whilst doing this however, it did highlight that a town or city is about the people who live in it and it is they that can make a truly positive difference and bring about effective change for the better. It was therefore heartening to see how something like a theatre production can be a force for good and a catalyst for ameliorating how a town is perceived and hopefully how it operates.

I refuse to accept that towns have to be in terminal decline in this country. We are all aware of towns and cities that have been regenerated and reimagined and which are now thriving places and there is no reason why Northampton cannot, in due course, have its own renaissance. Projects like ’60 Miles By Road Or Rail’ can be a part of this.

So two years on, it is great to see the project up and running again and hopefully many more people can get involved and the next stage of Northampton’s story can be written. I will always be a Scouser at heart but this town in middle England (as the song goes) has brought me a lot of joy. As the lyrics of the song ’60 Miles By Road Or Rail’ go, it brought me “..the love in my fairytale…” – my wife – and I hope it brings so many people even more joy and their own personal ‘fairytales’ in the future.

by Kieron Rathe