Greens Norton, Northamptonshire
Ramblings
BBC
4.5 • 768 Ratings
🗓️ 22 February 2018
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Clare Balding joins Christina Edwards as she returns to her childhood home in Greens Norton, Northamptonshire, to retrace the walk she took most nights as a teenager, when suffering from anorexia. Christina lived with her mother in a small cottage on the village green. At seventeen Christina stopped eating and as she explains to Clare, as hunger would wake her in the middle of the night, she'd slip out of the house, always accompanied by their dog Jamie and set off on a long walk around the village to try and tire herself out and soothe her mind. Jamie would never leave her side as she strode across the fields and along footpaths, always listening to the same album on her Walkman, The Waterboys, This is the Sea. Christina now lives in New Zealand with her husband and three children, she talks to Clare about the strength it took to overcome her condition and how she still needs to battle with it today.
If you need support with eating disorders, help and support is available. Visit the BBC Action http://www.bbc.co.uk/actionline/a-z
Producer Lucy Lunt.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Before you listen to this BBC podcast, I want to tell you why I love podcasting. |
| 0:04.7 | Hi, my name's Tommy Dixon, and I make podcasts for the BBC. |
| 0:08.4 | I'm a big fan of stories, always loved a good book. |
| 0:11.4 | But when I started commuting for my first job, I discovered podcasts. |
| 0:15.4 | I was blown away by how a creative idea and the right mixture of sounds could take you into |
| 0:19.2 | a whole new world full of incredible stories. You know, the type that make you go, wow. And that kind of inspired me to |
| 0:25.2 | give it a go myself, which to cut a long story short led to a BBC training scheme and a whole |
| 0:30.0 | new career giving other people that exact same feeling. So if you want to hear amazing stories that |
| 0:34.3 | make you go wow like I did, they're just a tap or click away on BBC sounds. |
| 0:39.7 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:43.5 | This is a BBC Radio 4 download. You're listening to me. Claire Balding with another edition of ramblings. |
| 0:51.1 | I'm standing in the gathering gloom on the village green opposite a butter-coloured cottage with cream windows and grey lead slate for its roof. |
| 1:00.0 | I can see the church spire, oh about 150 metres away and it is starting to get dark and the reason that we are walking at dusk will become apparent. I'm in the village of Greens Norton. |
| 1:13.6 | And it's fairly busy, a lot of people coming home from work. |
| 1:16.6 | And it's that time of year when the lights are on in houses before the curtains are closed, |
| 1:20.6 | so you can really start to get an idea of people's lives, which is very nosy and I shouldn't do it. |
| 1:25.6 | But do you know what? Sometimes it's just so tempting. |
| 1:28.3 | We're in the County of Northamptonshire, just north of Toaster. |
| 1:32.3 | And the house that I described, the cottage that was standing opposite, is the cottage where |
| 1:38.3 | Christina Edwards, you grew up. |
| 1:40.3 | Yes, I lived here from about the age of nine to about the age of 18. It's got a really |
| 1:46.9 | nice face. You know when houses have a really nice face? It's got a lovely, smiley, wide-eyed face. |
... |
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