The Holmes Chapel Tales - Tale of the Skeleton Army

An Ordinary Place

Excitement and adrenalin pumped through James's veins as he pushed off on his bike away from the village newsagents. Slung over his sholder was the strap to a paper bag, loaded with newspapers, which hung down by his side.

The sun shone bright and hot in his face on this balmy summers evening, as he headed off in the direction of the villages heart, the beads of sweat on his brow suddenly chilled by the breeze created by his own motion.

Pressing ever harder on the pedals of his bike, gaining speed with every pump of his legs, he rode with a growing sence of anticipation and excitement at the realisation of what he was doing.

He was only thirteen, and a child in the eyes of most, yet what he was now doing was the most grown up thing he'd ever done. He had a job. Yeah it was just a dumb old paper round, but it was still a job. A job which he would be paid for, which was more than most kids his age could say.

He rode past the fire station, the old buildings at the centre of the village looming up before him now. Holmes Chapel was a beautiful place. On a sunny evening like this, that much was easy to see.

James had lived in this sleepy village all his life. There was barely a person he didn't know, and he loved the place. He knew every hidden ally, every short cut, which was bound to come in handy on his new paper route. But as beautiful as Holmes Chapel was, it was the epitome of the ordinary English village.

Sat in the heart of rural Cheshire, and wedged between two rivers, the river Dane to the north and the river Croco to the south, Holmes Chapel was just like a million other small villages up and down the country. At it's heart stood a medieval church, who's tall sandstone tower still dominated the villages skyline some 700 years after it was built.

Surrounding the church were a scattering of small cottages and traditional village shops, all very quaint and pretty, but not unique. Beyond the villages traditional heart were a series of more modern buildings and public spaces. A 1960s shopping precinct and library, where the villages newsagents, and James's new employer was based, as well as a gathering of less tradition shops. Add to this a scattering of local pubs a village hall and a doctors, the villages centre was about as unique as a set of drums at a rock festival.

Meandering and surrounding all these places were the ever growing housing estates of the village. Holmes Chapel had been growing since the 1950s, when a population boom had suddenly seen the village become a popular destination for young families looking for a nice rural village to grow up in. And that popularity with young families never changed. With every passing decade, the village grew a little bigger. With its pretty surroundings of fields, meadows, woodlands and rivers, giving it a true rural feeling, and yet, at the same time the place didn't feel disconnected from the outside world. It sat on the main west coast train line beween Manchester and London, and by the 60s found itself on one of the largest junctions of the newly built M6 motorway, making its links to the rest of the world even better.

It was a place that had everything going for it, and having been born in the village, something that was very rare for his generation, James felt a deep love and pride in his home town. But that didn't mean he couldn't see Holmes Chapel for what it truly was... And what it truly was, was boring. As a younger child he'd never noticed it. Holmes Chapel seemed like the perfect place to grow up. But now James was at that awkward early teenage age, where your options suddenly become somewhat restricted. No longer was it cool or acceptable to indulge in childhood games. But James was still too young to partake in the cool things that older kids and adults could do, which left James with a conundrum. Did he simply waste his time, doing nothing until he was able to, or did he find a loop hole. The loop hole he found, lay outside of Holmes Chapel. There might be nothing acceptable to do in his home town, but what about in other places. Places with cinemas, and bowling ally's, and McDonald's! The problem was money. James's parents had made it quite clear that they weren't simply going to fund his every whim. So that was when the paper round came in.