This train is for Effingham Junction (rude!) calling at Raynes Park, Motspur Park, Worcester Park, Stoneleigh, Ewell West, Epsom, the town where I was born and famous for purgative Epsom Salts. I spent my first 18 years in my parents’ small terraced house in Stoneleigh, right on the border between the endless suburbs of Greater London and the rolling, wooded county of Surrey.
 
From my brother’s bedroom, we could look north across what was the Nonesuch Great Park, the forest where Henry VIII hunted deer but now is swathes of between-the-wars and post-war housing, including ours. The railway station names Raynes Park, Motspur Park, Worcester Park celebrate that long-gone forest, and Ewell, also on that line is close to the site of the now-vanished Nonesuch Palace built by Henry VIII^th. 
 
To the south the landscape rises to the chalk grasslands of North Downs and the home of the Epsom Derby. The great thing about the Derby was that on race-days we had days off school. There was some nonsense about risks from heavy traffic but we were four miles away and now I wonder if the Head was a gambler.
 
I accompanied Dad when he went to the Downs to play a round of golf – he played, I had adventures in the scrub and thickets between the fairways, or I birdwatched.
 
In the few-miles-square scrap of green space that is still called Nonesuch Park, grassy hummocks and three small obelisks mark the site of Henry VIII’s palace and when I was five or six, the palace was excavated. For many months people could tour the site and apparently we went so often that I knew every word that the tour guides shared. I expect that parroting their spiels or keenly pointing out wells, toilets and bricks of special interest must have been very annoying. The excavations didn’t instil an interest in Tudor history but I was always keen to join any trip where I could indulge my passion for natural history.
I’d return from most outings with treasures including half-mouldered leaves, reduced to skeletons of veins that threw lattice shadows.
On one trip to Nonesuch Park, I found, partly buried in leaf-litter, a leathery white puff ball more than a foot in diameter. I displayed my magnificent trophy on the top shelf of my bookcase. 
Unimpressed, Mum said, ‘I hope you washed your hands after touching that, Jane.’
‘They’re edible, Mum.’
The puff ball slowly dried, turned brown and finally exploded, covering all my precious books, and lots else besides, in black spores. 
 
Dad was a PE teacher and Mum taught cookery, and trains from Stoneleigh calling at Worcester Park, Motspur Park, Raynes Park, Wimbledon and Waterloo facilitated trips to Wembley for Dad, Kew Gardens for Mum, and the Natural History Museum for me.
 
            Mostly though excursions were on bicycles and when I found a road-killed but not-too-badly-squashed hedgehog, I decided to follow advice in a wildlife magazine that said injecting formalin would preserve and harden it.
            I was I guess 12 at the time but had no trouble purchasing a syringe, hypodermic needles and formaldehyde from our local chemist and I set to on my first exploration of taxidermy, injecting the remarkably unpleasant and eye-watering chemical into my hedgehog. Then it took pride of place in the centre of my display of fossils, fungi, sea shells and pieces of wild birds’ eggshells.
            I invited my parents to admire my museum and Mum said, ‘Won’t that hedgehog rot?’
            It did. Conclusion: insufficient formalin.
 
My next project involved a road-killed grey squirrel and this time I powered in formalin until droplets emerged from its nostrils. This was more successful than the hedgehog but her little squirrel feet had become rigid claws so I couldn’t arrange her into a position which looked anywhere near natural: nothing like the exhibits in the Natural History Museum in Kensington. Also, when she set hard, one side of the animal, the one that had supported the squirrel’s dead weight on my desk, was completely flat and no amount of combing and fluffing – I considered using Mum’s hair drier – made it look normal.
 
So I was out on my bike again, on a road-kill quest and soon found another careless squirrel. This time I set to work in the garden – the formalin fumes were less of a problem in the open air. Once injected, I arranged the carcass hanging from his feet, upside-down on the washing line.
Mum wasn’t best pleased.
‘But it’s only until he’s dried and set, Mum.’
 
‘I was thinking, Jane, we could do some flower arranging together. I have to take some displays to our church and thought you could help me.’
‘Aw, Mum – that sounds so boring.’ 
 
I never did embrace the art of flower arranging. Instead I often took the train from Stoneleigh, calling at Worcester Park, Motspur Park, Raynes Park, Wimbledon, and onward from Waterloo ever onward to other parks and forests: Dartmoor, Brecon, Snowdon, Buzet, Nakuru, Kruger, Chiang Mai, Sagarmatha and those other royal hunting reserves of Chitwan, Dhorpatan and Bardiya.

With thanks to fellow clubber David Lynch for the title of this piece