Wednesday 8 April 2009

8 April 2009 - First Post - Places I'll Remember

















27 March 2009 - Last day at work - Outside HSE Offices, 1 Hagley Road, Birmingham

When I retired I asked my son, Sam did he have any ideas as to how I should spend my time. He suggested I write a blog. He said write about things you know, places you have been, films you see, books you read. So I start with something about my origins.

MY BIRTH

I was born, at home, not long after midnight, on the 21 March 1948. It was the vernal equinox, the first day of spring and the cusp between Pisces and Aries. My mother told me that I was bright orange in colour because of the number of oranges she had been eating. (I don’t know if this was true. So soon after the war Britons were still subject to rationing and things like oranges must have been in very short supply.) The labour had been long and difficult. I was eventually delivered by forceps. My father had gone to fetch the doctor. It was touch and go whether I survived.

My parents lived at 229? The Roundway, Tottenham. They lived in an upstairs flat while my father’s mother and father lived below. My parents had a cat, a feral, half wild animal that roamed the streets at nights getting into fights with other cats. It was called Upsey – because my grandmother did not like it and whenever she saw the cat downstairs would shout at it ‘Get up see’. (It sounds right with a cockney accent). I did not like Upsey either. I am allergic to cats yet I spent my whole childhood with this animal; sneezing and wheezing whenever I inhaled one of its hairs. Upsey was still alive when I left home at 18 to go to University.

My parents moved from Tottenham to Well End near Borehamwood, Hertfordshire when I was 2. At first we moved to 17 Rowley Lane (My Mums elder sister, Evelyn lived at 15 Rowley Lane and my Mum’s younger sister, Joan lived at 11 Rowley Lane). In 1952 when I was 4 we moved to 2 Alexandra Road – it was actually the house at the bottom of the garden of 17 Rowley Lane so we only moved about a 100yds.

Although only about 30 miles from the centre of London, Well End then was in the country. Fields and farms surrounded it. I remember building dens with the bales of hay in the cornfields. I came home once with a sheep tick sucking blood out of my neck (Mum got it off by sprinkling salt on it). My grandfather, my mum’s dad, who lived just round the corner kept over a thousand chicken. He had a green grocery round and pulled a cart with horses, big agricultural carthorses. Alexandra Road at first was unmade and had deep ruts in it. There was a wood where we played cricket and Tin Can Tommy.

17 Rowley Lane was a council house i.e. we didn’t own it we rented it from the council. Most of Borehamwood was built at this time to house the soldiers returning from the war and those from the East End of London displaced by the blitz. Borehamwood was therefore a soulless place. It had no real centre and no history. The people who lived there looked towards London. We called Borehamwood ‘the village’ because that is what my Mum called it. Her mother and father and 4 children had moved to Well End when she was 12 or 13. Well End was a dozen houses and Borehamwood was a village a mile or so away where you went for your shopping.

My brother, Stephen, was born on 30 March 1950. We lived in Well End then. He was also born at home. The midwife was called Nurse Reggers and lived in the village.

MY FIRST MEMORY

I think I can remember the back room of our house at 17 Rowley Lane. It had no central heating and the room had a coal fire with a brown mottled fire surround. There was a heavy table under the window and a radiogram in the corner. It played 78s (records that revolved at 78 rpm) and had steel replaceable needles that you clamped into a head that was lowered onto the rotating disc. I don’t remember the records. I think one was called Coronation Express. How much of this is a true memory of the room and how much is a memory of a photograph of the room I don’t know.

I do remember moving house when I was 4. I remember carrying a dining chair up the road to the new house. (Even this memory must be suspect – could a 4 year old boy carry a dining chair?). The Queen’s coronation was the same year. The whole of Well End celebrated. There was a fancy dress competition in the grounds of the local pub, the Mops and Brooms. I was supposed to go as a television set. I think it was just a cardboard box over my head. I hated it and cried and refused to take part. There was also a firework display and a party in the Scout’s hut.

MY FIRST SCHOOL

I started school at four and a half. We were waiting for the school in Borehamwood to be built so as an interim measure we went to a grand country house which was temporarily being used as a school called High Cannons. This was only about one mile up the road between Well End and Shenley. It had wonderful grounds with old cedar trees and rhododendron bushes. I remember eating our lunch sat on the stairs – presumably we had no dining room. I remember waiting for a bus to take us there. The others would cry but I liked it. Opposite the entrance to High Cannons was a pond covered in weed. I remember a group of us stood on the edge of this pond and Janet Owers slipped in. She disappeared went straight down. When she came back to the surface I grabbed her and pulled her out. Apparently the pond covered the site of an old cottage and Janet had fallen into what used to be the well. The teachers liked me at school. I could read before I started school. I cannot remember a time when I could not read. Because they liked me, I liked school and this set a trend that continued all my life.