Book One

Brothers and Others

by

grandpa leslie

Grandpa Leslie, just getting started

Do not speak ill of those who die Whose souls are in eternity For they'll be restless if you do And they may come a-haunting you. So speak you kindly of the dead Then sleep you soundly in your bed.

Introduction

  In contemplating my personal history I have come to regard myself as being especially privileged to have arrived on this planet in a sizeable family domiciled in the south-east corner of trusty England at a time when England was the right and proper place to be. By the time of my arrival babyhood had been much practiced in the household and would continue for some time yet so, with little effort on my part, I progressed to early childhood in the brightness of a Kentish village where the world slowly awakened to show me a few of its many secrets. Within three short years the brilliance of life clouded as wartime pulled the family apart. Life, however, remained tolerable when brothers were on hand to lend support or to share its miseries. In the early post-war years, as I enjoyed the company of my brothers and sisters, I learned many useful lessons from observing each of them as they approached maturity and went their separate ways. In my dotage I feel the need to share these early experiences with succeeding generations so, while my tired fingers remain active, I have put together a small selection of recollections and observations, in as light a manner as their substance allows, with strong adherence to perception and no great regard for fact.

  I have been helped in this by sophisticated American-based technology which has sometimes frustrated my effort to produce good English by peremptorily changing some spellings and arguing about others. As the target readership is on both sides of the Atlantic there will be ample scope for literary criticism. My hope is that the reader will smile and frown as often as I have done in the course of preparing this narrative and will be tolerant of any doubtful interpretation of events or prevailing conditions, attributing such errors to the simple, sometimes amusing, misunderstandings of childhood.

Chapter One

  My earliest recollections date to the summer of 1936 when, on one occasion, I encountered vast crowds at a fete or festival in the company of a brother or two, leaving an imprint of flags, bunting, a red-striped canopy, a lot of noise and some sunshine. On another occasion, without the impression of sunshine, I was trekking across endless damp sea-side sand carrying a bucket of shells with my father looming large at my side. These signal events stand, together with my battle against an intransigent stocking nailed to my bed post on the morning of 25th December 1936, as recollections of my fourth year's engagement with life, but as I approached my fourth birthday an indelible archive of situations and events began to build in the deep recesses of the mind, always available at my bidding and often supplying unwanted scenaria in the course of troubled slumber.

  In the early summer of 1937 I graduated from my seat on the potty (already occupied) to the bench seat of the water closet. From this vantage point I could view the back yard through the open door and respond disinterestedly to my supervising sister Lily, aged 15yrs, who seemed unnecessarily solicitous and thoroughly amused as, from her vantage point, she also supervised the occupied potty on the kitchen floor. Mother, no doubt, was shopping and the many other brothers might have been at school. I recall being congratulated on the success of this landmark event before being allowed to play on my own in the large, enclosed garden where a favourite occupation took me to an earth bank with a cavity previously mined by me using small garden tools. Fresh excavation always produced darker, damp soil and yielded a supply of beetles, worms and other occupants to my close scrutiny.

  Another point of interest to the aspiring troglodyte was a defunct well, made redundant by installation of a solitary brass tap above the kitchen sink. The well was covered, at ground level, by a metal plate. This was a good spot for practicing the Indian War Dance brought home by brothers Ron and Arthur from a visit to the cinema. Stamping the feet would always bring on a deep resounding echo. The well was not, in my view, well sited because it was not "up the hill" as proper wells should be and gave very little opportunity for sympathetic administration of vinegar and brown paper.

  The garden was amply supplied with climbable trees and contained a large shed with a coal dust floor. This was generally out of bounds to small folk but I was allowed to attend the opening of a pretend shop there one Saturday when several orange boxes, stored as winter kindling, were dressed with dummy cigarette packets collected from the local shop as it changed its display. Older brothers would have visited the shop each Saturday as soon as their pocket allowances were received.

  A narrow path abutted the garden rising steeply, by my reckoning, to reach a field behind us, the topography facilitating my earth bank explorations. From this path errant youth could look down into the garden to offer verbal abuse to any of my brothers willing to respond. Beyond the path was a smithy, whose sounds and smells were ever a source of wonder. Beyond the smithy a cart track turned up to the field behind our house whilst the road reduced to an unpaved lane. The lane led to a supposed vastness of fields and woods, glimpsed on rare occasions when shouldered aloft on family walks but otherwise obscured by attractive, even exciting, banks, ditches and hedgerows.

  Returning from one such outing we were joined in the lane by a man, trousers tied below the knee, leading a shire horse on its way to the smithy. Brother Bob, aged 2 years and evidently fatigued, was lifted onto the horse's shoulder, protesting loudly. I was then hoisted to a position behind him when he became calmer with my arm about his waist. We stayed aloft for the few hundred yards to the smithy. Writing 70 years later I can say with certainty that was the only time in my life I have been on horseback. Perhaps on that occasion, but certainly on others, I was permitted to stand in the doorway of the smithy to watch while a new red-hot shoe was beaten into shape across the anvil before being offered to the horse's foot amid sizzling clouds of peculiarly unfragrant smoke and steam. The great wonder was the passivity of the giant who scarcely reacted to this astonishingly unfriendly attack on his person.

  Sunnydale, expensively rented at 26 shillings per week, was a detached double-fronted house at the northern edge of the Kentish village of Rusthall whose front garden was divided by a path from entry gate to front door. This garden on one side comprised a small lawn, the other, a weedy patch interrupted by several fruit trees. On the lawn I had my first involvement with mechanical engineering one Saturday afternoon when our father would not have been at his employment. Older brothers had connected parts of a failed perambulator to an orange box which needed holes to be drilled for the passing of a steering rope. One might suppose Mother and sister Lily had escaped the premises, leaving Father in charge of the male brood. One might further suppose that autumn had encroached because a fire was burning in the living-room grate.

  The method of drilling holes was explained. Ron, just aged 12, would heat up the fire iron in the grate until red-hot then move quickly through the front door applying it to the marked position while Arthur, aged 10, would follow with a slightly smaller fire iron. Father, of course, would supervise holding Bob, still aged 2, out of harm's way while Leslie, 4, Reg, 6, and Ken, 8, stood by to learn what they could from the demonstration. The operation did have a measure of success in that, half an hour later, two blackened holes were available for the steering ropes but Bobby had cried loud and long as the smoke stung his eyes, Ken burnt his fingers picking up the wrong end of the lesser fire iron and Leslie, at least, was left wondering whether some alternative method might not be found for making holes in wood.

  Unhappily, that was not my only encounter with a fire iron at Sunnydale. With the onset of winter the living room fire was the only source of warmth. As I approached it one morning, perhaps having taken a little longer over my dress than my elders, most of the brothers were seated in front of the fire awaiting their breakfast and excluding my access. As I offered a mild protest, the brother in charge of the poker (by no means red-hot) raised it nonchalantly to rest on his shoulder. It caught me just above the left eye. Fortunately the damage was temporary but, as breakfast was delayed, I earned only limited sympathy before being returned to bed for an hour or two.

  The front path was a good place to stand to view the night sky. Our house, at the edge of the village, had no street lights in the vicinity so I was able to contemplate a spectacle not often available in later life. It left a lasting impression thus meriting its place in these notes, though I cannot begin to understand how I came to be exposed to the experience when all rules suggest I should have been in my bed.

  A summer storm at dusk also left a deep impression. I was expected to cower and so I did while lightning flashed and thunder clapped. In the morning one of the fruit trees near the front path had shed a major limb. Ron said it had been struck by lightning. Arthur warned me not to touch it or I would die from electric shock. I stalked warily around it for the rest of the day until Dad came home when I shared my fears with him. He set my mind at rest by removing the dangerous object to be cut up for firewood. My sense of humour may have been a little under-developed in those early days.

  One day a call from Bobby by the front gate sent me running down the garden path. He was excited!

  A car had come down our lane and stopped at our front gate!

  I had seen motor cars before on a visit to the clinic to have my wart looked at, and I had been on the upper deck of a bus with external staircase! We had seen cars on cigarette cards and may even have handled one or two toy cars, but here was a real car and it was outside our house! To our amazement, a door opened and Dad climbed out. Our father had had a ride in a car! What an event! I could never have guessed that, a little more than a year later, I too would ride in a motor car.

  Bob often stood at the front gate, always interested in the limited activity beyond it, whereas I found interest in the minutia of every corner and hidey hole in the garden, possibly an early indication of short-sightedness. Busy with my garden-based pursuits one morning, it was some while before I needed to share a confidence with him and he was not to be found. I looked in the house and asked Mother. She looked in the obvious places with no success. When did I last see him? A long time ago, by the front gate. The gate was not properly shut and we did not know whether to look to the left or the right. I quickly checked the smithy and the lane beyond but my best guess was that he would have gone up the road, past the many houses, where the people were. Very few folk came by our gate but, when they did, they would usually stop to speak to Bob because, at two years old, he was a striking, endearing sight with light blouse and shorts and a great shock of curly white hair. Bob reached the common, three quarters of a mile away, before a lady realized he was alone and cornered him.

  May 1937 saw the coronation of good King George and his lady. The whole nation was obliged to celebrate so we assembled at Toad Rock, a nearby venue, to watch and hear marching bands and to wave flags at a never-ending parade of horses and carriages. There must have been other attractions for children because the older brothers kept running off and returning to the family encampment, identified by a wicker basket on a tartan rug. I was but three weeks short of my fourth birthday and felt entitled to do my own exploring. I remember walking alone through other picnic groups and reaching the rock which I patted with my hand. It was later protected from this sort of rough treatment by a sturdy iron fence.

  The area was covered in loose sand making walking difficult but it was quite pleasant to sit in and highly tactile. As I sat dreamily moving the sand about with my hands I found something soft and damp, clearly a foreign object. I uncovered it but could not believe what I saw! No-one would have done such a thing in such a place! I exposed it fully but could still not accept the proof before me. This was outrageous! I touched it again to make certain and indeed it was what I was sure it could not be. At that very moment Arthur found me and instantly saw I needed cleaning up. Taking me by the wrist he found some long grass and rubbed my hand about in it. He hauled me back to base, borrowed Dad's handkerchief to give my hand another wipe before passing the unsavoury cloth back to its owner.

  I was angry! The world was a treacherous place! I could find no immediate target for my ill feeling other than King George and his friends. One of them must have done it! I sat on the blanket feeling rather sorry for myself. The fish-paste sandwich, next on my agenda, seemed to have a stronger smell on that day than I had come to expect.

  At bedtime it was my privilege to sleep in my parents' room and I must suppose that my junior, Bob, was bedded in a room with sister Lily. Long before cessation of playful shouting in the garden, I was clad in my white nightshirt and unjustly placed in a double bed in the certain knowledge that, some hours later, I would be transferred to the nearby gate-sided cot from which escape, for me, was a mere formality. Gates, of course, are made for climbing.

  Each evening I would slide from bed to explore the room. It housed, among other curiosities, a gramophone with a large horned speaker. This machine lacked certain essentials such as a needle and bakelite record but it spun well after an energetic winding and the detachable horn was good for amplifying shouts, songs and, in the last resort, a loud raspberry noise.

  Evening shadows soon foreshortened these pre-slumber activities leading me to ponder the awfulness of being alone in the dark. It then occurred to me that the remedy was in my hands. A small table between bed and cot housed a saucer-type candlestick equipped with candle and matches. Chasing away the darkness would be no problem.

  Brother Ron heard my screams as he approached the front door. He shouted at the top of his voice and raced up the stairs, Dad hard on his heels. Together they extinguished the fire and extricated me from the remains of my shirt. The bed was badly damaged but my principal wound was no more than an inch across. It was treated with butter and bandaged before I was laid to bed with Ken, Reg being temporarily upgraded to share with Arthur. The scar on my thigh grew, as I grew, to reach three inches in diameter.

  I like to think this incident had some bearing on the decision to install that new-fangled electricity in the house because within a week or two electricians appeared. The house was suddenly full of light switches, a pair of them operating a single lamp over the stair. I passed several happy hours turning on the light downstairs then running upstairs to turn it off and, a day later, vice-versa. Arthur spotted my enthusiasm and, being the owner of a toy electrical set with a six volt battery, showed me how to wire up a 2-way switch circuit. Incidentally, some 40 years later, when the need arose, he showed me how to wire a multiple switched system and, on another day, a series to parallel switching arrangement. Thereafter, when the older children were at school, mother knitting by the fire and Bob deep in his post-prandial nap, I would ask her to let me go up to Arthur's room to borrow a meccano bracket or a light switch or a piece of wire which I took into the understairs cupboard to construct my own electric light system.

  Mother found me to be a good companion at this time. She seemed a quieter person when the others were at school and she sat down a lot. As we settled by the fire one afternoon, she in an easy chair, I squatting on the floor, I had rested my head to one side when she enquired if I was sleepy. "No," I replied in my usual taciturn manner. "What are you looking at?" she asked. "Oh nothing. I'm just dreaming," I replied, startled at my own verbosity. I could not tell her I had been studying the untidy manner in which her silk drawers conjoined above the knee with her poorly supported stocking tops. These garments had lost the dignity they displayed when flying informatively on the washing line.

  Life changed a few days later when Lily stayed home from work and mother went to hospital with a suitcase. She was gone for quite a while and Lily had a very hard time of it, particularly with Ron who, one evening, she excluded from the house and who endeavoured to batter his way back in. She won the day and Ron was not admitted until Dad came home from the hospital after dark but, for me, it was a noisy, frightening experience.

  While mother was away Lily prepared and supervised our meals. Perhaps because the porridge was not up to standard, toast burnt, or maybe each awakening simply bringing fresh awareness of Mother's absence, but breakfast time was no longer cheerful. Indeed, within a day or two, mutinous protest arose from the lower ranks. The meal had progressed to the bread and marmalade stage when Reg declared he did not like the stripes in the marmalade. The food in my mouth suddenly felt bad. I retched, disgorging it to the floor. Lily angrily told me to clear it up. I was happy to oblige and felt justified when I discovered two marmalade stripes in the offending debris. Thereafter, Reg and I nervously extracted the peel from any marmalade supplied leaving it on our plates. I was eventually cured of this habit by the effects of wartime rationing when billeted with the sternest of landladies.

  Mother returned from hospital with baby Gerald, the last of the King brothers yet the first to be christened without reference to royalty. Ron also carried the royal name of our paternal grandfather Alfred. Arthur could enjoy an association with the great Frederick, Reg was awarded the name of the reigning monarch, I saw myself as echoing the achievements of Richard, Coeur de Lion, Bob's crowned head managed to lose his jewels while Ken had a whole dynasty to himself. Gerald Roy (it should have been Rex) was, according to Dad, a ten pound monster. I was not sure what this meant but liked the sound of the words and I practiced them a little before filing them away. However, they left me with a nagging doubt.

  My awareness of monetary value was generally to be measured in pence but I had occasionally handled the silver coins in Mother's purse and had some idea of their immense purchasing power. I knew that somewhere way above these heavy coins came the mighty Pound. I had not exactly seen a Pound but, when Grandpa Alfred Henry had visited a few weeks earlier, I sat on his lap and fondled the pendant on his gold watch chain which, he explained to me, was a half-sovereign. As he departed after tea, he placed four half-crowns on the table which, Reg astutely observed, added up to ten shillings. We were all very impressed by this; Reg ventured the further observation that he had carried a whole Pound with him when he came to call. Could Gerald really have cost a "monsterous" Ten Pounds? How could so vast a sum have been acquired?

  The baby was a new item of interest. He had a sore belly button and a sore tinkywink which, Dad said, the doctor had cut unnecessarily. "Careless of him", I thought. "He should keep his knife in his pocket as Arthur does." Then I remembered: Arthur had cut his finger even though his pen knife had been in his pocket. A new enameled basin had been acquired for the baby's daily ablution which he daily protested in the loudest terms. I was sympathetic. I always protested the need for a bath and mine was very far from being on a daily basis. I did wonder if he carried his objection a little too far when he defecated in the bath water but I think it may have done the trick. Either he had fewer baths or my interest in them declined.

  A new baby on the premises led to some philosophical questions. I knew Mother had brought him from the hospital in a suitcase but Arthur said he had been found beneath a gooseberry bush. I took Lily by the hand to the patch of fruit bushes in the garden insisting she tell me which gooseberry bush had produced him. Lily told me Arthur had it wrong. Gerald was brought by a stork, a large bird allegedly existing without the benefit of my acquaintance, but her manner was far from serious and I knew she was teasing me. Arthur was more reliable. Thereafter I checked the bushes regularly to see that no further disaster was pending.

  Gerald's arrival sent Bob to my sleeping quarters while the baby had a small crib in the same room and I went downstairs to share Lily's bed. Her room held many curiosities, most particularly the floral chamber jug and basin and other paraphernalia found in and on her marble-topped washstand. There was some altercation over our respective rights but we soon settled our differences for Lily was "out to work" and had the means to offer such small incentives as would lead any four year old to know his place. One incident sets the room in perspective for me. Brothers were playing in the garden so I defied the nightly admonition by climbing from bed to peep past the curtains, kneeling on a dining chair placed against the window. My knee became fixed between upright slats of the back of the chair, and it was painful. The extrication process was even more painful; butter, or more likely margarine, once more being liberally applied.

  Another effect of Gerald's advent was a brief visit from Grandma Mary Ann Warnock. She seemed to fuss about at mealtimes while mother sat in a corner nursing the baby. She introduced me to the tea towel or drying cloth and showed me where the crockery was stored in a cupboard, hitherto avoided by me because of its arachnid inhabitants. I would sit on a table to make my contribution to drying the dishes. From there I had a better view of activity in the sink as first hot water from the kettle, then cold from the tap (faucet) was mixed in the washing bowl. Soap contained in a small metal mesh basket was swished through the water before operations began.

  The washing up business done, the basin was emptied into the sink and I sought my release. However, I was surprised to find that both the bowl and the sink also had to be cleaned. The bowl received a ration of cold water which was swilled round and round and then not merely discharged into the sink, but carefully used to rinse every corner of that final receptacle. This and other useful lessons on bed-making, sweeping, dusting and the like were learned in the few days before an exchange of angry words with Dad caused her abrupt departure.

  On the evening of Grandma's arrival, it being a Sunday, we were gathered together to provide polite mutual entertainment. I sat on Grandma's lap and, while the preliminaries were under way, found myself exploring the uncomfortable lump beneath my leg. This turned out to be a suspender clip, a magnificent piece of engineering the like of which I had already encountered on Mother's discarded corset, lately used by Bob to gird his loins. He was a truly resplendent sight as he proudly paraded the garment on the front path. I later learned that, after each confinement, Mother insisted on having a new corset.

  Reg was first up with a poem about a scarecrow but he fluffed the second line and began to sob. Much effort was lost in trying to placate him, then in encouraging him to remember and finally in requesting an alternative piece. All to no avail. A bad start indeed, but Leslie was generally to be relied on and, standing on a chair, he offered:

  When Father takes his spade to dig

  The Robin comes along.

  He sits upon a tiny twig

  And sings a little song.

  But if the trees are far away

  He does not stay alone,

  He comes up close to where we are

  And bobs upon a stone.

  This was very well received, except by little Bob who tearfully complained that he was not upon a stone, implying it was unkind to formulate a diatribe specifically directed at him. Commotion passed, Arthur, recently engaged in a choir at the church by The Common, obliged with a verse of a hymn. Something about a Ternal Father which I, in my turn, found irritating as there was no resemblance to the father I knew and I felt he was stretching credulity too far. Fortunately I did not feel the need to shed tears over it. I judged it simply to be an aberration on his part.

  Before the Ooohs and Aaahs were over, Ken was on the chair with a chant, which I must assume was collected from the school playground.

  Sensitive readers should now turn over two pages.

  If it is considered unwise or in bad taste for me to show the precise content of Ken's offering, the reader should allow for my being, at four years old, impressionable, a quick learner and almost entirely trusting.

  As Ken chanted I immediately identified another learning opportunity. I was well aware of the phenomenon of history since nearly all around me had lived many long years and had lots of interesting stories to tell of bygone days. I had had opportunities to look at books and had become familiar with fairy tales, most of which I recognized as belonging to olden times when life had not reached its current state of complexity and when Knights on horseback were often encountered as they went about looking for dragons. I had long suspected there must be a strong reason why men were so clearly superior to women, and here it was. Thank you, Ken, for filling me in. Women were not invented until later. Common sense. I should have guessed it. I was also thoroughly up-to-date with modern technology: the doctor had explained to me the nature of the instrument in his office which allowed voice messages to travel along wires supported on telegraph poles.

  It is hardly surprising therefore, that Ken's every word struck a sympathetic note with me and lodge in my memory to this day. There was, of course, uncertainty, at that first and only hearing, as to why men should wish to make holes in telegraph poles but this, as with much other information ever coming to me from all directions, I knew I would understand later. I did not have time to consider how the holes might have been made; that was not important. Given these circumstances I was totally bewildered by the pandemonium that followed Ken's mono-tonal rendition of:

  In days of old when Knights were bold

  And Ladies weren't invented,

  Men made holes in telegraph poles

  And went away contented.

  Poor Ken was cuffed off the podium and sent immediately to bed. Grandma mumbled something about a very bad boy. No-one, not even Lily, would give me a moment of attention. Ron and Arthur found it hugely funny but would not share the joke with me. Utterly at a loss to make sense of it, I crept off to find a comic book to look at.

  Mrs Staples was a kindly lady who lived a little way up the lane in the middle of a terrace running at a right angle to the road. She may have owned a husband and I dimly feel she may have had a mature son or two but I believe she had no other employment than to keep house for her shadowy family. From time to time I was left in her charge for brief periods. I enjoyed her small back yard because one could be wholly in possession of it by standing on an upturned bucket and looking over low fences in both directions at other near-identical gardens. Some care was needed in mounting the bucket because it was bottomless and the leaves of rhubarb sprouting through deserved respect. She, too, had a gooseberry bush bearing darker, sweeter fruit than our own.

  The five or so small houses comprising the terrace enjoyed access to their rear entrances along a brick-paved communal path adjacent to the rear of the building so that each private garden began two leaps or some five feet from the respective back door. Lost in a reverie atop my perch, I did not notice a small white scotch terrier emerging from one of the houses until it stopped between me and my safe exit route. I froze. Never in my memory had I been unattended in the presence of an unattended dog. Each of us stared at the other as time stood still. The dog raised its leg for a little squirt (no, I don't mean me) and, having marked his territory, returned whence he came. I breathed again with deep relief. I felt I had passed an important test on my way to maturity.

  Mrs Staples was not always my friend. She had been assigned on one occasion to take me to a visiting doctor at the school clinic to have my warty finger treated. Ron, in truculently towing me by the wrist at some speed towards her home, told me the offending wart was to be burned off. I was not happy with the idea, declining to open my fist when presented at the clinic. Her effort was entirely wasted and she was most abrupt with me when, on returning to her house, I suggested it was time for a biscuit.

  Ten years later, the family being resident in Croydon, Surrey, I was at a loose end one morning, contemplating a long cycle ride into the country to spot a particular steam locomotive on the channel crossing route, when Mother, dubious about the project, suggested I take a train to Kent and look up Mrs Staples. Inwardly pleased to excuse myself the long, lonely cycle ride, I donned my blue sports jacket, pocketed her kind money offering and sandwich and caught a bus to the station. My "grown up" jacket served, better than my school blazer, to allow me to pass for half-fare (under fourteen) on buses and trains and to be sixteen when presenting myself in the darkness of a cinema foyer to see an adult film.

  Thus I arrived at Tunbridge Wells station though I do not recall how I progressed to Rusthall. I had little difficulty finding Lower Green Road and was soon standing at the gate of Sunnydale. The house fully met my expectation but the smithy was now only an engineering workshop with no sign or smell of horsiness.

  Mrs Staples received me kindly though it was clear she could not identify me other than as "one of those boys". She plied me with many questions about Lily and her offspring and about Mother's final child, then 3yrs old. After tea I departed from the back door, careless of any possibility of meeting a stray dog, and just a little disappointed not to have seen a rusty upturned bucket in the garden.

  Back to 1937. Sunday morning often meant a stroll on The Common with Dad and little Bob in his pushchair. Presumably, older brethren would have been despatched to Sunday School. There was rarely any noteworthy activity but it was a change of perspective offering a wider and more vertical view of the world. A grey stone church at the edge of The Common usually sounded its bells when we were present. I did not care for the sound of church bells. There was very little tune to them and they were far too repetitive. I do recall opening a discussion on church steeples and posing a few questions, not answered to my satisfaction, about the reason for their peculiar shape and the difficulties that must have been encountered in their construction. Dad told me they were maintained by steeplejacks who periodically climbed them to oil the weather vanes. To the question, "What is a weather vane?" the reply was wholly unacceptable. Why should anyone place a metal fox or a chicken or a ship out of view at the top of a steeple? It would be another four years before my visual impairment was recognized.

  One Sunday, as the three of us progressed up the lane towards The Common, we encountered a hole in the road guarded by an elderly man sitting on a box by a brazier and cooking his breakfast. Near to the hole was a canvas tent housing picks, shovels and the like, and a large bag of coke. Behind the tent rested a giant steam roller, quiet and inactive, consequently lacking in interest. Dad spoke to the man, expressing the hope that he had enjoyed a quiet night, while I placed myself as closely as I dared to the bacon sizzling in the pan. This was a spectacle I had not previously witnessed since such domestic operations always took place above my eye level. Only when the egg had whitened in the pan did I turn my attention to the hole in the ground. I quickly learned that electricity pipes were being installed, though I could see no electricity. I decided the empty pipes must be very valuable to warrant the permanent attention of a night watchman.

  Christmas 1937 brought a make-over for Lily's bedroom (mine too), it being the most spacious room in the house, designed as the front sitting room. Space was found for a Christmas tree. Paper chains, balloons and tinsel were hung and the floral jug, which I had come to use occasionally on nocturnal excursions, filled with ginger wine. The fireplace, until then a sooty hideaway, was uncovered and a coal fire lit. The bed became a useful depository or work bench for unwrapping the many presents as they were handed from the tree.

  Lunch was an unusually jolly affair with orange drink, a roast chicken and Christmas crackers yielding up paper hats, assorted novelties and incomprehensible mottos. After lunch came great excitement as presents were dispersed. I had two presents: a clockwork steam roller and a pop gun capable of shooting a cork which, for the first five minutes, was tied to the barrel with string. Once the string was undone, the cork was soon lost. But, yes, you've guessed it, Arthur came to the rescue. Among Baby's bits and pieces was a card of large safety pins used, in those days, to secure the nappy (diaper). The gun propelled these closed pins with good speed and reasonable accuracy so that, in the course of ten minutes, all balloons were burst and Arthur was in disgrace.

  The clockwork steam roller was disappointing, almost to the point of vexation. When wound, it trundled well enough across the dining table but the clockwork steam was only glimpsed very briefly, and that in the coldness of the following morning!

  The day's surprises were not yet complete. I stood close by while Dad opened his present, a small pack of cigarlettes. The regular cigarette after supper was no longer a curiosity but this larger brown tobacco product was quite new and its smell so interesting - reminding me of the smithy. The packet was labeled "Wills Whiffs", the contents now down to four. I hovered a while to enjoy the flavour and, to my astonishment, witnessed my mother extracting a cigarette from a John Player Navy Cut pack of twenty! Dad lit it for her and she fondled it a while taking an occasional puff but, though she smiled at me, twelve inches away, I felt sure she was not enjoying it. Dad was an expert practitioner of the art; after lunch on Saturdays he could sleep in his chair with a cigarette in his mouth bearing a tail of ash nearly two inches long.

  With hindsight I can see that this celebration was rather out of character. Its contrived opulence resulted from Father having recently been away a few days each week on a training programme not unconnected with his emerging from a motor car. He was to become, or had become, a sales representative purveying clocks by calling door to door in the newly affluent London suburbs. On the eleventh day of Christmas we moved to Croydon, the town of my birth, technically in the adjacent county of Surrey but already an integral part of suburban London.

Chapter Two

  I have no recollection of any preparation for the departure to Croydon and I suspect my feelings were not consulted but, on the day, a large van arrived and I became privy to the arrangements. The senior segment of the family were to stow aboard the furniture van whilst the junior party comprising Mother and Baby, Lily and four little lads, were to use public transport. The journey by bus and train would take several hours so refreshment and other essentials had to be distributed among the baggage bearers. There is little to record of our journey except that the train was of the suburban type, without corridor, and followed a route lined with a great abundance of telegraph poles. Fortunately, being mid morning, we had a compartment to ourselves so that when, inevitably, our drinks of milk began to filter through we were able to discharge into the chipped drinking cup. Having mastered control of the window, I was proudly able to manage the final solution(s).

  We arrived at 231 Davidson Road in mid-afternoon, the furniture and workers joining us very shortly after. Floors were covered, beds raised and a scratch meal eaten over our familiar dining table. The house, in a terrace, was long and thin. A narrow corridor from the front door had entrances to front and rear rooms before terminating in a breakfast room which, in turn, led to the kitchen with a lean-to outhouse beyond the back door. Sheltered beneath the outhouse roof was a door to the sole water closet.

  My mental map of the first (upper) floor of the house is a little confused but later familiarity with the type of property suggests there was a small room above the front entrance, no doubt claimed by Ron, a large front bedroom housing three beds for five boys, a quieter rear bedroom for parental occupation and a smaller rear room where Lily might rest her head. Somewhere in the remote reaches of the upper rear there may have been a bathroom. I suspect not because it would have claimed my prompt attention in its complete unfamiliarity. At Sunnydale, infrequent baths had been taken in a galvanised tub in front of the fire.

  Davidson Road is much as it ever was; a mile long, straight as a die, and connecting two suburban centres. In 1938 very few cars were at the kerbside thus encouraging a good flow of through traffic. Having fallen asleep in early darkness at the end of an exciting, tiring day, the younger group were soon awakened by flashing lights and clamour coming through uncurtained windows. Screams followed the certain realisaton that a thunder storm was in progress. Under the calming influence of an older brother we stood on our bed, peering into the darkness, waiting for another monstrous intrusion. It soon came in the form of a motorcycle headlight and the gentle put-put-put of its exhaust. Our bed was, of course, only a few feet from a suburban traffic route.

  Our resident engineer found a blanket, some string, safety pins and a couple of nails, cleverly excluding the flashing lights and allowing untroubled repose for the rest of the night. Thank you Arthur. Thus we made the transition from country to town.

  The school, with senior and infant departments, was just a few hundred yards along the road. Ron and Arthur were enrolled in the senior school and Reg in the infants' section but the junior boys department must have been full because Ken had to walk a mile or so to Woodside School and back again for lunch. Lily found employment with a greetings card manufacturer reasonably close to home. I was left to follow such pursuits as the January weather allowed, mostly about the garden at the bottom of which ran the main London to Brighton railway line.   There was also the nation's second largest marshalling yard a few hundred yards along the line so that, for much of the day, small shunting engines came very close to my domain and I could sometimes exchange shouts through the high fence with flagmen, firemen and engine drivers. My ambition nevertheless remained steadfastly towards becoming an electrician. Perhaps I should record here that the grandfather of my life's companion was in charge of the marshalling yard at that time and had been awarded, ten years earlier, the Order of the British Empire for his effort in keeping open that vital part of the national rail system during the general strike of 1926.

  The boys had not been long at school before the measles came home. A bed was brought down to the dining room to be shared by Bob and me while Reg passed his days and nights in an armchair supervising the permanent coal fire. The worst was over in a week or so when Reg was able to give us a taste of school life with handwork lessons using paper, scissors and glue. We bravely entertained each other for about three weeks before Reg was cleared for school. Then Bob fell ill again, scarlet fever being suspected. Perhaps the diagnosis was not confirmed or the attack very mild because I do not recall his being taken from us as was the custom at that time.

  A large wireless set turned up one day and, as part of the installation process, a long arial cable had to be fixed to a high pole at the bottom of the garden, the other end to be secured to a fascia board at roof height. No ladder was available for this last operation. As I watched from below Arthur emerged from a bedroom window, stood on the stone sill and, reaching to his full height, screwed a hook into the board. His daring exploit was a great success. We stood by the wireless listening to a spirited speech in a foreign language by a Mr Mussolini about whom I soon learned several rude songs. Days later, following a change of weather, we were able to receive English language broadcasts.

  From time to time I might find my way through to the front yard, a small patch of concrete with unfriendly rose bushes, to await my brothers' return from school. Should any strange female pass by I would welcome her with raucous rendition of "Who's that walking down the street? Mrs Simpson's smelly feet!" The unenlightened reader may not realize this was a disrespectful allusion to the wife of our former king. At other times I might observe the street furniture and offer passers-by a version of George Formby's "I am leaning on the lamp-post at the corner of the street in case a certain little lady comes by." Well, anything to pass the time. Having lamp-posts in view and strangers flowing past the gate was a new experience for Bob and me.

  Lily was imposed upon to take four of us to an afternoon Sunday School at Spurgeon's Tabernacle, a full mile from home. We made the journey with the help of a push-chair for 3 year old Bob. I do not think we went regularly because five coins would have been required at each attendance. I remember very little of the proceedings but, on the journey, we had a much better view of the railway line than was obtainable from the bottom of the garden and I have a faint recollection of a January post-Christmas party in a dark and dusty hall.

  As the year advanced Mother would take Baby, Bob and me to the local park, very conveniently situated by the railway yard and amply supplied with swings, slides, roundabouts and paddling facility. On the way to and from this playground we crossed a road bridge over the very wide railway track. The brick wall of the bridge was penetrated by an iron gate protecting a staircase leading down to the track. The gate provided a high vantage point from where we could see much of the activity on the shunting area, including the washing shed where passenger carriages passed through powerful jets of water. Later generations may have enjoyed the thrill of going through a car wash but, to us, this was a wonder of the age.

  On many evenings I had a tutorial with Ken who patiently helped me with reading and number work. I came to understand the four rules before my fifth birthday but was not due to start school until the September following. As the summer of 1938 progressed I became unwell and when the boys emerged from school for the summer vacation I missed the chance to run wild with them in the park, participating only vicariously in their many misadventures. I believe I made up for it well enough during the next year's summer break.

  Before the boys went back to school I was confined to bed with painful limbs. Rolls of cotton wool were wrapped about my legs and arms for a few days; then I was off to hospital for three weeks. Rheumatic fever was to be cured by several doses of nauseating mixture each day, strong discipline at mealtimes and wakefulness at night beneath ceiling lights switched to pale blue at 22.00hrs. The duty nurse would switch them off when the windows were uncovered just before breakfast. The ward was large and only partly occupied. I was kept in bed for 10 days before being allowed to dress and wander, but even then there was little companionship as the other invalids were younger and inclined to sleep all day.

  There were few visits from the family, understandably since visiting times were strictly limited, no child was permitted to visit and it was a long-ish walk for my busy parents. One bright morning, when the Ward Sister made her daily inspection, wishing me good morning as usual, I confided in her that the night lights were still illuminated. "No they are not", she said. "Oh yes they are!" I retorted. She stood beneath one of the lights, peering intently. She said no more but inspected the wall switch, touched it and went on her way. A little later she returned with a small chocolate bar and a picture book. I had made a friend. My social skills were improving. From then on I took over management of the light switches. I was well on my way to becoming an electrician.

  On a Sunday visit Father brought in a grey suit, short trousers and jacket, which I recognised as belonging to Reg. I had been transferred to hospital by ambulance in my shirt and perhaps my regular garb was not up to standard. Properly clad, I was allowed to walk with him on the lawn for a while, chatting about this and that, catching up on the news from home. He too, brought me a chocolate bar and a picture book. I dutifully shed a tear or two when he and the crowd departed but soon cheered up when I found I was free to run around the lawn, inspect the colourful rose beds and generally be my own man for a while. For the next week I would dress each morning and, weather permitting, wander out through the glass doors at the far end of the ward.

  At that end of the ward, a good distance from my bed, was the entrance to a glazed extension containing a score or so of cradles, each with an infant a very few days old. One supposes they were stored thus to introduce them to natural light or perhaps to allow their mothers a little sleep. Some received extra nourishment from a teated bottle and, as I was well practiced in this, I offered my services. My offer was accepted with one proviso: I must wash my hands before and after ministering to each child. What a strange requirement! Still, it was quite easily managed once I was able to master the awkward taps and accept the new concept of liquid soap.

  This was an enjoyable way to pass the time because, unlike my first few days in hospital, I was in contact and conversation with busy people. One nurse was especially friendly and I was inclined to follow her around. I watched as she took a baby apart to service the underparts and, noticing this one also had a sore belly button, I was shocked to see it had no tinkywink! I thought instantly of the careless doctor and his knife before assuring myself he could not have gone so far. The nurse noticed my concern and explained it was a girl baby. This was a relief to me. These lesser mortals clearly took longer to develop. The missing item would come in due time.

  The following Saturday Dad came at visiting time and took me home where another adventure was waiting. Mother had become friendly with near neighbours who had no children but had lately acquired a maroon motor car. She also had the acquaintance, from an earlier life, of a Mrs Edmunds and family who had moved from Somewhere to Eastbourne. She had arranged for the good neighbour to take the two of us to Eastbourne for the day on the Sunday following my release from hospital. Swimming in the sea would aid my convalescence and might even cure my rheumatism.

  I was enthralled by the two-hour journey to Eastbourne. I became aware of gear levers, brakes, signaling devices, rear view mirrors, traffic lights, Belisha beacons and the basic rules of navigation through town and country. The time spent with the Edmunds's was almost as informative. A teenage son had put together some complicated motorised meccano constructions and was pleased to show them off to an admiring audience.

  After lunch we went to the beach where I examined clinker boats, dug in the sand and walked out amidst cautionary shouts until the gently-lapping water reached my chin. Mother, having taken off shoes and stockings, was not far behind me. It was early evening before we joined the motor car for the return trip. I dozed awhile then woke to a new world of street lights, illuminated shops, coloured signs and the many shadowy novelties emerging from the countryside at night.

  Next day I joined the beginners' class at school. This class had more to do with social adjustment than with literacy and number. I was much in need of the former and had no need at all of the latter. Girls were a stumbling block; they neither threw stones nor wrestled and had such long hair it simply invited pulling. I had virtually no experience of these strange creatures. One morning we were sitting at tables applying crayons to paper when Barbara, monitor for the week offering fresh crayons from a box, kindly passed me a solitary green. I thought her action ungenerous in the light of the great quantity in the box. I saw red, literally, as I grabbed her about the face, being shocked by the effect on her eye as I pulled down her cheek. I instantly unhanded her but she screamed and dropped the box. I think I learned something about myself from that unpleasant encounter. Readers may like to know I was able to apologise to Barbara Doswell 35 years later when we were fellow employees of a London bank.

  A very tedious part of belonging to the entry class was the afternoon rest. Each day I went home for lunch and had to carry a cushion in a bag when I returned to school. At first I felt sheepish as I clutched my bag diffidently, slinking along on the inside of the pavement. Later I was able to express my true feelings, running down the centre of the road, lobbing the bagged cushion ten yards or so then kicking it once or twice before lobbing it again. Thus I expended sufficient energy to allow me to drift away when the cushion was finally pressed into service on a rush mat. Reg attended the same school but I do not remember having his company to and fro at any time. Perhaps the beginners' class had different attendance times.

  On Saturdays I went to the park with Reg and a mandated, but sulkily reluctant supervising older brother. I was never wholly enthusiastic because one eye, or more, was ever on the look-out for loose dogs. However, I had advanced in life to the point where I had my own pocket allowance and the park had a kiosk where sherbert or toffee or lemonade powder was traded. One day I invested my whole allowance in a tiny sailing boat, launching it contentedly in the paddling pool. Unhappily, it soon caught the attention of a large girl who wanted to join the play. As I resisted her advances she pushed me over into the water. Indignant and thoroughly wet, I sized her up and retreated. I think I must have left her in charge of the boat. I looked in vain for brothers before, already shivering, I squelched my way home, defying warnings against crossing the road without supervision.

  The Davidson Road kitchen had a structure which impinged vertically on my learning curve. A cast iron bowl of about 10 gallons capacity was set in brick above a fire grate vented to an external chimney. A circular wooden lid sat on top of the bowl together providing a useful depository for six days of the week. On washing day, Monday in most households, the fire was lit, water heated, soap added in some form or other, cottons dunked and pounded before being transferred to the nearby sink for rinsing. Thereafter, the freshened goods went through to the back yard to face the mangle and the washing line. Mother was reluctant to undertake the whole procedure single handed so Sunday was a more likely day for us. Having heard harrowing tales of fingers being crushed in mangles I limited my interest to the other end of the process.

  Despite my earlier mishap with matches I had come close to mastering them and could now strike and hold the flame against anything likely to give satisfactory response. I had ascertained from experiments in my bedroom that better results were achieved when the flame was held below the object, in that case a woolen blanket hanging down from the bed, than when merely brushed against it to cause a singeing effect. This principle, I had discovered, was not inviolate. Candles were best lit from above needing a delicate touch, acquired with just a little practice.

  In our previous home a small wooden medicine cabinet had been fixed to the kitchen wall but now rested temporarily in the understairs cupboard - my exclusive domain. The cabinet had a fascinating smell, probably a mixture of iodine and germoline. It housed my collection of candle ends and, of course, a box of matches. When I withdrew to my small closet I would close the triangular door, strike a match, light a candle or two and enjoy the dancing shadows. One day the game went a little too far when a thin wooden shelf in the cabinet took to flame and began to smell rather differently. I had the good sense to call for help which, fortunately, arrived promptly. Arthur also pointed out that the burning cabinet was immediately beneath the gas meter. The badly-scarred cabinet continued in family use for a number of years, serving as a warning not to play with fire.

  Back to the boiler. I volunteered my services before breakfast, found some newspaper and went to the meagre pile of kindling in the lean-to. There was hardly sufficient. I went through the back gate into the communal alley where I knew a damaged fence might yield a little something. I was successful, earning a commendation for resourcefulness. I was now permitted to offer the lighted match. There was not much coal about just then but we had got away to a good start and I was released to join the breakfast party.

  I was not long at breakfast, there were important things to attend to. The water was barely warm, the fire looking sad. Dad went off to see what he could find. He came back with a broken cricket bat, a small shovel of coal dust and an old pair of shoes which, he said, smelled bad. After each stoking the metal fire-door was shut to increase the draught, the effect of this enhancement easily seen in the illuminated ash tray below. It was a worrying time. Would we ever get the water up to boiling?

 Searching the back yard I came in with some useful findings which were posted through the fire door, using a wet dish cloth as hand protection. Dad turned up with some more bits and pieces. It seemed that the fire, now audibly eloquent, could consume anything. I had lost interest in the water temperature. Mother had a good-sized shopping basket which I took with me on a tour of the bedrooms. I found an untidy pair of shoes and, yes, they did smell bad. I checked out another pair indecisively. Would they be missed? Unlikely! My shoes were on my feet. They went on in the morning and came off at bedtime. These shoes must be surplus to requirement or the owner would be wearing them. At least two more pair were construed as lacking freshness and condemned. I covered the basket with an old grey jumper, my contribution to the sacrifice, and went below.

  That wash day was a success. I did confess, when questioned, to disposing of my jumper but, lost shoes? Why ask me?

  As I emerged from school one afternoon I was captured by Arthur, lifted to the crossbar of his bicycle and taken off in a different direction to 42 Birchanger Road. Reg was similarly transported by Ron. I had received no advance warning of the move. I have assumed in later years that, the rent being in arrear, a moonlight flit was deemed necessary. The suburbs were still expanding and many older properties bore "To Let" notices so fresh accommodation was not difficult to find. However, recent discussion with older brethren suggests other reasons for the move. The new home would be more convenient for Dad's use of the local railway station, it had a bathroom, no doubt much appreciated by Lily, and it gathered the younger boys into a single school in anticipation of the evacuation likely to follow the imminent outbreak of war.

  The house was, of course, in disarray as I explored for unusual features. Several rooms had lockable doors with keys in locks. Little point in having a lockable door and leaving it unlocked so I secured myself within the front sitting room removing the key to a safe place. Tea was called soon after but I could not remember where I had placed the key. Mother was able to instruct me in the opening of a window and soon she, with the use of a chair, joined me in the room. A series of question and answer followed. As she pointed to a roll of linoleum I instantly remembered it to be where the key was lodged. All door keys were promptly removed to be placed in the sundry items tin residing on the high mantle shelf in the dining room. It was not long before a Dupontic arched oak seven-day mantle clock came to reside on the same shelf, evidencing Dad's employment with the mighty Du Pont Corporation which, unhappily, would soon be terminated by war in Europe. This clock was his good companion for the remainder of his life.

  Although the new home was only a mile from the former one there was another school even closer than before. Yet another fresh adventure. Reg and Ken, both now of junior school age, had merely to cross the road and walk a few yards but my route to the infant department took me several hundred yards around the block to the back end of the school complex. On this lonely journey I was liable to encounter a stray dog or two. One small creature was a terrifying barker who, surprisingly, responded to my scream and flailing foot by relocating itself on the other side of the road. Other dogs ignored me but, in keeping a watchful eye on a wandering Labrador one day, I walked into the metal shelf of a lamp post receiving a modest cut to my forehead which vented a good deal of blood. Ken was persuaded to escort me to school thereafter, cleverly finding his way through to his own department but, coming home, I was alone against the weight of the world's canine cunning.

  The new school was interesting, the more so because I sat at the front of the class and had a good idea of what was happening. My latest skill, acquired from Ken, was joined-up writing. This had to be unlearned as we patiently went through the alphabet chant, distinguishing, often with difficulty, between upper and lower case. Chanting the four times table was, for me, no more demanding than the first verse of Little Bo-Peep. When these perfunctory performances were over I was generally left to read the book of my choice. And so until the end of the summer term when, school out, I was old enough, strong enough and noisy enough to run wild in the local park with and without the company of my brothers. Dogs were always a problem for me so, as often as not, I kept close company with a brother or two.

  I think some of us must have kept in touch with Sunday School because we went with an organised group on a coach outing to Chessington Zoo. The entrance fee vouchsafed rides on a road train with open, animal-shaped carriages. This was a great attraction, not so much for the chance to visit the animal quarters as for the sport offered by leaping on and off between stations. I showed little interest in the uncheerful caged animals and their disturbing smells.

  Another attraction was the play park with its very large, speedy slides and roundabouts. Some of the slides were too intimidating even for a reckless 5 year old. Needless to say, I eventually became separated from the rest of the party and, as the day wore on, I became apprehensive. The remedy was, of course, to switch on the tears. A kind lady led me to the lost and found centre which, unbelievably in this latter day, was in the charge of a uniformed policeman who supplied me with a cup of cocoa and chocolate biscuit before announcing my plight over a public address system. I fear I was dragged away before I had finished my small repast.

  Succeeding generations of parents have provided offspring with equipment for skills development and quiet entertainment. One might suppose that computers and play stations are the order of the present day but our generation were satisfied with clockwork toys, skittles, skipping ropes and spinning tops, though these last were not always quiet. At the bottom end of this range of toys were the hoop and the whipping top, a heavy wooden cone or mushroom with metal stud at its ground contact point, available, with its wood-handled whip, for a few pence purchase at any shop whose window was worth pressing one's nose against. Ken was a master at winding the rope, setting the top spinning and whipping it back to speed when it lost momentum. With admirable accuracy he could wind the whip, flick his wrist and land the spinning top where he chose.

  One Saturday after lunch I was left to entertain myself while Dad took a brief nap in his chair. The dining room had glazed doors opening onto a concrete patch leading to the back garden. Just the place for spinning a top. Looking through the doors I could see him resting comfortably as I wound the whip around the top. I gave it my strongest flip of the wrist and it spun beautifully as it sailed through a glass pane and dropped at his feet.

****************

  Every Sat'day morning

  Where do we go?

  Getting into mischief?

  No! No! No!

  To the Mickey Mouse Club

  With our badges on

  Every Sat'day morning at the Odeon.

  The trip to the Odeon was an adventure in itself because we passed through a long, low, dimly-lit, echo-sensitive tunnel running beneath the aforementioned main railway line. The electric lamps were protected by small cages but it was obligatory to jump up to touch each one as we galloped through whooping loudly. The older boys were mostly able to achieve a full score whereas I never got closer than about 18 inches, that is until, in adult life, passing through the tunnel with wife on arm on a visit to the same cinema, I could not resist the temptation to fulfil this ambition.

  Having paid our three pence entry fee we began with a sing-song, including the ditty above, brightly-lit organ playing along, words on the screen picked out by a bouncing ball. Then, latecomers seated, we were into Disney shorts. Mickey, Donald and Goofy became early acquaintances adding real colour to our lives. A sprinkling of spinach from Popeye brought us to half time. The organ rose from below the floor, playing noisily while a formally clad Master of Ceremonies took the stage holding a mirror. When he thought he had our attention the music played softly, a beam of light emerged from the projection room. The game was that anyone on whom the reflected light fell was entitled to claim a small chocolate bar.

  When the reflected beam came within about five yards of us Arthur shot out of his seat and went to stage left side to claim a reward. He immediately went to the rear, crossed over to the right side so as not to be recognized, then went to the front to make another claim. With similar input from Ken we munched our way through the interval before enjoying the really heavy stuff: Roy Rogers and Trigger and the reliable Lassie coming to the rescue.

  These Saturday excursions could not often be arranged as there was some lack of will on the part of the older, supervising brothers or, sometimes, a budgetary problem. More usual on a Saturday morning was a visit to the nearby shop to spend our pocket money on sweets or chocolate and pick up a Dandy or Beano or Film Fun to help pass the day. If one was clever enough to understand the concept of credit these latter items could be charged to the family newspaper account but confectionary had to be paid for in hard currency. Although the shop was a much shorter journey than my passage to school, I was not allowed to go there on my own because it meant passing number 38 where some "common" boys lived. They had been unfriendly in a number of ways, not least in using doubtful language while throwing mud across the intervening garden at the contents of our washing line.

  In those distant days, bedtime, arranged according to rank, took a fair amount of supervision. Gerald was, no doubt, washed off and tucked away in his corner soon after tea, Bob and I were left at large briefly before being rounded up for inspection, partially undressed and put into our mutual bed protesting. If Dad were in charge we could expect a five-minute story time, often about paternal prowess over unseen wolves lurking in suburbia looking for small boys to eat. Then came our nightly devotions and having the curtains drawn upon us. Various strategies were adopted to attract further attention: the drink of water was common but too easily resolved. An itchy willy brought the unpleasant Vaseline tin. The itchy bottom brought an unwelcome probing for worms with an instantly-engineered cotton bud. "I feel sick" caused only a brief diversion. "I've been sick" gave a better result.

  Bob would eventually drift away and I would lie quietly until the next pair came to the room to fill the second bed. The following half-hour was usually interesting. As masters of the alphabet, Reg and Ken would play "I spy, with my little eye ---" and then embark on a quiz or a naming game where a bird or animal beginning with "A", etc., etc., had to be identified. One evening Bob and I were singing nursery rhymes when the bedroom door opened and Arthur came in with a cup of Tizer, a present, out of the blue, from his schoolmate Watson. Grateful, for the acknowledgement of our existence as much as for the treat, I reached for the cup and drank deeply.

  On handing the cup to Bob I felt guilty; I had taken the lion's share. Bob saw what was left and protested tearfully. I hastily assured him this was an equal share and he, trustfully, accepted my explanation. There had been no malice intended but the careless pursuit of a natural inclination had robbed little Bob of his full entitlement and I felt bad about it. I did make amends, a few days later, with a half-packet of wine gums hoping to calm my conscience but, by my mentioning the matter, the reader will realise I did not wholly succeed.

  My sixth birthday present, a cricket set, was not well suited to our small back garden so on Saturday afternoon or sometimes Sunday morning, Dad would accompany a few of us to the park to set up our own entertainment. One Saturday I bumped into a lad from school who actually owned a small two wheeler bike! Dad opportunistically gave the lad a penny to buy an ice lolly while I had a ride on it. This was a great adventure for me. The family had a brake-less tricycle but this was my first ever chance to fall off a bike. I kept to the grass to minimise personal injury finding I could manage nicely on the gentle downward slope but couldn't even get started going up the slope. Another penny for a toffee apple and my prowess quickly improved so that, at the end of the afternoon, I felt I was fully accomplished as a cyclist.

  On another Saturday we went by bus to Croydon Aerodrome to witness a display of aerobatics. A large crowd prevented us from reaching the air flight barrier and the event proved to be of no great interest to me. I had seen a good many planes in flight, often with advertising banners in tow. The planes on this day were just a little noisier and in good quantity but, when you have seen one ---. An interesting diversion was the iced lolly vendor with insulated box built onto a pedalled tricycle. Dad persuaded him to cut in half two one-penny triangular wares, one of lime flavour, the other raspberry. These were of more interest to four of us than the noise overhead. I enjoyed my green ice and, when I found a penny on the ground a few minutes later, I re-joined the queue to ask the man to let me have half a raspberry and half a lemon. He would not oblige me so I decided to take my business elsewhere.

  After tea on Sunday it was customary for the family, in best attire, to walk the mile or so to Ashburton Park where we could throw a tennis ball for a while and listen to any local brass band temporarily in possession of the small bandstand. The paddling pool was proscribed by reason of our wearing best clothing. An alternative outing would be to Norwood Lake where a short motor boat ride was on offer for one penny per child. On these evening walks we would stop at any empty house bearing a "To Let" notice, press our noses against the windows and contemplate the prospect of our moving, should the need arise. Lily, now nearly 18 years old, excused herself from these outings, passing the evening with a tall young man who came to call for her. Perhaps she was putting into service the intriguing silver dancing shoes kept in a small cupboard in her room alongside my most valued possession, a shoe box full of spent toffee papers.

  An August Saturday afternoon found some of us on a bus to Croydon's central car park to register for an air-raid shelter and for gas masks. I could not get to grips with the architecture of the proposed shelter and showed little interest in it, but the gas masks, unpleasant as they were when worn, were intriguing, especially in their effect on voice communication. I tried mine again on the bus going home, demonstrating a booming raspberry noise produced by forceful exhalation. Returning it to its neat cardboard box was not easy because the shoulder string got in the way.

  Workmen came to dig a hole 10ft by 7ft and 3ft deep in our small lawn. Well, the cricket season was nearly over. I was not permitted to climb into the hole but ascending the enormous mound of earth and sliding down again was quite good fun. In a day or two the component parts of the Anderson Shelter arrived to be bolted together by Ron and Arthur once Dad had lifted them in place. Then everyone, including four year old Bob, was pressed into service with shovel, spade and bucket to move the soil heap atop the structure. This produced an even better climbing/sliding opportunity. Workmen would return later with shuttering and concrete to firm up the edifice but not before we had used it in earnest, gas masks out of their cases at the ready, when the siren sounded on the evening of 3rd September 1939. Baby Gerald's gas protection bag had not arrived and I never did get to see it because the following day we were shipped off to our separate wartime destinations.

Chapter Three

  With the nation at war, London's children were to be evacuated to the countryside and we lived but ten miles from the centre of London as the bomber flies. To our great relief we had not been bombed or gassed on the first day of war. On the second day we were going to places of safety. Ron and Arthur were at senior schools in the borough, Ken, Reg and I were at the local school whilst Bob, not yet of school age, was placed in my charge. Gerald, nearly two years old, was beyond the scope of the school system.

  We reported to our respective schools carrying gas masks, wearing a full suite of clothes and, in my case, my remaining wardrobe was in my case. My box of sweet-smelling toffee papers and my cricket bat were left behind. Brave farewells took place at school. Those teachers volunteered to travel with us organised us loosely into classes, showing some respect for family connections. They attached individual parcel labels to each child then took us by crocodile to the local main line station, Norwood Junction, just 350 yards from the school gate.

  Our parents may have known our destination before our departure but the information had not filtered down to my level. Not until we reached it did I know we were going to the seaside resort of Brighton nearly 50 miles away. Fortunately the down side of the line (up to town, down to the country) was accessible without having to leap and yell in the long pedestrian tunnel. From the platform we were crowded into compartments, whistles blew, the train moved out and tears began to flow. I had no room for morbidity as I was busy absorbing the environment and improving comfort by shedding my overcoat. I had claimed a window seat and, having previously been entrained, was able to open a window and cast Bob's babyish woolen bonnet into the wind.

  At Brighton station we were each handed a brown paper carrier bag containing goodies. A quick inspection revealed a whole pack of biscuits, an amazing 8oz bar of Cadbury's milk chocolate and other alien comestibles. Then we lined up to use the urinal, a tricky business when holding case, bag and gasmask, before being trailed off to a nearby cinema where we sat in gloom for about two hours, eating sandwiches and drinking from novel paper cups.

  Eventually, in a group of about thirty children, Bob and I were called to a bus for a short ride into the back streets. Little Bob's courage began to ebb away as the bus moved off but I showed him his bar of chocolate, the largest he had ever seen, which brought a look of incredulity to his face quickly followed by a bright smile when I told him it was all his. We were now under supervision of billeting officers carrying clip boards. Ten of us, in the charge of a stout lady, alighted at the junction of Ditchling Road and Semley Road. The first house on the left in Semley Road was number 14. Loud knocking brought a lady to the door, argument ensued. A second lady came to the door, then a third. A seven year old boy was produced from the interior but he was evidently not to be traded and was sent back in again. The first lady pointed in my direction apparently agreeing to take me but Bob was pushed to the front and the argument continued. Finally both Bob and I were accepted, receipts taken and two sums of 8/6d paid over as the first week's allowance.

  The stout lady moved on with her ménage, a heavy evening ahead of her, while Bob went to reside with the young lady upstairs and her fireman husband, and I moved in with the mid-life Misses Thorpe and their other temporary charge, a boy left with them under a private arrangement. I passed the night in an easy chair before, the following day, a wood-framed canvas bed arrived with three itchy blankets. It was placed at the side of Michael Shorter's bed with scarcely a foot of space between them.

  In the few days following, Bob and I played together in the garden or in either of the two flats at our disposal. I met up with Michael Shorter, already enrolled at a private school, at tea, sometimes taken by the fireside to facilitate use of the toasting fork. We also listened to Children's Hour on the wireless, a new but unenlightening experience for me. Uncle Mac and Larry the Lamb were not my heroes.

  Much kindness was shown by our carers. There were outings to the sea shore and to a very exciting playground constructed around a canal-like water feature. The Thorpe sisters, Gladys and Violet, had a brother who owned a book shop close to this play centre. Violet went to the shop daily to work so that we sometimes waited at the playground for her to join us. Sunday evening's walk along the sea front could bring forth a Lyons strawberry ice-cream cone (2d) and, before winter closed in, perhaps a ride on an open-top bus to the giant windmill at Rottingdean. Fruit gums, toffee, chocolate and the like were readily available from the corner shop in those days before sweet rationing was introduced, and Semley Road was relatively free of canine wanderers, it being a short street branching from a busy trolley bus route. The garden had an interesting potting shed. A fuchsia bush bore hundreds of bright red and purple flowers at face level with dozens of insects available for myopic study.

  Soon we were both enrolled at school along the Ditchling Road, though Bob was on a half-day. His "Auntie" kindly fetched him at lunch time because, as an evacuee, I stayed to sandwiches provided by volunteer workers. My classroom was very crowded with 52 children sharing 32 desk places and an array of chairs at the front. As often as could be arranged we moved to the school hall for singing, country dancing (not my favourite occupation) and for stories read to us by 11 year old children. At 6 years old I was expected to learn to read and to look beyond addition and subtraction to multiplication and short division. I found a book cupboard to sit in but was eventually discovered by the headmistress and sent back to class.

  The first half of the morning was always arithmetic; a short explanation being given by teacher then examples chalked on the board to be copied down and solved. I would try to find a chair in a corner and tuck into a book but, on a bad day, there would be no chair so I moved from desk to desk among the evacuees, undetected in the murmuring hubbub of a busy class, easing many a burden and showing little boys what to do with their remainders. I could find no books on electricity. It looked, for a while, as though I might have to become a teacher.

  Evacuees began to trickle back to Croydon and class sizes became more manageable. I was passed up the school to sit with older children and found the literature, at least, more to my liking.

  Reg and Ken were billeted at some distance, too far for me to go to find them, but they walked past Semley Road on their way to school and Ken managed to seek me out occasionally. He brought me an exercise book with weights, measures, and tables (up to 12 times) printed on the back. I remember one contented half-hour passed in a tutorial on the doorstep of No 14 learning about yards, feet and inches while he estimated the width of the road and went on to appraise me of the formidable relationships between fractions and percentages.

  Towards the end of 1939 Mother came to Brighton with Gerald. I believe she stayed only two weeks as I saw her just once before she made her way back, leaving two year old Gerald in the hands of a minder.

  I have no recollection of Christmas 1939 other than going to the theatre at the end of the pier, the length of which we walked as angry spurts of water splashed us through the slatted wooden floor. The Misses Thorpe treated Michael and me to a matinee pantomime performance of Dick Whittington in which his cat, who must have been a fur-covered professional wrestler, vigorously vanquished the King of the Rats amid loud cheers from the audience. In all, a bright, colourful, noisy occasion, rounded off by cast and audience singing with loud patriotism, "There will always be an England and England shall be free." I found the performance very pleasurable but, holding on to Violet's arm on the way home in the dark, I sought explanation as to why Dick Whittington was represented by a shapely young lady and why his mother, the Dame, was clearly a husky man in female attire. I could see no humour in such a topsy-turvy arrangement.

Brother Reg 1939

  Winter of '39/40 was severe. When the snow came it lay above my welly boots and I had to use lorry tracks to work my way to the main road from where the pavement was mostly passable as far as school. The wellies chafed my bare legs so that, for a week or two, I smelled of Wintergreen.

  Soon, Bob was moved to another billet because the lady upstairs was expecting a baby and had obtained exemption from child homing. I still had his companionship in the school playground except for March 28th when his new "Auntie" took him from school to buy a birthday present. That was the day Miss Porter, my portly teacher, slipped in the un-seasonal snow and broke her wrist. More country dancing in the hall and a hesitantly read story about a silly little dutch boy who got his finger caught in a dyke. Only later did I learn he was regarded as a national hero.

  Spring arrived and with it, the Easter holidays. On Easter Sunday there was a chocolate egg for breakfast, instantly consumed, it's silver paper cover stored with my other treasures. The ladies took Michael and me to church, a fresh environment of strangely inactive people sitting on hard wooden benches. The organ growled and groaned forbiddingly, quite unlike the cheerful cinema organ though this place was much like the cinema but with more light and interesting windows.

  I observed a curious wooden structure towards the front with a small staircase at the side. It was big enough to hold and protect several pirates or spear throwers. A very large open book perched precariously on the front edge. "What is that for?" I enquired in full voice. "That is the bull pit," came the hushed reply. I thought for a moment. The carving on the front of the structure did not seem to me to represent a bull. Besides, one would not use stairs to enter a pit. Ron's oft-used adage came to mind: ask a silly question, get a silly answer.

  There was a universal stir as people moved in their seats. Something was about to happen. The organ cheered up a little. A procession began beyond my view so, with a single bound, I stood on the pew to obtain a better one. In my previous life I would have expected to have been raised upon shoulders to improve my absorption of the experience, but I must have been out of order as I was pulled down again.

  I kept to my feet and soon the procession came by my end of the pew. A couple of inferior personages led the way carrying sticks and things in front of a taller, white-clad figure, be-crooked and be-mitred. In the subdued atmosphere I enquired with loud wonderment, "Is that Jesus?". "Hush!" said Auntie Violet. There followed a loudness of suppressed tittering. Procession over, there came dull, un-interesting talk, clearly not addressed to me, but I found an occupation in opening four hymn books to the specification indicated on the display board and, sacrificing my silver paper, went so far as to tab up the next following hymn in each of them. Singing from a book of words was a new experience. We did not do this at school. I looked about me but could see no blackboard.

  Michael went away with his parents for a while and I was left to play alone in the garden. A wall, about four feet high, had been extravagantly built in nine-inch brickwork, with rounded top, on three sides of the garden. A wooden gate at the end of a path from the kitchen opened onto a muddy service passage about four feet wide. Occasionally I would venture along the passage but it was damp and smelly and, of course, a haunt of dogs.

  A pile of stones in a corner of the garden allowed me to climb onto the wall and, hesitantly, arms outstretched, walk along it. As confidence built agility improved and I moved about quickly on my elevated walkway, that is, until I reached the gate. Crossing the gate was tricky as it was inclined to move or swing open but, after a few mishaps, a suitable technique was acquired enabling me to run the whole boundary of the garden. Opposite, in Semley Road, lived a pleasant family whose 12 year old son would sometimes spend a little time with me. He was much slower along the wall and cheated by striding across the gate in a single step.

  At school new games were learned in the playground; bungedy barrel, stinger, hopscotch, marbles, French release, touch, and no doubt several more. Being light on my feet and certainly not over-nourished, my useful turn of speed allowed proficiency in the more active games. There were outings by crocodile to see educational films in church halls. Some of these were government propaganda films urging economies here, there and everywhere. Usually diverting, sometimes entertaining, rarely believable. Runner beans could not possibly grow to the top of the pole in two minutes! We also walked to the sea, class by class, where there was only limited access to rock pools and paddling areas because rolls of rusting barbed wire and other defence structures were an ominous impediment to complete enjoyment.

  My seventh birthday on 3rd June 1940 arrived on a Saturday. The postman brought a birthday card and a generous postal order which I cashed, as usual, at the corner shop. My normal pocket allowance was 6d allocated: 1½d (three-ha'pence) for a postage stamp for my weekly letter home, 2½d (tuppence ha'penny) for a 4oz bar of chocolate and 2d (tuppence) for contingencies. On cashing postal orders I indulged myself with a full signature in joined-up writing. On my birthday I invested 9d in a wooden gun with a spring contraption allowing the release, at speed, of a heavy, coloured rubber band. There was also a target which squeaked if centrally struck. I played happily with this for an hour or so before being passed to the lady opposite for the remainder of the morning. It was a delightfully sunny day; I found her garden full of colour and interest. I was entirely happy on my own, shooting the heads off a variety of flowers and knocking the wings off a bee or two. While I was enjoying myself that morning the residue of more than three hundred thousand British, French and Belgian soldiers were trying to prevent their heads being shot off across the water at Dunkirk.

  A week later, on the Sunday, there was an unexpected visit from Lily and her tall boy friend, Bob Neale. In the excitement, the reason for their visit escaped me and it was some years before I realized they had married on my birthday and were keen to announce the event to the family in person. Big Bob had the use of a Kodak Box Brownie camera so the morning's fun on the beach and the afternoon's play in Preston Park are recorded for posterity.

 Pull your socks up Ken!

  Big Bob, due to his work as a Post Office telephone engineer, held a driving license. In those early wartime days important people could still hire a car for essential business. Disseminating such urgent information must have fallen within that category.

  Following the fall of France, the south coast was no longer considered a safe haven for evacuees. In July, within a day or so of Reg's 9th birthday, Bob and I, Reg, Ken and Arthur were back on the train, this time to the quiet end of Surrey. Arthur had, so far, spent the war at Shoreham-by-Sea, a few miles from Brighton. Ron had also been evacuated to Sussex for a few weeks before returning to Croydon in time to celebrate his 14th birthday and the end of his school career. Gerald was left at Brighton for later collection. The four younger boys went to New Haw, not more than 25 miles from Croydon. Arthur's school went to Woking, the nearest big town and railway junction 4 miles from New Haw along the main road, Woodham Lane.

  New Haw had been a small farming settlement close to Addlestone, where the Wey Navigation joins the Basingstoke canal, until the 1920's when railway electrification brought the area, a stage at a time, within commuting distance of London. The main road became extensively lined with ribbon development. Expansion continued into the 30's, with a lull during the depression years, and had picked up full momentum at the outbreak of war.

  Broad residential streets now stretched away from the main road on both sides and, in every direction, ended in partly-built houses and bungalows where they abruptly stopped against fields or woods. Many part-built houses were abandoned when the first sirens sounded as much of the building labour force was called up for active service. These skeletal houses provided splendid climbing, swinging, hiding, fire-lighting and other play opportunities.

  Bob and I were placed with Mr & Mrs Downing, a cheerful young couple who had moved into a new house in Lindsay Road just a few weeks before we arrived. Reg and Ken briefly shared a billet 300 yards away in Amis Avenue. Lindsay Road was only partly paved, the unfenced garden a wilderness. A school friend, placed a few doors away, easily found his way across the backs to our play area. We had some long, exciting evenings together in the height of summer when, thanks to double summer time, darkness came at 23.00hrs. This lad was about 10 years old and, when we spotted a grass snake in a tangle of long weeds, he was brave enough to catch it in his hands and keep it captive in a box for a few days. But, a baby was on its way and Bob and I were moved on after a month of easy contentment.

  Meanwhile, the evacuees had been imposed on the already crowded New Haw school. Initially, the newcomers were divided into two groups in the school hall, infants at one end, juniors near the door to the playground with some circulating space between. Each group had two teachers. We had chairs but no desks. The infant end held the piano. Miss Trollope, a temporary teacher, possessed the necessary musical skill so we had daily singing exercise though, fortunately, there was no room for country dancing. While the younger group learned by heart tragic songs of the Drunken Sailor, Widdicombe Fair, Dashing Away with a Smoothing Iron, Early One Morning and the like, the older group escaped to the playground for ball games.

  In those mid-July days, Ken's tall figure was to be seen at the junior end of the hall as he collected Reg from school and on one occasion when he called to have a green extension fitted to his gas mask, but the summer break came and went and he moved to the Woking area to join Arthur's school, leaving Reg, Bob and me without the comforting proximity of a very big brother.

  During the summer break Bob and I were relocated to Selbourne Avenue in the care of the youthful Mr and Mrs Chandler who, already possessing a baby girl just a few months old, must have been unable to show good reason why the empty room in their small bungalow should not be claimed. They may, perhaps have been tempted by financial reward because, at about that time, the allowance rose to ten shillings per capita and there came with us another benefit: two more ration books, giving an improved range of choice at the butcher's shop. Their bungalow was the last in the road to be built. The road went on for another 30 yards past a vacant lot before terminating against a barbed wire fence enclosing a field of cows. Several hundred yards beyond the fence, the River Bourne meandered gently towards the River Wey. This home had a dog whose age in years exceeded the sum of mine and Bob's.

  On first acquaintance Mr Chandler was cheerful and interesting. His new garden was packed with vegetables and we were soon put to work pulling weeds, earthing up potatoes, searching out caterpillars and eggs left by the cabbage white butterfly, picking peas and runner beans, thinning out carrots and onions. We worked willingly although, before long, the vegetables proved to be our undoing. In one corner of the garden was a small dug-out, something like a fox hole. It was designed for two bodies but, at the first wailing of the siren on a dark night we all squeezed into it until the solitary 'plane had throbbed away.

  One Sunday morning we watched as the mongrel dog was very unwillingly pressed into the baby's portable tub and lathered all over with a smelly preparation. Then, Bob and I, the guv'nor and dejected dog negotiated the fence and went off to the river. On the way we threw a ball for the dog, which he lazily loped after, the idea being that, if the ball were cast into the river, the dog would follow and emerge good and clean. I have to say it did not quite work like that. The ball was duly thrown in. We stood on the bank watching it float away. The dog was also thrown in but not before the ball had disappeared around several bends.

  Some months later, the river in flood became a magnet to a group of us treading slowly home from school on a chilly afternoon. As we waded, welly shod, across the flood towards the river, Wally Burgess disappeared from view for a moment before struggling back onto the invisible bank. He was safe but soaked. His gas mask, in its battered cardboard box, floated slowly away before our eyes.

  Our difficulties with the Chandlers arose mostly from the meals they put before us. Breakfast was easy, with cereal or porridge, toast or bread with a little marge to spread. Dinner, at midday, comprised a small something meaty with vegetables, and Tea, the final meal at 5 p.m., was bread and marge with a little jam, cake on Sunday. I had much trouble swallowing cabbage and a little trouble swallowing potato. Bob found it impossible to stomach carrots. The rule was that if we failed to clear the plate it would be presented to us again at the following meal and so on until it was cleared.

  When I failed to eat the lunch-time boiled cabbage one day, we disappeared to school through the back door while Mrs C was nursing her baby elsewhere. At tea-time I was offered the plate of cold cabbage, Bob had bread and jam which he obligingly shared with me. Suspicion was aroused when he asked for a second helping. Eventually I put most of the soggy cabbage into my trouser pocket and, when Madam reappeared, I said I had done my best. I was excused from table. We went to the vacant lot next door to play blissfully in the dirt until called in at 9 o'clock. Mr C had found a long stick which he dramatically slashed through the air crashing it down on the kitchen table. We would be caned thus if we gave any further trouble over our meals. The stick was placed prominently in the kitchen corner.

  Within a day or so I was seen to eat Bob's carrots while he helped me with my potato. This caused a furious reaction. We each had our legs slapped by Mrs C, Bob was supplied with more carrots. The prospect was too much for him. He vomited into his plate. We were excused but, at tea-time, both plates were re-presented. I remember Bob enquiring tearfully, "Have I got to eat the sick?" Mrs C sniffed his plate and, close to vomiting herself, tipped it into the sink. I think we had won the round because the practice stopped. Thereafter we were left very much to our own devices and were no longer smacked for wetting the bed.

  I found we could enter and escape through our bedroom window, a useful device because we were sometimes still out playing when the house was locked up for the night. The lady next door accosted us one morning as we left for school by this means. Unlike anyone of our previous acquaintance, she was strangely dressed in matching jacket and skirt of dark blue. I felt she must be a rather important lady as I had previously seen her emerging from a car. I expected a reprimand but she simply said, "Would you like a piece of cake?" I could deal with this kind of enquiry and knew well enough how to respond. She handed us two carefully prepared packages each, as we shortly discovered, containing a good-sized piece of soft cake and two biscuits stuck together with very tasty jam. Perhaps she knew something of our troubles.

  Visitors came for tea one Sunday afternoon. I was admitted to the general company while records were played; we were all required, baby excepted, to croon "South of the border, down Mexico way" every minute or so. I also learned something of the character of the stars at night deep in the heart of Texas, wherever that might be. A box of chocolates was produced and circulated. When the box reached me I enquired whether I might take one for Bob who was confined to quarters for a lunchtime misdemeanour. I was told to go and fetch him. His tearful eyes and profuse, curly white hair made a great impression on the visiting lady who took him on her lap and fed him two chocolates. In fetching him, I missed my only opportunity to imbibe! Fortunately, I had not a resentful nature.

  Ken came to our rescue, turning up with Reg at tea-time one afternoon. Mrs C came to the kitchen to see what the extra noise was but did not acknowledge them. We poured out our problems. Ken threw the stick over the back fence. He was able to tell us that Mother and Gerald were now staying at Horsell, close to Woking, and she would come to see us soon. He gave us a little chocolate and some coins before disappearing on his bike into the late-September evening. A few days later Mother collected us from school and took us to the billeting officer who was unable to offer help. Mother arranged for me to stay at Reg's billet and she took Bob with her to Horsell. Some time later Bob returned to New Haw with Gerald, then nearly 4 years old. They were billeted together with Mr & Mrs Parrott in Grange Road where they remained until quite late in the war. Mr Parrott was a butcher at Sainsburys and had the ampleness of figure to match his position.

  Reg's billet, like the rest of Holly Avenue built some 2 years earlier, had 3 bedrooms upstairs, one being little more than a box room, with two living rooms and a sizeable kitchen on the ground floor. The upper floor also boasted a modern bathroom/toilet. Formerly No. 87, the house was located immediately opposite the junction with Warren Road. The ground floor front room was occupied by Mrs Woodger, mother of Mrs Wright. The Wrights slept in the upstairs rear with their infant, a happy 2 year old boy, having the adjacent small room. The front bedroom was occupied by a mysterious party who came and went at odd hours and did not eat with the family. So mysterious was this person that I cannot, as I write, come to a conclusion as to gender.

  Reg had a canvas bed in a corner of the dining room. By careful rearrangement of furniture, space was found for my bed. People could eat in shifts, two or three at a time, at the small kitchen table. Mrs Woodger's food was delivered to her room.

  So Reg and I would wake to Eileen Fowler's musical keep-fit instructions on the radio, just before Alvar Liddell or John Snagge told us how many german bombers had been shot down overnight. One score, I remember, was 112 but objective scrutiny would quite likely discover enhancement for propaganda purposes. We dressed in the late darkness of the morning, pushed our beds together and stepped some three feet to the kitchen table for breakfast. Washing, tooth brushing, toileting and the like took place, to the best of my recollection, on a fortnightly basis, more or less.

  I was immensely relieved to escape the oppression of our former carers but found it hard to smile when Mr Wright jokingly told me to eat up my lunch-time shepherd's pie or I would get it again for tea. I may have reacted spontaneously to shedding responsibility for the care of my young charge for I adopted a new role, that of an irksome thorn in the side of poor Reg. I became undisciplined, noisy and vulgar, carelessly using unacceptable language with which I surprised even myself. I have occasionally paused to wonder how I developed such a fund of expletives but have lately learned from Reg that Mr C's style of expression was thus tainted. My apparent change of character may have resulted from a belief that heavy punishment would no longer follow doubtful conduct or it may simply be that the latent Leslie had been too long suppressed.

  When not required for meals or sleep, Reg and I would be out to play in the street. Other school pals were plentifully dispersed throughout the locality and, just a few yards up the road where housing halted, was an excellent play area at a partly constructed road junction (The Broadway). At the junction, extensive vacant lots provided places for soccer, cricket, archery (privet hedge style), spear throwing and, uniquely, two dozen or so barrels of liquid tar, used in those days in road surfacing. Three or four "tubs" stood on end, some were at varying angles to the rest, the majority in closely assembled groups with staves abutting.

  "The Tubs" was a great attraction. The smallest legs could climb onto a barrel and progress carefully to several more. The most agile could hop and leap staying active and "off-ground" for many long minutes. Whatever the game, whether pirates or "last war", or even if passing by to catch or miss the hourly bus to Woking, "The Tubs" was the place to be. I was to spend another two years in Holly Avenue enjoying all manner of sport on these barrels. They were removed shortly before I went back to Croydon, making room for the post-war construction of the public library.

  Close by "The Tubs" was a large notice board spanning a partly constructed road, supported on tall 4" x 2" timber frames on either side. The main display extravagantly announced the nature of the proposed development. I watched with bated breath as a 12 year old boy climbed one frame and slowly worked his way across the road, twelve feet above the ground, to descend by the other frame. I did eventually manage to climb to the transom but had not the upward reach to allow me to make the crossing. A year or so later it all blew down in a storm.

  There was a little socializing at the Wrights which usually took place in Mrs Woodger's room on a Sunday evening when a wind-up gramophone might grind out a dirge or two. On one such occasion the siren sounded and black-out was hurriedly invoked. Black-out was much less strictly enforced in the country than in London. In quiet moments, a peep through the curtain was permitted to watch searchlights scanning the sky. The drone of an aircraft engine was soon followed by loud ack ack firing and then the deeper sound of a bomb exploding not far away, to which Mrs Woodger responded: "That be down Cobham way!" There were several more such explosions as Reg and I crouched beneath her table that evening, each one eliciting the same response. In the event she was partly right. A bomb did drop at Cobham that night, causing a small crater. Her perspicacity, however, was not sufficiently acute to leave us aware that, a few days later, a mighty explosion would follow in the same crater, causing a great deal of mayhem.

  The Wrights found they could tolerate my company for no more than five weeks. According to the headmaster when he called me in to deal with their complaint, it was my foul language to which they particularly took exception. Mr Minette had responsibility for all the South Norwood School evacuees. He and his family lived in the head teacher's house adjacent to the school and he was, in my experience, remarkably un-sympathetic to any stray football entering his garden.

  To my surprise, he smiled at me reassuringly, inviting me to sit down. He showed me a note from Mrs Wright and asked me to let him know precisely which words I had drawn from my reserve vocabulary. Since I knew such words to be in every day use, I had no reticence in reciting them. The first few he accepted saying, "Yes. Well, we used to say those things in the last war when I was in the army. There's nothing very bad in that." Thus encouraged, I trotted out a four-letter word used by me only in extremis.

  "Do you know what that means?" he enquired.

  "Oh yes." I told him. "I saw Peter Thompson doing it with a girl behind the air-raid shelter."

  It should be noted that Peter was 10 years old and the occasion had been purely a demonstration arranged for the benefit of we younger folk.

  A change came over the headmaster. His face became contorted and tears appeared on his cheek. He seemed to be sobbing. I did not know men could cry; crying was a manipulative device long since abandoned by my older brothers.

  "You are seven years old?" he croaked, recovering himself.

  I concurred.

  He took me on his lap, spoke of my naughtiness and got me to agree I had let the side down. I felt genuinely repentant. He then said he thought a little punishment was needed and I agreed. So he turned me across his knee and slapped my bottom several times. It hurt me not at all but I was duty bound to shed a brief tear which he dried with his handkerchief, patting me on the head as he held the door open. I scampered back to class, confident I had won the day and aglow with the assurance that somebody cared about me.

  During the summer break of 1940 a number of our group found their way back home so that, when we reassembled, we tightly fitted in to one of the larger classrooms with five columns of double desks, six desks in a column. Some of the older Brighton bunch, like Ken, had gone on to senior school while some of the very young, like Bob, had achieved school age and were now officially in the group. If our family was in any way representative, there was a tendency to leave younger children in relative safety whilst older children, doubtless more persuasive complainers, were permitted to take their chances with falling bombs. So the infant section fully occupied three of the five columns under the guidance of Mr Keer while the two dozen juniors progressed towards the scholarship examinations with Mr Williams. Both these gentlemen were exiled from Croydon with their families.

  For a while I sat next to Bob, helping him as he struggled with the alphabet or with tens and units, before he was whisked away to Horsell leaving only two King brothers in the room. I also acted as milk monitor and managed the eight jars of Cod Liver Oil and Malt provided to those of us showing signs of malnourishment or rickets. I was allowed into the local headmistress's toilet to wash the spoons under an interesting gas-driven hot water device.

  Ever a loose cannon, I was shunted, two years before my time, into the scholarship group where I vied with Reg for the privilege of sitting next to Marion Minette, the headmaster's daughter, and where Peter Sheppard taught me how to draw a Lancaster bomber.

 Junction of Holly Ave and Grange Rd, April 2007

Chapter Four

  Holly Avenue, like most roads in my childhood, had it ups and downs. Up the road was "The Tubs", where the library now stands, across the way from there was Annett's corner shop and Post Office, now a motor-cycle emporium. A left turn led to the main road and its shopping parade, Co-op included, close by The Black Prince, a landmark public house in solid red brick at the near corner. The Fire Station with it's visible siren (Moaning Minnie) occupied the other home-side corner with Woodham Lane. A right turn took us along two hundred yards of partly constructed road to rough ground awaiting the builder's shovel but temporarily providing cricket and soccer fields for us and manouvering territory for Home Guard at play.

  Downwards, the road reached the junction with Grange Road. Opposite Holly Avenue was Selbourne Avenue where we had stayed with the Chandlers but the junction itself had two interesting features. On a small island was an electricity sub-station painted green and, beside it, a maturing female horse chestnut tree. Early efforts to mount the smooth seven foot high sub-station were unsuccessful but the tree was less of a challenge, providing easy chances to rise in the world at all seasons. With a little help from below I eventually mastered the metal object. Once aloft, one sat or stood on the level, round ventilator, thoughtfully provided by the designers, and easily repelled unwanted boarders. Getting down was never a problem.

  A left turn at the Grange Road junction took one past just a few houses and the bottom of Warren Road before reaching Farmer Giles's (truly) domain of dairy, yard, and never-ending fields laid to pasture, brussels sprouts, cabbages, potatoes, turnips and stuff. Somewhere in this area was a partly-fenced acre with chestnut and other large trees, fruit bushes, stone paths, garden steps and other interesting remains of a demolished house known locally as "The Mansions". A couple of tracks found their way to the river and beyond to the distant Ottershaw sandpits. The right turn came to the main road after about 100 yards with a useful NewsConTob close by on the other side. This was also the exit route for my daily gallop to school.

  I believe it was Mrs Wright who found my penultimate billet for me. She met Mrs Gadd at a local whist drive where participants changed tables every few minutes, building up individual scores as the evening progressed, the highest scorer leaving with a modest cash prize. Mrs Gadd, at No. 66, sent her 14 year old son Peter to No. 87 to fetch me and my scant possessions. There was some initial disagreement over entitlements on my ration book which was settled later when two sausages arrived from No. 87.

  The attraction for Mrs Gadd, apart from the weekly ten shillings and the ration book, was that I would be companion for her six year old son Michael, enabling her to spend more time at her casual employment when he was out of school. Michael surrendered his bed in the small room, joining his brother in the double bedroom overlooking the back garden.

  The change took place in late autumn as the first round of school-collected illnesses took their toll. I arrived with a fever and painful throat, was washed and put to bed where I stayed for the better part of a week. This household owned several picture books and a couple of full feature adventures dating back to Peter's younger years, so I was able to obtain some mental exercise. "Auntie" would squat by my bed as she administered the cold flannel to cool me down and I could not help noticing that her silk drawers matched the colour of my mother's. The absence of stockings reduced my interest and, drawing on my previous experience of the subject, I took care to avert my gaze. Mrs Gadd seemed quite fond of me giving me a hug or two in those first few days but as I began to take up more houseroom, hostilities ensued.

  Uncle, well into his fifties, had heavy iron-grey hair and moustache. He was easy going and never crossed swords with me even on the occasion of a rather unsatisfactory transaction that passed between us. I had been provided with a small bicycle to enhance my usefulness and was sent UP the avenue to the tobacconist to buy 10 Players Weights (5d) and a packet of Rizzlas (1d), the latter used during his long night shifts as security guard at a local factory, to bond together the fag ends of his preferred Weights - and possibly any other fag ends left lying about.

  Armed with one shilling I speedily executed my task and handed over the goods, but the 6d change, a single small silver coin, could not be found. He suggested I go back to the shop to enquire whether I had left it on the counter and I went off in that direction, but I had a clear recollection of putting the coin into the breast pocket of my woolly jumper and concluded, before making any embarrassing enquiry, that it was lost in transit. I made a careful search of the route but returned empty handed.

  Let me say, in defence of my character, that I have never been a spendthrift and there have been occasions when I have managed to amass a small sum through living within my means. I apologised to Uncle, assuring him I would see him right. Repairing to my room I took a sixpence from my hoard and cheerfully passed it to him in the garden. He was perplexed, looking at me for some moments in bewilderment before reaching for his purse to envelope the coin. Then, with afterthought, he re-opened the purse and gave me a penny, my reward for carrying through the errand.

  The business done, he passed me the hand axe to split the following week's kindling. There was a framed photo of him in one of the bedrooms, taken soon after sergeant's stripes were sewn to the brass-buttoned tunic of his WW1 uniform. Four years later, when I joined the Army Cadet Force, I too had to master the process of winding khaki puttees between boot and knee before donning an identical cap and brass-polished tunic, in my case without the three stripes.

  Digging the garden, feeding chickens, manning one end of a two-man saw (sometimes on my own), lighting the fire on coming in from school, fetching in the coal, laying the table, washing dishes, lending money to Peter to bridge the gap between dance night and pay day; these duties allowed not much time for play as winter returned in 1940. I did escape into the fresh air on the frosty morning of Christmas Day to throw my new, brightly coloured pen-knife up and down the street. I quickly found a technique for a slow turn in flight so that the blade, not the handle, presented to the target but the choice of target was between frozen ground and tough oak fence posts which were still in place when I visited the area many years later. I crept through the back gate to try my skill on the softer shed door but was soon spotted from the kitchen and called in to lay the table. Thus was my temporary ambition to become a circus knife thrower deferred until, four years later, I bought a sheath knife from Putts, the stationers in Addiscombe. This item now rests at the bottom of a tool box.

  Back at school after Christmas I was well occupied in the scholarship class and having a good time on the soccer patch in a variety of team games. I ran the mile or so home for lunches of lentil soup derived from ham bones, Lancashire hotpot and other tasty dishes made even more palatable by a bottle of H.P. or Daddy's Favourite sauce which Peter insisted on having always to hand. Food problems belonged to the past. On trotting back to school I was sometimes overtaken by Mr Keer on his bicycle. This prompted me to increase speed and maintain a common pace with him until the last few yards when I felt obliged to shorten my stride and let him take the tape.

  Auntie went out each afternoon, ostensibly to work but, as I soon discovered, often to join a smoke-filled room of other aunties for a few games of cards. Occasionally, the meeting would be in place when I arrived home from school, to my great pleasure, because it meant the fire was already lit and there would be girdle scones and maybe a better-tasting jam for tea.

  The way to school was brightened briefly by an almond tree tucked behind tall iron gates hung on substantial brick and stone pillars, each with a non-functional electric lamp on top. Whilst the lamp assisted the climb it unfairly inhibited use of the pillar as a plinth for exhibiting prowess or as a lofty leaping point. The gates were sharp and forbidding. They protected a metalled lane which disappeared into the distance but led, according to a large notice, to a Central Veterinary Laboratory. Other blossoming almond trees could be seen further along the lane. This magnificent entrance was quite out of keeping with the small, dark nineteenth-century cottages set back beyond long gardens on either side of it.

  As January turned to February the beautiful blossom blew away but the tree had engaged my attention and I renewed the acquaintance occasionally when I stopped to review the challenge of the gate. This became urgent a few months later when green fruits appeared on the tree. Some of these overhung the gate pillar and were collected but, in the event, more were needed. The fruit was inedible but furry, tactile, friendly and an ideal projectile. On my turning out a pocket to find coins for Peter's evening outing, he took hold of a fruit and explained that the hard bit inside would make a useful whistle.

  Using my penknife, he cut it round, produced the stone and said I must rub it on a brick wall to grind down the edge. This would begin to expose the kernel; the kernel could then be picked out with a piece of wire, the hollow shell emitting a loud shriek if blown at one end of the slit. Peter was right in every respect. The grinding was done as I walked about, regularly crossing the road to engage any passing brick wall. Front boundaries fell into different categories; hedges, fences and walls. Alas, these last were less plentiful. All manner of surfaces were scraped in search of abrasive quality. Wooden fences did some work but parked motor cars were quite disobliging and were soon given up as unsuitable.

  My jacket pocket could be relied on to produce a rusty nail or two. Trouser pockets were not the place for storing equipment of this kind. The nail facilitated extraction of the tasty kernel. Finishing to a mouth-friendly shiny surface was achieved by rubbing the nut on a wooden desk top. I was able to produce a quality whistle, retailing at threepence, every two days. An essential prerequisite to production was, of course, mastery of the prickly iron gates. In gratitude for Peter's introduction to the trade, I did not press him, on that occasion, for repayment of my small loan.

  As the fruiting season advanced so a rumour passed down Holly Avenue one Saturday morning that the greengrocer on the Black Prince shopping parade had Victoria plums for sale at 6d the pound. The extra ration of sugar, notionally allowed for jam making, was already in hand. No time was to be lost in extracting bicycles from the shed. I, being fleetest of foot, was dispatched bearing a basket and four shillings, the price of eight pounds of plums. The fruiterer was queued well beyond the door as I took my place in line.

  Eventually I emerged with heavy basket and began the thousand yard struggle back to base, resting periodically. I observed that the plums were some way short of being fully ripe and, in seeking to lighten my load, selected one or two of those closest to maturity. They seemed pleasantly edible. I passed Bernard Church on the way home. He was off on an identical mission and demanded a sample. Michael Isaacs was out to play so I stopped at his gate and showed the contents of the basket as I rested it, yet again, on the ground. He was not so sure about the suitability of the fruit but, on a second tasting, agreed they might soon ripen.

  Auntie had begun preparations for her jam-making. She was very angry when I presented the goods. Her loud abuse was a cue for other members of the household to troop by, shake their heads and mutter at my stupidity. Uncle suggested they would ripen if left in the darkness of the understairs cupboard for a while but she was beside herself with anger and would have none of it. "They are no use to me!" she bellowed, and went upstairs to prepare her bedroom for Uncle's morning repose. I crept quietly to my room confident that, with careful management, the storm would soon pass. I pocketed four shillings and skulked below.

  When Auntie re-appeared I pressed two florins into her hand and said I would have the plums. She had calmed down a little but now seemed to struggle with a different set of emotions. I could not gauge whether her anger continued or if my gesture had pleased her. I kept beyond the reach of her long arm, picked up the basket and placed it in the dark cupboard. Ten minutes later I opened the door to check on progress. They looked much the same but I removed a couple more to be stored for a later snack. Perhaps having wrestled with her conscience, half-an-hour later she presented me with the basket and told me to take the fruit back to the shop. This was the worst of all worlds for I was no longer in possession of my capital and could not buy my way out of an embarrassing situation.

  I used a bicycle to transport the still-heavy basket and with trepidation stepped into the shop. By this time the plum bay was empty. I explained that Auntie did not want the plums and would like her money back. The large, brown-overalled man resisted. I sobbed haltingly about my being beaten if I returned without her money and attracted the sympathetic attention of his wife, the deputy shopkeeper. "How much is it?" she asked. "Four shillings," I sobbed. The man churlishly tipped the contents of the basket into the weighing scoop, handed me the basket and applied 8lbs weight to the side pan. "It's light!" he exclaimed. I howled. "I expect it is," said the lady, handing me four shillings. I ran, dry eyed, from the shop. In fact, I ran all the way home without thinking of the bicycle left at the roadside.

  My journey home from school at lunch time was solitary, Michael being at school at West Byfleet and most fellow pupils being supplied with the means to make the modest dinner payment. I was not always inclined to hurry. Part way between school and home was a small general purpose store where one might sometimes spend a ha'penny. Once or twice a week a delivery van would be ready to drive away from the shop in the same direction as myself and, with careful timing, one could grip the back of the vehicle and take a free ride, albeit in suspension. The trick was to let go before gaining too much speed and to hit the ground running. I tried this once in Holly Avenue with Michael in attendance. Alas he had not the trick and took a rough and, please excuse the word, bloody tumble which we had difficulty explaining away.

  One day, en route to lunch, I spotted another van, larger than my regular lift and further along. I could not understand why it was parked thus on the opposite side of the road. It clearly needed investigating.

  I stepped off the pavement and the world changed!

  I seemed to spin round several times before sitting motionless on the kerb whilst the world continued to rotate. One shoe was missing. A car had stopped noisily a few yards down the road and, as I struggled shakily to my feet, a man slowly emerged and came to my aid. He was ashen-faced, not looking at all well. He was very attentive and quite anxious about me, though he seemed unable to express himself. My only concern was to find the missing shoe. After a minute or so it was spotted deep inside a roadside hedge. The gentleman, for he was well dressed and, had he been able to speak, I am sure he would have been well spoken, withdrew it. As he gave it to me I noticed his hand was shaking violently. I felt sorry for him. He was obviously unwell and I thought he should go home to bed though it did not seem appropriate for me to offer him advice. The following morning, as I pulled up my sock to apply a garter (these, if little else, were usually removed at night) I noticed a large bruise on my right calf.

  A cold spell brought more excitement with a fall of snow. On arrival at school, the junior boys had made several lengthy ice slides across the playground. Good balance was needed for speedily travelling their full distance. Discipline in the line up was excellent. We were all polite, cheerful and well behaved. By playtime the slides had been deemed hazardous and the caretaker had sprinkled fire ash along their length. Spoilsport!

  Half-way home at lunchtime, where the road widened and recently built houses were now occupied, I found a useable section of pavement which responded, in the course of 10 minutes, to my energetic effort to turn snow into ice. I had a fast slide about 12 feet long. Luncheon called and I bounded away as snow began to fall again.

  Auntie had an engagement that afternoon but conditions were against the use of her bicycle and she thought she might be late home. I was surprised when she sought my advice as to whether Michael would find his way home from school in the snow. I said if he did not come at the usual time I would go to meet him. She expressed gratitude, a startling innovation! The world was becoming ever stranger.

  After lunch I rushed back to school intending to have another go on my personal slide but, when I reached it, I saw two people attempting to raise a large lady to her feet so I tiptoed discreetly by.

  Michael did arrive home at about the right time but Auntie, in the course of changing her arrangements, had failed to leave the house key in its usual place. This was no bar to our enjoyment of the next hour or so. We organised warfare with ourselves and Ronald Reading on one side against Bernard Church and Herbert Keating on the other. The reader need not be concerned about any imbalance of power because Bernard and Herbert each had a younger brother. These foot soldiers, while not competent at launching missiles, were proficient snow collectors and ball formers. Soon our playmates were called to their firesides leaving Michael and me to build a snowman in the middle of the road, there being no sign of any traffic. By 5 p.m. we were cold, a little wet and shivering. Peter slid home from his factory employment, helping us to complete the snowman. He too began to shiver. Auntie walked with very careful step from the Black Prince bus stop at about 6 p.m., Uncle following from work immediately after. I collected firewood from the shed and was last to escape the elements.

  It took a few days for the snow to melt and a miserable time it was. Much slush, cold wet feet, few sliding opportunities and hardly anything worth throwing. On the way home one afternoon I was attracted by a heap of sludge on the other side of the road. One lump of this was decidedly throwable. The target was a schoolfellow passing the small store previously referred to. Accuracy eluded me. Hearing the tinkle of broken glass I made a dignified retreat. The lady shopkeeper complained to the school, my name emerged as the culprit, my good friend Mr Minette said I should go to apologise.

  Hesitantly, I abased myself before the lady, keeping one eye on the small pane temporarily replaced by part of a Rowntrees chocolate carton. She was stern, saying it would cost her two shillings to have the glass replaced. I explained that I didn't know there was a stone inside the snowball (actually, the missile was a lump of solid ice). She said: "Well, never mind then," and with enormous relief I skipped off home.

  When I cashed up that evening, I found I had seven shillings and ninepence in the kitty and I decided to compensate the nice lady. Early to school, I called in to leave her with a shiny florin. She said nothing and I excused myself with a polite "Good morning."

  That was not the last of it.

  The shop must, like Mr Minette, have possessed a telephone. Conspiracy was afoot. I was called to account for my conduct.

  Had my "Auntie" given me the florin? No!

  Had I borrowed it from her handbag? No!

  Did I have any other funds about my person? I had a few pence.

I would willingly have given any information required had I been able to see where the questions were leading. I was told to wait while brother Reg was produced. He was equally unhelpful about the source of my funds except to suppose I did not always spend my pocket money. As we were dismissed Mr Minette reached for his telephone.

  That was not the last of it.

  The lady watched out for me as I passed by at home time. She caught me, gave me a squeeze, a packet of fruit gums, then asked if I was free on Saturday to run some errands. I had to say that my Saturdays were spoken for.

  That was the last of it.

  Soon afterwards I resolved to beware of ladies in the street. Walking back to school one lunchtime, I was enthralled by the whine of low-flying aircraft very close by. I stood in the centre of the road to obtain the best view of Stukkas dive bombing in near-vertical fashion, disappearing below the roof line and then coming on so low even I could see the rivets in their fuselage as they passed above. The explosions and machine gun fire were quiet in comparison to the shriek of their diving and the drumming of their engines as they straightened up. In all this excitement a lady lifted me off my feet and carried me down a garden path to bundle me into the understairs cupboard of her cottage. It was all over in about 20 minutes when I was allowed to proceed, ungratefully, to school where several windows had been shattered by machine gun fire and there were a few minor injuries among the shocked evacuees. The target had been the Vickers Wellington Bomber factory at Weybridge, less than a mile from school as the plane flies.

  Saturdays were indeed spoken for. Michael and I were permitted to go by bus to attend morning cinema in Woking, often with the proviso that we call in at Pearks Store to redeem coupons or acquire the week's special offer. Mostly these outings were uneventful but we sometimes managed to imbibe a few goodies which staved off lunch anticipation and interfered with our awareness of time. Occasionally we would arrive home at about 15.00 hrs, having been some 6 hours on our travels, stopping to hop the barrels or sail improvised boats on deep puddles or, just once, joining a game of cricket. As the elder, it was I who bore the blame for this misconduct whereas it was Michael's inclination to wander and his refusal to heed my warnings that sometimes brought us into trouble.

  On one occasion Michael insisted on spending his return bus fare on a pastry. He argued that we could hitch-hike home. Stan Laurel, in the film "Way Out West", had shown us how to do it except I did not understand the magic ingredient introduced by raising the trouser leg. I was in two minds as we passed the bus stop, me being in possession of the requisite twopence fare, but I knew my life would be worth nothing if I abandoned him. So we began to walk with thumbs raised. A wiser move might have been for us each to buy a one penny ticket and hope to avoid detection on overstay, but that would have required a level of deceit beyond my current development of the art.

  We dawdled for a full hour in cold drizzle before a lady driver came to our rescue in a quality car. She seemed surprised when we declared the number of our years and the distance of our destination. She could only take us the two remaining miles to The Victoria Inn where her route branched away, but there she pressed a sixpence into my hand and urged us to wait for a bus. The bus was not long in coming, the final stage fare one penny each. We arrived home just one hour late and in deep argument over our respective shares of the sixpence remaining.

  Michael and I had many such adventures. I will recount two more.

  We were left alone one evening when Peter was at a club, Auntie was at a whist drive in Woking and Uncle had begun the 6 p.m. night shift. Tired of smoking string in a tobacco pipe secreted from a bedroom drawer, we returned the pipe and looked for something to alleviate the very nasty taste in our mouths. Michael said he thought a bottle of Tizer would do the job. The evening was dark and we were forbidden to leave the house but our need was pressing. Drawing from my cash reserve we left the house at about 7 p.m. taking the down route to Grange Road, thence to the NewsConTob on the main road. There were, of course, no street lights. We had no torch, but we knew every inch of the way and the occasional car headlight slit confirmed our bearings.

  At the shop, Tizer, with its easy screw top, was sold out. We settled for lemonade but not until we were well clear of the shop did we recognise the difficulty of removing the crown cap. My ever-wise counsel was that we should wait until we reached home. I was confident the do-it-all tin opener was the tool for the job. Michael was adamant, perhaps under the influence of the Saturday cinema. He would strike the top on a wall or metal gate post and drink to satisfaction. I warned that the broken bottle neck would be sharp and he might cut his mouth.

  Nonsense!

  To no avail I tried to pull rank; it was my money after all!

  The blow was struck, the neck shattered, Michael yelled. He had a gash almost the length of his tiny index finger. Clutching the bottle we hurriedly groped our way home to assess the damage but, first things first, we quenched our thirsts using a couple of cups. Tasty it was too though, by that time, the colour was closer to orange than to lemon. I discarded the broken bottle in an arc across the chicken run, landing it in the garden of a house on the main road. I did my best to apply a bandage. We crept off to bed.

  When Uncle was on night work, Michael slept with his mother. She came home at 10.30 p.m., found disturbing signs in the kitchen and discovered the wound. Our story about a rusty knife in the shed was hardly convincing. She was sure the wound would need stitching which would cost half-a-crown at the doctor's, maybe three shillings! I began to fear this could be a further drain on my resources. In the morning she showed Uncle the wound which, war veteran that he was, he bound tightly. Stitching? He told her not to be so silly. He instantly rose in my esteem. He was quite right. She was silly! The hand was kept in a sling for a whole week.

  The next reportable adventure, a few weeks later, also involved the shed and the bedroom drawer, and, I suppose, the Saturday cinema again comes into the picture. Before being recruited to essential security duties, Uncle had been a gamekeeper on an estate at Pyrford, a few miles away. In consequence of this career, the unlocked shed housed a .410 shotgun hung on a couple of nails. In rummaging through the bedroom drawer we had encountered some strange little cylinders which I recognised as possible ammunition for the often-fondled gun. The how, when and where were thoughtfully debated. Being alone of an afternoon, the gun was collected and taken to the back bedroom, the window opened wide. The fourteen chickens, 20 yards away at the end of the garden, looked larger than usual. Michael claimed his proprietorial privilege just as he had done when we found two slugs for Peter's air rifle. I demonstrated the action, Michael inserted the cartridge, put the barrel through the window and closed the gun.

  My left ear was very close to the mechanism which may account for a partial loss of hearing on that side. The gun discharged with devastating effect, not on the chickens but on us. The explosion was vastly louder than we had come to expect from sitting in the ninepennies, five yards from the cinema screen. Colour drained from Michael's seven year old face; he began to tremble. He sat on the bed and wept. I returned the gun to the shed, sending the discharged cartridge to join the broken bottle. I left the window on the latch because the room had a quite unusual odour hanging in the air. I then, thoughtfully, propped open the shed door.

  On Saturday, Uncle observed that the old cockerel (rooster) was beginning to moult. There were certainly quite a few feathers lying about. A few weeks later the cockerel came to lunch when another strange phenomenon, which I need not describe, came to light.

  Did I promise two adventures? Then I neglect the afternoon we were defending our territory against local marauders. The rear gate was bolted and virtually un-climbable. We confidently hurled insults while sticks and the occasional stone were thrown over the gate in both directions to keep the battle on the boil. In case a lightning retreat was indicated the glass-panelled garden door was open, but it hung outwards and calamity struck. Glass shattered. Game over. Enemy dispersed. Leslie entirely to blame as usual. A skilled neighbour replaced the glass for the cost of half a crown. Fortunately I was due for a paternal visit.

  Father paid up with a smile of remembrance.

Chapter Four and a half

  Here I must find space to mention that our parents had settled into a loose routine for visiting. The general plan was to check on us fortnightly, alternating so that we saw each of them on a monthly basis. It did not always work out. There were two practical train routes from Croydon to West Byfleet or Woking, one requiring a change of train at Surbiton, the other at Clapham Junction. The latter was a very busy railway junction, specifically targeted by enemy bombers. Mother had reached there one Sunday morning as a bomb damaged the line and frustrated her journey. Her anger, however, was reserved for the plain-clothed Ministry officer who, having inspected her identity card, told her she should not be traveling at such a time. She found a bus to Surbiton and eventually reached us. At some periods she was herself in evacuation which meant that Dad's visits were the more frequent of the two.

  One Sunday in May '41, Reg and I met at his home in Scotland Bridge Road and walked to West Byfleet to meet Dad at the station. I carried my robust two-piece fishing cane, in case he was delayed. We would have to cross the canal bridge anyway and, ignorant of the existence of a course fishing season, I had discovered a nest of gudgeon just below. Neither we nor the gudgeon were disappointed as he arrived on time, an impressive, blue-suited figure in his Sunday best. He carried a heavy suitcase which we knew to be full of surprises. My fishing cane became a useful means of sharing the weight of the suitcase among the three of us. The plan was to stop first at Reg's billet for a little light lunch then, with lightened case, down to Holly Avenue to deposit the luggage, cricket and other games in the field by the river, and back to Holly Avenue for tea. I found that Dad, with his 41 year age advantage, could bear down on me, despite my best efforts, in a race for the ball or in a game of touch. I must have grown well that summer because by the end of the siege of Tobruk I could outstrip him easily.

  The suitcase provided a carpenters' set, a present for my eighth birthday. Recognizing that the collected tools were of only marginal use even to an eight year old, Dad had added, on impulse I dare say, a de-luxe hand drill, quite likely of doubtful origin. There was also a quarter inch wood bit. This tool became a star attraction, regularly borrowed by Uncle, lodgers and neighbours alike. Perhaps the red-hot poker was obsolete at last. The remnants of this piece of equipment rest in a quiet corner of my barn to this day.

  The visit went much according to plan. In all, it was so pleasant that farewells were almost tearless.

  Life at New Haw was steady for a while. Bobby and Gerald were soon to move from Horsell to the Parrots, two hundred yards down the road. Reg was less than a mile away and a classmate. My personal skills quickly advanced so that I could be trusted to take an adult bicycle as far as Woking - up hill all the way - and complete a satisfactory mission. Auntie may have over-used this resource when, one wet Wednesday morning, I was obliged to cycle to Woking instead of going to school. I properly accounted for my absence to Mr Williams; the matter was referred to the billeting officer. In consequence, future missions were confined to Saturday mornings, the cinema privilege being changed to matinees at Chertsey.

  In warmer weather, Auntie would take Michael and me by bicycle to the Ottershaw sand pits, an abandoned quarry where newts were abundant and shallow ponds offered free swimming opportunities. An alternative venue was the River Wey at Addlestone where I had been swimming with the school. One afternoon, as she helped me with the breast stroke, she enquired how my finger nails came to be painted pink. In fact, Michael had found a small bottle in rummaging through her bedroom drawer and chosen me as his canvas. My quick response described the activities of a named female schoolmate and the moment passed.

  Michael and I would go fishing together, sometimes with his father, often on our own, usually in the Wey Navigation where the water flowed briskly, otherwise in the canal where it did not. I once caught a three pound bream and ate it, without help but with a good dose of vinegar, for my supper. Another time, as I pulled in a small dace, a large perch partly swallowed it and I landed the two together. We also swam in the canal but only when Reg could procure the use of an inflatable tube from his guv'nor, who ran a motorbike with sidecar. The canal was quite deep, especially, I recall, by the lock gates. The gates were fun. They allowed us to cross the canal with a hop, skip and jump but, visiting the spot many years later, I baulked at the prospect of walking across on the decaying eight-inch timber.

  On a very warm evening when we had dried off and engaged in a name-calling exercise with a couple of older swimmers, three American soldiers came along the footpath, sorely tempted by the water. A brief negotiation followed and, for the sum of three pence each, Reg and I surrendered our soggy costumes. Two soldiers carefully forced themselves into the bottom ends of the full-bodied garments and leaped into the water. They greatly enjoyed their sport and promised not to be more than ten minutes. It was too much for the remaining soldier. He handed over a sixpence to Reg with an injunction to guard their uniforms, stripped off and launched himself naked into the spray.

  A family group appeared on the towpath, and then another and, yes, another. They mostly stopped to watch the fun so that it was rather more than ten minutes before our damp towels became over-subscribed and we were again in possession of our property. The Yanks walked homeward with us as far as the bridge and, as they said goodnight, for the sake of propriety I informed them my name was Leslie and not Lesslie. They were duly apologetic and one of them said he thought I should use a zee, whatever that might be. A funny lot, these Americans, but I would get to know them rather better before the war was over.

  The very long evenings of early summer meant that even the most disciplined of us might play out until quite late. Groups of children gathered to join in whatever sport was of moment. This might mean building barricades on the many accessible vacant lots. In those days the builder's scaffold was the product of the timber yard rather than the steel yard and the available poles were useful for temporary structures and significant conflagrations alike. Holly Avenue lads, with a female supporter or two, might gather stones, bits of brick, paper bags filled with soil and other ammunition, and advance noisily, some banging wooden swords on steel dustbin lids, down Selbourne Avenue where, as the road bends to the left, a vacant lot held hundreds of poles stored in the form of an extended wigwam. On hearing our approach the Selbournites would retreat into this structure and retaliate bravely for a while until reluctantly conceding the day to our superior strength.

  The Warren Road gang were respectfully reckoned to be the toughest bunch. They had superior numbers, were skewed towards seniority but, much more telling, at least half of them were mobile and, formidably, led by a female. They launched a surprise attack into Holly Avenue early one evening during a quiet game of cricket. First the bike-mounted cavalry with small missiles, including windfall apples, then the noisy infantry waving sticks. They chased us into our back yards and made off with the cricket ball.

  I knew they would be back. I sent for all available reserves; the Churches, the Keatings, Ronald Reading aged 12, Brian Clark aged 4, Lillian Clark aged 13 all gladly prepared our defence, scratching about for suitable ammunition. I was a little upset at the thought of losing my cricket ball so I planned something nasty. I partly filled one of the chicken buckets with water from the rainwater tub, took a one-pint grain measure as my dispenser and squatted behind the front fence. When the next wave came I emerged and threw water over at least two of them. It seems they had a similar plan because a lemonade bottle was swished towards a defender but, in the melee, it was dropped, shattering on the road. Broken glass was definitely not playing the game. The infantry did not arrive but the cavalry threatened to return.

  It was time to re-write the rules. I stood by with an old walking stick. As a last resort I might use it as a sword or cudgel but my real intention was more subtle. As the leading bicycle came in for round three I thrust the stick into its front wheel. Picking up the nearest remnant I went for the second machine which stopped short, turned and retreated as I chased it down the road. Meanwhile, Ronnie Reading was interviewing a tearful young lady with a buckled wheel. He kindly offered to help her home with it.

  The reckoning came a little later when an upset mother, deprived of her means of getting to work the following day, knocked at the front door. For once, I had a little moral support from within. Mr Gadd had seen some of the action from his window as he dressed for work. He came to the rarely-used front door in the uniform of Special Constable and said he would like to know which hooligan(ess) had thrown the glass bottle and who was going to clear it up. The lady withdrew. I took the hint and went to clear the broken glass, a little rueful over the loss of the cricket ball, but not over-concerned as it belonged to brother Reg.

  The Gadds went back to their native Scotland for a week's holiday and I went to stay with Reg. His guv'nor was enigmatically different and my next piece of excitement was to ride in the sidecar of a motorcycle while Reg sat on the pillion. There was a baby in the house able to benefit from a supply of goat's milk obtainable at the home of Sir Richard Dolby, Bart., about two miles up the Woodham Lane towards Woking.

  In retrospect, the red brick house and grounds, magnificently large by our standards, would hardly rate as a country house, but I did have an opportunity to chat to a member of the upper class. He kindly showed us over the ground floor of his home. Rooms were large enough for all manner of sport though the high floor-to-ceiling windows might inhibit some ball games. I was especially fascinated by the wainscot rising up the wall, with diminishing thickness, almost to waist height. The goat was brought through the back door each day into a cool room referred to as the dairy, where the baronet himself did the milking. The garden was not a garden, but a park.

  At Reg's home, the roof of a flimsy garage supplied a wooden rainwater barrel. The canal bridge, with its population of gudgeon, was only 200 yards away. Five fishes brought back from our first sortie did not survive their night in the barrel and joined the compost heap. We used the garden tap to improve the quality of water for our next experiment but the result was much the same.

  During these summer days there were occasions when we could stand in the street, look up into a clear blue sky and watch and hear tiny aircraft in combat at a great height. Fallen shrapnel was picked up gingerly in case it was still hot. There was a market for these mementos but I was always a seller having no wish to keep such material in my limited storage space.

  At school we took over a grassy patch belonging to an adjacent factory, stripped off the turf and immediately cultivated the ground below. This was in response to the "Dig for Victory" campaign. Two ladies opposite the school, impressed by our orderly activity, invited us to take over their adjoining neglected gardens. Eventually, as produce was sold, a couple of rabbits were acquired, not as school pets but to consume surplus produce and to breed for meat production. This part of the enterprise did not succeed, partly due to failure of children, including myself, to discharge their week-end responsibilities, partly due to the rabbits' unwillingness to co-operate.

  We also had some outings from school to boost the war effort. Groups of twenty children or more were led among the fields and hedges to find stinging nettles, always in abundance. These were cut down by teacher using a sickle, tied into bunches of a dozen stems and handed to unsuspecting children for transportation, stinging them without exception. On the first occasion these were stacked in an outside play shelter at school and were collected for some obscure purpose beyond the wit of our teachers to explain. But it was important war work. The second outing included only those children unable to produce an excuse note or those few who were careless of being stung. These nettles were hung up in an under-used cupboard. I discovered them there, crisp, brown and dry nearly two years later. Our teachers had forgotten to take them to Croydon on the train when the main body of evacuees returned.

  Michael and I had to go to Sunday school in a Baptist Chapel made of corrugated tin and peeling paint. Immediately next to this hut was a bungalow half-constructed. It had a roof but no windows and, apart from a little excrement here and there, provided an excellent retreat on those afternoons when I was shown the door of the chapel from the inside. I had no real wish to misbehave but I had such a receptive audience for my alternative verses to well-known hymns. A few of the audience were school chums, genuine admirers of my work and willing participants.

  The kind ladies were disinclined to report my conduct elsewhere but the elderly gentleman superintendent thought otherwise when I organized a rival singing group, including Michael who, poor fellow, had a pronounced lisp, in the windowless building next door. Timing was of the essence; we sang loudly as they went into quiet prayer mode. Auntie gave me a caning for this which I repaid by piercing her new rubber hot water bottle, 2s9d by bicycle from the Woking branch of Boots the Chemists, with my small penknife. We were excused Sunday school but it was a hollow victory because we lost the opportunity to spend Michael's collection money.

  During a lull in the London bombing I found myself in Croydon for an exciting week of new experiences. I was not specially chosen from among the family absentees for this honour, but someone at school had sent messages about my restricted vision and I was to have an eye test. So, on the chosen Sunday, Mother came to visit in company with brother Ron now three months short of his 16th birthday. I do not know how he earned his living but he wore a smart belted overcoat and trilby hat. On the return journey we reached Clapham Junction where he was able to feed pennies into a chocolate machine and extract Rowntrees tuppenny bars of chocolate. This was a surprise to me because sweet rationing had begun and the identical machine opposite my school had been unproductive for some weeks.

  After the mass evacuation, our home at Birchanger Road was occupied by Dad, Ron, Mother from time to time and Lily until she and her husband set up home in half a house not so far away. Shortly Lily and Bob were separated by the war and she had to raise her baby alone for several years. One of Arthur's school friends, Watson, the generous supplier of Tizer, had lived with his mother, his younger brother Bob and a quasi-adoptive Post Office executive known as Uncle Tom, in a good-sized house a mile or two away in Addiscombe. Mrs Watson went away with her two boys to the country leaving Tom Wright, confirmed bachelor, without a housekeeper. Here was a chance to rationalize the rent payment and our family moved in with Tom at 5 Colworth Road. Before long, the Watsons tired of country life and Tom rented an even larger house for them at Beckenham, four miles away but closer to his employment. Thus the wheel took a full turn and our family was in sole occupation at Colworth Road. The house had a telephone but Uncle Tom, for an unexplained reason, had stopped paying the bill so it was of ornamental value only.

  At the time of my introduction Mum, Dad and Ron were in residence. One rear bedroom with black linoleum floor covering was entirely empty but for a small tricycle which brother Bob had enjoyed for a brief period when he was in transit following an attack of impetigo. It was too small for me to use but Ron showed me how he regularly spent a few happy minutes with it by standing on the rear bar and scooting in circles about the room. I mastered the technique but found no exhilaration in it. Two other rooms on the same floor had more beds than were needed by present occupiers and I believe I slept in a bed in my parents' room.

  Dad who, at the outbreak of war, took work at the Trojan vehicle factory at Purley Way, was now employed on the bacon counter at the Co-op, a universal store owned by its customers and, because of this employment, he could obtain a discount from the Optical Department. On the Wednesday, he came home on his bike at lunchtime and took me on the bus to read ever-smaller letters on an illuminated screen. I was to be supplied with glasses to be used for school work.

  In this brief introduction to Colworth Road I found some remarkable features. The small back yard had an Anderson shelter, flooded in winter, but otherwise useful for all manner of experiments. It had an extra covering of brick rubble, glass, plaster and the like arising from a modest little bomb blast that took out the local Bank (I allow a capital B because this Bank pays me a pension) about 40 yards from our house as the brick flies. All our rear windows were blown out. The local brigade of hammer competents attended shortly after, ripping up flooring from the large, unused upper room of the house and using the boards to cover the missing windows. These had been re-glazed by the time of my visit but the large gap in the bedroom floor remained to challenge the nimble-footed. Several sections of ceiling had collapsed about the house exposing dusty laths; other patches looked as though they were soon about to fall.

  Our father had just vacated the small rear kitchen as the bomb blew. He was pushed by the blast along the hallway, almost to the front door. This had a leaded light in the glazed section which remained intact because of its malleability. He had a narrow escape. Glass splinters from the kitchen window penetrated metal pans hanging beneath a shelf on the opposite wall, rendering them un-usable except as grisly exhibits.

  The most impressive feature of the house, apart from larger rooms than we had enjoyed since leaving Sunnydale, was the colour of the paintwork. The main sitting room had bright blue skirting boards and a red door. The strings to the lower staircase and the woodwork of the bedroom at the foot of the upper stair were also an attractive blue. I had never seen a cheerful house before.

  During my brief stay Lily and baby Brian visited each day. I believe he was about 8 months old. He responded to my spoon feeding and I was permitted to hold him and rock him to sleep. The downstairs rear room had a billiards table, with cue rack and score board not, as I might have supposed, being left by the former occupants but acquired by Dad through the aforementioned discount purchasing arrangements for his own and Ron's amusement. Other signs of affluence included a smart wall-mounted wooden tool cabinet, housing, with its many other interesting tools, a hand drill identical to my own. Had I been wiser in the ways of the world I might have drawn inferences about those aspects of the wartime condition which eased the financial burden of maintaining a large family. All too soon I returned to New Haw.

  At mid-term we had a two-week break for potato picking. The best part of this was the twice-daily tractor-trailer ride from farmyard to field. The worst part was the back-breaking slog of lifting potatoes into baskets for each of the many four-hour sessions. One or two periods were rained off but Michael and I persevered and earned our keep.

  The going rate was one shilling per session for adults and half that sum for children. At the end of a session we each pocketed a sixpence. I was inclined to creep home for a bread and butter lunch and put my coin in a safe place but Michael, coin in hand, found his way to the nearest shop and, burdened with heavy copper change, would lose much of it in the potato field. Auntie held the blame for this to lie at my door. He would not behave like that if I did not put him up to it. I amassed a further useful sum in those two weeks while Auntie had little benefit from Michael's earnings. I observed early in life that some people just cannot keep hold of money, scottish antecedents notwithstanding.

  With the approach of winter Michael and I, with Bernard and Herbert from numbers 60 and 61 respectively, would go off to the woods at the canal-side to gather sticks for firewood. The canal was liable to flood during the winter, water lying on the low-level adjacent ground well into the summer. The net effect was that much vigorous tree growth in dryer summers would die off in a following wet season so that, rubber booted, we could disappear into the undergrowth, snap off dead hazel stems six feet long and cram them into our sacks. A rewarding exercise but ultimately self-defeating as, when the sticks were most needed in deep winter, the canal spilled over again.

  At the approach of the nativity season, each class at school had to form a tableau or stage a play. I was an eager participant but was awarded only the smallest part in our long-winded presentation. However, after a couple of rehearsals I found I had every part verbatim, became self-appointed prompter and occasional stand-in so that, when a principal performer was whisked away to Croydon without notice, I inherited a more important part. I do not recall whether I was an under-sized highwayman or an under-sized sheriff's man but I proudly strutted about in a pair of long trousers of surprisingly good fit.

  The transition to long trousers was a major milestone in any boy's life. Arthur had crossed the threshold, Ken had not. The latter-day small boy could never appreciate the pride with which the occasion, in my case temporary, was marked, since they are clad this way from earliest times. I might have felt less important if I had benefited from wearing a pyjama suit but that did not come my way until my sixteenth year and at my personal expense. Thus clad, I prolonged the proud experience by volunteering as a stage hand and unwillingly shed the garment as the caretaker turned out the lights in the hall. Life, full of surprises, brought Auntie to school on that day, as a spectator though she did seek out the caretaker to enquire for any possible work opportunities.

54 Holly Ave (formerly No 66)

  Another Spring, another Summer, the life of the under-dog continued in similar vein. As the summer break arrived, Reg, and others of the dwindling residue went home to Croydon, in his case to take up his scholarship at a senior school. In autumn term the remaining evacuees were integrated into the local school and I found myself for a few weeks in company with Mr Green in the school's large art room. He was a placid gent, capable of an occasional practical joke and keener on drawing, painting, gluing, making things, than on the three R's. When he discovered I had a pair of spectacles he kindly offered to keep them in his desk drawer for safety. They could still be there for all I know, except that the entire school was swallowed up by the M25 motorway some twenty years later.

  Recognising my problem in relating to class number work Mr Green found a fat text book used, he said, in senior schools and invited me to bully him if there was anything I could not understand. I sat in uncomfortable isolation at a small table at the front and facing the class. The first half of the book was instructive, confirming my knowledge of decimals and fractions, explaining some basic geometric and algebraic concepts and terminating in meaty methods for finding square roots. The second half of the book was entirely down to problems, alas with answers listed in the final few pages. After a week or so of study I was left with just the problems, rationing myself to half a dozen each day. One problem could not be reconciled to the answer. Both Mr Green and I thought we were missing something in interpreting the scenario so he sent me to see Miss Nicholson, in charge of the top class.

  I was a little wary of this good lady as, with her welcoming, smiling face, she had all the appearance of a hugger. She was unable to shed further light but she had her own answer: to use a different book of problems. Her book had never been found wanting. She sat me on her front bench and I stayed there from October '42 until the following April.

  Minding my own business one autumn day, I practiced climbing the redundant lamp-post some 25 yards up from our house. With an awkward step-up to a convolution, a straightening pull followed by energetic clawing and foot-gripping, one reached the cross bar below the lantern about nine feet from the ground before relaxing the feet and swinging free. This position had to be held for a mandatory slow count of 20 before dropping onto the balls of the feet on the unkempt grass verge. I usually did this three times before boredom struck but, on this day, during my first suspension, I glanced into the front room of the nearest house observing that I had an audience. My landing was, I thought, imperfect. The next attempt would have to be better. As I held myself in the second suspension I looked more closely at my audience and saw a rather glum man in a brown overcoat. I then realized he was in Michael Isaacs's house where Michael lived alone with his mother. I thought my second landing quite good but my audience seemed not to approve and turned away.

  During my third suspension, Michael Isaacs emerged, looked up at me, and asked if I would kindly come into the house. He was a little older than me but not allowed out on his own, other than to play in their front yard and I had, in the past, carried out a distant errand or two for his mother. Entering the kitchen door I surmised that the man must be Michael's father who had been "away". His long brown coat was tied at the waist with rope. He wore sandals but no socks and had a funny little black hat on the back of his head. He kept his hands in his coat pockets and just looked at me, taking no part in the following proceedings.

  Mrs Isaacs smiled and asked if I was able to strike matches. Me? Strike matches? How naive could one be? It was a Jewish holiday and there were some things they could not do today. A box of matches was in place on the table next to the gas stove. A kettle sat on the stove and the table also held a tea caddy and teapot. The family formed a semi-circle about me as I lit and adjusted the gas, checked the contents of the kettle, enquired about cups, spoons, sugar, milk. They had no milk but did not think that was important. Their kitchen was much the same as ours so, while waiting for the kettle to boil, I was able to lay out the mid-morning tea party. More time went by as we just stood and looked at each other then, as the kettle began to sing, they brightened up. Even the man smiled. I warmed the pot, made the tea, waited briefly and offered to pour it. They were sure they could do that for themselves but they would like me to come back in the afternoon to light a candle for them. A strange request. Perhaps they had no money to feed the electricity meter.

  Michael picked up an envelope from the dresser and handed it to me. I realized at once that it held coins. I could not accept payment for the pleasure of making that man smile. I refused the envelope and said I would come back before dark. The lady showed me to the door and, you've guessed it again, she was a hugger! At tea-time I excused myself from table and went to light a solitary candle for them. Strangely, they used it at once to light other candles while muttering in a foreign language. They declined my offer to make more tea because, in an hour or so, they would be free to do it for themselves. All this was well beyond my understanding as was the very dark invective growled by Uncle when I told him what I had been doing.

  Michael (Gadd) and I were sent to join the cubs (cub scouts) at All-Saints Church hall, little more than a stone's throw from my school. We prepared and consumed an early tea, scampering away with our torches as dusk fell. Almost all the fun was had before the meeting, hiding behind gravestones, flashing torches provocatively in games of hide and seek and exploring the small muddy wood adjacent to the church. Michael had some bits and pieces of uniform because Peter had been a cub briefly. I had none. The meeting was anticlimactic with its "dib dib dib, dob dob dob, the cub gives in to the old wolf, the cub does not give in to himself." A lot of nonsense! Why not express themselves in plain language? Sitting on the cold, grubby bare boards in short pants was also unpleasant. Learning knots seemed to be the only skill on offer and that was not at all demanding.

  The team games were O.K. but loud expression was frowned on and, after a few weeks, I found myself excluded from the group, waiting outside in the cold for Michael to be released. All rather unsatisfactory. I had to find a way out. I told Auntie I must have a neckerchief, woggle and garter tabs before I could attend again and that subs were to go up to 3d each per week. I did not mind escorting Michael there but I thought he should come home on the bus. She seemed to give this a lot of thought but did not commit herself until the following week when we awoke to a very wet day and she did not put out Michael's uniform before going off for the afternoon.

  During the winter of '42/43 a dentist came to the school; the remaining evacuees were caught in his net. Extractions were indicated. Six of us were to go to Chertsey with Miss Nicholson and I was told to bring a towel to spit in on the way home on the bus. Auntie saw it differently, what with coupons being required for household goods of this sort, so I was supplied with an extra handkerchief.

  I do not think I was at all anxious though I had never been to a dentist. I was fascinated by the equipment and would have asked many more questions but for the abrupt application of the gas mask. Incidentally, I should have recorded somewhere that we had long since ceased to carry our own gas masks though they had not been jettisoned and mine rested permanently on my bedroom window sill. After a few minutes awareness of bright colours and roaring sounds I emerged four teeth lighter and very glad of a hug from Miss Nicholson. The return journey on the bus was not quite a disaster but I was pleased to get back to school to rest my head on the desk. At end of day she kindly walked the mile home with me, pushing her bicycle.

  My time with Miss Nicholson was the first period in four years of schooling when I was contented and comfortable. I was fully occupied and felt myself a participant, no longer a spectator watching others struggling with their daily tasks. There was personal tuition and a good selection of reading material. The inkwells were always full, due to my very close attention, and the pen nibs were of the variety that produce two sharp points when the business end is broken away. Readers over 50 years of age will remember that such a nib, when split at the quiet end by squeezing in a desk lid or door, was easily converted, by means of a paper flight, to a fast-moving dart.

  Once a week we went to the art room to spend a couple of brightly coloured hours with Mr Green. The last session on Friday was story time when we would listen rapturously to the assorted adventures of the fearless five or the secret seven. One day Miss Nicholson's voice ran out; the leading eleven year old took over. The story soon lost its momentum; volunteers were requested. I had read the book more than once and managed to get the story back on track. I found regular Friday employment thereafter.

  Early March was scholarship time. In those days we were allowed two attempts to pass the scholarship exam, the first, at aged 10 (approx), would stream a few brighter pupils away to certain grammar schools and the second, a year later, allowed some twenty percent of primary school leavers to transfer to a selection of preferred schools. Unsuccessful pupils would transfer to the elementary school and, unless selected a year later for a technical school, would expect to complete their schooling at age 14. For me it was off to Egham on the bus with Miss Nicholson and others for my first attempt. I quite enjoyed the papers, written in ink, and the mid-day sandwich in a school dining room. Several girls in the class were later called for interview. They were decidedly more clever than the boys, despite their being a later invention. I was told my papers had been sent to Croydon.

  The end of my time at New Haw was fast approaching and it began with itchy fingers. The school nurse on her nit round was on the lookout for other problems and decided the small spots on the back of my hands were signs of scabies. A car was called to take me to my billet to pick up a few bits and pieces and report on my condition. No-one was home, except for Uncle asleep in bed, so I gathered my few shillings and a partly-read comic, my guide left an envelope on the table then took me to the isolation wing of a small children's hospital at Woking.

  My comic was confiscated and gingerly placed in a large envelope marked "boiler", money, penknife and my collection of bottle tops put on an enamel plate, clothes put in a linen bag. A bath was filled deeply, way above the government-stipulated four inches. A pint bottle of white stuff was poured in and whisked about. I followed.

  The instructions were to stay still until the water was quite cold. At the end of the session a timid nurse asked if I would mind holding my breath and putting my head under water. No problem. I had done this often enough in the canal. The nurse scurried away as I went under for the third time and, at my fourth emergence, a man, who I later discovered to be of janitorial status, was standing at the side of the bath. "Let me help you up," he said. I came gently to my feet to avoid a tidal wave. "Ah, yes," he said. "Do you think you could pull that skin back?" I got the idea at once. I had done it in the bath before the war at Dad's suggestion. I sat down to have several practices. "O.K.," he said. "You can come out now." I stepped out and looked for a towel. "No," he said, "No towel. You have to dry off as you are." This was hardly fair, after all my close co-operation. I sat on a cane chair, shivering.

  The nurse soon came back with a cotton nightshirt and a towel to dry my face and hair. Then she escorted me to one of three beds in an empty ward. I had nothing to read and no diversion of any kind. When I felt warmer I climbed from bed to look out of the window onto a magnificent walled garden. The window latch was of a kind I had not previously investigated but, without a screwdriver, this kept me occupied for just a few minutes. Apart from that, there was nothing.

  A meal was served and I asked for something to read. No, I could not read while I was still infectious. This was serious. Would my eyesight be further impaired if I read in this condition? I had read at school today. I had read my comic in the car. I had read signs and advertising notices. No-one had told me to close my eyes on the journey. Weighing this up I decided adults were not to be trusted. I had survived this far using my own judgment and I would continue to follow it.

  The spare beds proved useful for forward and reverse rolls, hand stands and other acrobatic activity including a tricky standing jump from the floor, but I was fast running out of things to do. The light was fading as I leaned from my dormer window in an attempt to touch the gutter below. My body weight was carefully balanced on the window sill when I noticed an identical arrangement (without a balancing body) about twenty feet away. There must be another ward a few yards along the corridor. Time to explore.

  The adjacent ward also had three beds and housed two sisters aged about 8 and 10. I quietly introduced myself then sat on one of their beds chatting for ten minutes before borrowing a "Girl's Own" annual, promising to return it in the morning. Not quite my choice of reading, but better than nothing, and I read until the light faded completely. I lay in bed for a while until the electrician in me came to the surface. I groped my way to the door, found the switch, lit the room and got back into bed. Then, chiding myself for discourtesy, I passed along the corridor again, quietly opened the girls' door and switched on their light. They were fast asleep and, as I remarked to myself, presented a very pretty picture. Honour satisfied, I extinguished their light, returned to bed and slipped into the land of nod.

  For the next two days I suffered the same bathing process but without the need for male advice. On day two I learned from the elder girl that they had had their three sessions and, being no longer infectious, were entitled to handle paper. I could see no sense in all this and had no qualms about making further demands on their extremely thin library resources. I asked the nurse if my money was safe and whether some of it could be used to buy buns or something tasty. Tapioca pudding had twice been trickled down the tiles to the gutter below my window and, despite my inactivity, I was sometimes hungry.

  I received a visit from a senior lady in civilian dress who wore a badge saying she was the Almoner. This had me puzzled for a moment. Her spelling must be wrong. Even so, I could not see how almonds entered the case. She gave me an assurance that my money was safe and, like my clothes, had been disinfested. She needed more information about next of kin, his address, my temporary address, school, religion and where I was to go when discharged. It seemed I had not been committed to the isolation hospital but had arrived voluntarily and, when my bill of health was clean, they would deliver me to my chosen destination.

  Not so far from my tenth birthday I knew I was mature enough to make the right decision. This silly war had gone on long enough. It was time to make a stand and put a stop to all this evacuation nonsense. I opted for delivery to 5 Colworth Road, Croydon. The Almoner came back in a while with a plate of bread and butter to bridge the gap between breakfast and tapioca pudding. Politeness had brought its reward.

  The next few days were more cheerful. Two younger lads, aged about 6 and 8 joined me in the room. They suffered only two baths after each of which they were lathered with a sulphurous preparation. A visiting relative, though not allowed into the ward, brought them some reading material and rosy apples which I gladly shared without wondering how they came to be on hand in April. A volunteer lady brought me some fine clothes. I strutted about in blue short trousers, green jersey, choice of socks and new sandals. There may have been a vest and shirt in there somewhere and, for the first time in my life, I donned a pair of underpants. We played in the grounds with other disinfested children and were taken on walks about the roads playing visual games as we went. I bought a couple of fresh comics at W.H.Smith & Son Ltd in Woking. (Whatever happened to the Son?). The weather was kind to us allowing very civilized tea times, two or three to a table, beneath shady trees. I had no contact with family or billet in the 10 days spent at the hospital; my parents knew I had been confined but there were no formal visiting arrangements. When my chauffeur dropped me in my smart new clothes, brown paper parcel under my arm, on the doorstep of No 5 my mother's welcome was not, I felt, wholehearted. Why had I come home and was I sure I was not still infectious?

  A few days later I met Miss Puckey.

Chapter Five

  The joy of being home, after more than three and a half years absence, was inexpressible. The house was full but the billiards table was dismounted and a bed imposed. Ron took over this room for a few weeks. Reg, Ken and I shared the front bedroom, still with a gaping hole in the ceiling, Mum and Dad had the rear bedroom with wheel marks on the black linoleum. Arthur commanded a room of his own. The upper room, now a general lumber room, remained uninhabitable by reason of missing floorboards. This room became an important play area where a bank was built for bank robbing, the central feature being a compendium-style writing desk housing pen, inks in two colours, a secret drawer and plenty of writing paper.

  A genuine revolver was also conveniently available along with an ancient typewriter, almost fully functional, though many a secret message or extortion note had to manage without the letter "e". When the ribbon shredded or twisted up, Arthur could be relied on to effect the necessary repair. Ken was still young enough to participate in games of imagination and, when not robbing the bank, would join Reg and me for football or cricket in the nearby recreation ground. This park had challengingly climbable high wrought iron gates to its three entrances. It is one of life's obscure curiosities that, 40 years later, I came to own a house adjacent to one pair of these gates.

  The back yard had been tidied up, surplus debris being returned to the vacant lot a few yards away, previously a bank. Sorry, a Bank. The six-foot high fences defining the small back yards had largely escaped the force of the blast and our gate to the service passage was indeed serviceable. This was, for me, while I had no bicycle, my usual means of ingress and egress, the back door of the house being permanently unlocked. Twenty yards from our gate was the corner of the said vacant lot across which lay the main road and the ever-beckoning Woolworth's 3d and 6d store, much in demand, especially on Saturdays. In another land this would have been a nickel and dime store or Five and Ten. Close by Woolworths was Boots the Chemist where, in the pharmacy, a uniformed nurse was ever on duty, always willing to patch up the superficial damage regularly suffered by boys wearing short trousers.

  Crossing the Bank lot one day I noticed a further deposit of debris. It must have been turned out from one of the badly damaged adjacent houses. A touch of colour suggested some broken china in the pile. Investigation produced a light-weight translucent white vase with pretty green and pink floral motif about it, perfectly tidy after a little spit and polish, despite its companion being in a hundred pieces. I did not even think about taking it home. I saw at once that it must have a cash value of at least ninepence. I took it to the second-hand shop next to the Civic Restaurant at the Black Horse. The shop had a good deal of bric a brac and I regularly had my nose against the window because the man seemed not to be there very often. Most items on display had a small tag attached on which the price, or perhaps the stock value, was expressed in code but not very cleverly. Anyone could see that b/b/- meant two guineas.

  "Where did you find it?" he asked. I told him precisely. He was hesitant. Perhaps he thought I had stolen it. We came to the next question:

  "How much do you want for it?"

  I said I thought it was worth two shillings.

  "Oh yes. It's worth that alright," but he still hesitated.

  "Well, if you don't want it ---" He took it and it was on display quite prominently for several weeks before it disappeared. Unfortunately, the price tag was beyond my view and I had not the courage to brave him in his den to satisfy my curiosity.

  Part-way up the upper staircase in my exciting new home were two man-sized hatches opening onto un-floored attic spaces. The smaller space had an un-insulated hot water tank resting on the floor joists with corresponding cold water feed tank about four feet above and to one side. The upper tank must have feared an attack of ice because a wisp of lagging hung about its pipe work. On those few days of the year when the dining room boiler was lit it was fun to sit on the warm tank but, at any time, this space provided a personal hidey hole for use in games of imagination. However, it lacked electric light. Not for long. Any required adaptor, light bulb socket, switch or cable not to be found about the premises or in Arthur's personal collection was readily available at Woollies, three minutes away.

  During such projects Reg was usually a most reluctant and nervous assistant. One day we needed to extend the lighting arrangements into the long roof space above our parents' room. I found a lamp with wired socket, twisted the two ends of flex into my extension lead without the benefit of protecting tape and warned Reg to keep the bare wires apart. Perhaps he had a problem in stepping from one joist to the next but my warning was neglected and he conjured a large flash with explosion attached. Fortunately the lamp was still glowing when I took it from his trembling hands. I went below to find adhesive tape and a hanging nail to advance the project.

  What drew us to that dark and dusty quarter was a gleam of light coming upward from the bedroom ceiling. Now the area was illuminated we were able to spread large pieces of heavy cardboard and some old carpet over a few joists which meant that, although we could not walk on this surface, we could lie down with less discomfort and put an eye to the light source. Thus equipped, this attic area was now a spydom. There was little to spy on because the small hole was about twelve inches from the wall and immediately above a wardrobe which had, of course, already been investigated.

  The effort was not entirely unrewarding because, on top of the wardrobe and unseen from below, was a strange object; a glass cylinder, capacity about two gallons, with handle at one end, spigot with rubber tube attached at the other. There was also some kind of metal frame, possibly for hanging up the apparatus. Arthur looked in later with advice on improving the electrical arrangements and I allowed him a peep. "What is it for?" I asked. We extricated ourselves from the attic and switched off the light before he gave answer. He looked me in the eye and said, wagging his finger emphatically, "Do not ask!"

  A dozen years later I was browsing through a chapter describing early birth control devices and saw something like it. One must cast doubt on the efficacy of the contraption because it was not so very long before the ninth child came to join us.

  The nearest school was at Woodside where junior boys were separated from junior girls. It would be another full year before my age could qualify me for senior school so I joined 3A for the ten weeks remaining of the school year. This class, under Miss Puckey, was full to bursting, but I was squeezed in to make a threesome in a double desk. I made a bad start because, spending a little time with Mother waiting at the headmaster's office before coming to class, I was late with my milk money and the count was already done.

  We began with a geography lesson. I knew little of geography. My stock was at rock bottom when I failed to supply the name of the capital of Peru and could not point to it on the large map on the wall.

  I was not happy. I was alright on historical dates, able to recite the comings and goings of all Tudor monarchs, although perhaps otherwise a little vague about what went on between WC-1066, and WW-1914. I had done extensive nature study, bluffed my way through handwork and art and learned to knit, but this sort of geography was a step too far. In every waking moment and beyond, I was aware that the german enemy was in France and Belgium on our very doorstep. I knew that Columbus had started America, giving us a comprehensive map of the world, and that Rudyard Kipling had discovered India where my father had been posted with his regiment in 1918 and where uncle John Warnock had died of diptheria in 1920. What further use was geography? It was certainly not needed to pass the scholarship.

  Arithmetic came next. I was handed a partly-used exercise book. I had my own pencil and the means to sharpen it. Simple fractions were discussed at length and workbooks produced. Miss Puckey's frown fell on me.

  "You won't have done this work," she said. "Do a couple of sample sums to show what arithmetic you have been doing."

  I wrote down a random seven digit value and proceeded to work it's square root to three decimal places. It took a few minutes and she was at the back of the room so I proved my answer and did another. She called me to the front and took the exercise book. Another deep frown.

  She said: "We don't do long division like that."

  I told her it was not long division but the calculation of a square root.

  I watched as her colour rose and her countenance changed. I had seen Auntie reacting thus and shuffled uneasily. Unfortunately, Auntie had been left-handed so I did not see Miss Puckey's blow before it struck heavily on my left ear. Caught unaware, my knees buckled and I fell to the floor cutting my forehead on a radiator valve. ---- I had been in this twilight world before ---- . After a short while I became aware that boys were crying, Miss Puckey shouting and the room rotating slowly. I pulled myself up using the radiator which I held on to for another full minute until the room became steady. I was immensely relieved to find my right shoe still in place.

  Michael Thomas was delegated to take me to the headmaster's office to have my head looked at. The office lady was sympathetic: "Had a little knock, have you?"

  She bathed the wound, applied a large plaster and we returned to class. There had been some rearrangement. I was told to go to the back of the room. I shared a desk with Michael Thomas who shared his atlas with me and over the next few days brought me completely up-to-date with geography. My knowledge of South American capitals dates back to that time. He was always helpful in interpreting anything written on the distant blackboard and was a useful, quiet class companion in the year that followed.

  At morning playtime I found myself alone until spotted by David Duffin, an eleven year old who I remembered as a classmate and principal slide former in the winter of '40/41. He, the entrepreneurial son of a dustman living in a council estate at Rees Gardens, welcomed me like a long-lost brother and cleared a wall space to set me up in charge of a marbles game. He saw that no playground harassment came my way while he remained at junior school.

  One desk in front of me in the next column was a quiet lad, Ronald F Binstead. He muttered a lot but completed his work quickly before turning to me to check his answers. I had been four weeks in the class when the head, Mr Benetto, came in one morning and spoke to Miss Puckey. She visibly brightened; I felt we might be in for a better day. Binstead was called to the front, turned about to face the class and, with the head's arm across his shoulder, congratulated for having passed the scholarship to Whitgift Middle School, a very good grammar school funded from a wealthy private foundation. He was especially to be congratulated because he was still in the third year and had passed at his first attempt. I had mixed feelings. Clearly I had failed to pass first time but then, few scholars achieved this distinction. Well done Binstead!

  Summer came and I took a paper round. Reg and I were called at 6 a.m. each morning, Dad's normal start for the day. As we dressed he prepared tea for us and, both being earners, we enjoyed a biscuit with it. Reg's heavy bag was ready for him but I was judged to be under strength so I had to fold my papers in a tiny room at the back of the shop and fit half of them into a smaller bag before setting off on my first circuit. Most mornings I would run both sections and, depending on the day of the week, e.g., Thursday the load was increased by many customers also taking The Radio Times, Friday, the heavy local paper was added, etc., I could finish in 50 minutes.

  As I emerged for duty one morning, I noticed next door's mongrel dog sitting on his doorstep. I called, "Come on Bob!" and, no doubt expecting some reward, he tagged along, patiently waited for me outside the shop then ran at my heels for 45 minutes while I broke my record. A week later I had to go on an errand to Croydon town on a number 12 bus. I called, "Hello, Bob!" as I skipped past him on my way to the bus stop 40 yards away. He took it to be another adventure and sat on the pavement close by until a bus came along. It was a 59A. Bob made no reference to me and, without waiting his turn in the queue, leaped on board and bounded up the stairs. I had a long wait for the number 12. About 10 minutes later Bob came by the bus stop, tail between his legs. He went home, ignoring me completely. I giggled for the rest of the day, contemplating the nature of the probable altercation between the unsuspecting creature and an irate bus conductor.

  In the early days of my news delivery work there was occasional air activity and I was persuaded to wear an over-sized tin hat. Not long after I had given up on this, a stray incendiary bomb landed on one of my delivery targets. The fire brigade would not let me near the house but obligingly took the paper from me.

  Having a connection with a Tobacconist (NewsConTob) meant that I could buy quality cigarettes when Joe Public had to make do with any rubbish, including Turkish. Dad asked me to buy 60 Gold Flake when next I received my pay; he would settle with me when he received his. The doctor (adjacent to the bus stop) had been making noises. The cigarettes were to be delivered to his back door, just across from us in Colworth Road. It seemed we were in his debt following a misunderstanding between Ron and Arthur during a bout of free-style wrestling in which Arthur's knife accidentally found its way into Ron's calf muscle. Doctor Grassick had cleaned and stitched the wound. He had suppressed awareness of the unlawful nature of the event and was expecting to be paid in scarce cigarettes at a time when Dad, employed at the Co-op, had a line of supply. Dad had changed his employment and the debt had not been wholly satisfied. I mentioned this trifling matter to Dr Grassick's successor many years later as I picked up an urgent prescription at the same back door. He was quite sharp with me. He told me the good doctor had died from lung cancer. My fault, I suppose.

  For some months we settled on a steady course. Mother took an evening job in a restaurant, Ron moved away from home, following a brief brush with the military authorities, to become a teen-age itinerant professional ballroom dancer, Arthur took an apprenticeship expecting to qualify one day as an electrician, Ken and Reg progressed at their respective schools, disciplined more by their homework than any familial code. Leslie rubbed along at junior school, managing some basic domestic responsibilities. Bob and Gerald remained at New Haw for a while longer. The billiards table was re-erected though my skill lagged some way behind my father's and the room was often too cold for a game. I generally got on well with Reg at this time but was a constant source of irritation to Ken. The earlier chemistry between us had clouded into an abrasive precipitation. When, later, I had anxiety over my school work I found him a useful source of reference and I believe I became less of burden to him.

  Lily, about a mile and a half from Colworth Road, continued raising her little boy in the absence of Big Bob. I would often call on her after school or in the holidays, always rewarded for my visit by comforts provided, by avoidance of duties at home and by the pleasure of playing with my nephew. Brian, little more than two years old, was sadly struck with scarlet fever and taken away by ambulance to the isolation hospital at Waddon for a month as Lily and I stood sobbing on the pavement at Dickensons Lane.

  After the summer break of 1943 I was relieved to have moved on from Miss Puckey and went into 4A under the guidance of Mr Hayden, brown-suited and grey-haired. His was the scholarship class, although a few of the leading boys in 4B also entered. Each week began with controlled tests so that we had a mini-scholarship exam every Monday. There were three papers, Arithmetic, English and Intelligence Test, the last being all about numerical and other sequences, spatial concepts with triangles, oblongs, even a bit of code breaking. When the results were posted on Tuesday musical chairs resulted.

  This time there were four columns of desks. Those with best results sat in the column by the door, the worst against the window. In other regimes I had encountered, those with top marks sat at the back but under the current system it was the other way about. From week one until the scholarship papers were finished, Jack Chandler and I sat at the front, next to the door, with Michael Thomas in close proximity. Willie Evans, my good friend in later life, was usually located in middle third. It was explained to us very plainly that the first two columns should expect to pass the scholarship to reach a preferred secondary school.

  To keep us on our toes we had 20 mental arithmetic questions and 20 spellings put to us on alternate mornings. We then exchanged papers and marked each others' work. Those with a full score were rewarded by being allowed to leave early at lunchtime.

  Howard Ripon, a well-fed only child for whom money was not so important, had introduced me to lunch at the Civic Restaurant, twice the cost of the school meal service but with a real choice and the option of refusal. This was situated at the Black Horse, about half a mile from school. I found it very much to my liking and managed my budget accordingly. However, I was often out to lunch before anyone else and, tired of waiting for my friend, would run to the restaurant, thinly occupied before noon, gulp down my oxtail soup with bread roll, claim a jam sponge pudding and race back to school so as to jump up and down and make faces at the window before the rest of the class emerged.

  If the posted menu was not to my liking I might stroll across the road to the Co-op bakery section and check their special offers. These could be particularly good on Wednesday, when they closed for the day at 1.00 p.m. I was tempted by a sizeable Madeira cake, stale but with cherry on top, for 2½d (tuppence-ha'penny to you). I took it home because, it being a Wednesday, Reg's Adventure had arrived with the morning paper and this was exciting reading. The Hotspur, Ken's subscription, came on Thursday and Arthur's Champion, with the adventures of Rockfist Rogan, R.A.F. on Friday. I cut out a quarter section of the cake and poured a small cup of milk, strictly rationed. The meal was enjoyable but dry, so I took a drink of water, read another story and ate another quarter. The story done, I checked the clock. Time was still on my side but I felt a bit bloated. Perhaps I should sit on the toilet for a minute. Upstairs was more comfortable; the outside, not used much in winter. Lowering trousers, however short, whilst holding half a cake and a comic is not easily done so I put the cake on the floor, keeping a grip on a gripping story.

  I don't quite know how it happened but, engrossed in the adventures of Wilson, a two hundred year old Devonian athlete, there was a lapse of concentration. A significant quantity of urine trickled onto the floor to be absorbed by the cake. Of a sudden, time had run out, a mess had to be cleared, a soggy cake disposed of. My management skills were not found wanting; the dustbin was on my exit route. I strolled into the classroom, a little out of breath, as the bell stopped ringing. The following day Mother mentioned angrily that those dreadful people next door had been filling our dustbin with their rubbish and she was going to have it out with them. I told her that the boy next door, David Marriott, had asked my permission to dump a piece of stale cake because he did not want his mother to know about it. Mother, relieved to hear this news, quite understood.

  Howard Ripon was a friend in other ways. We went to the cinema together once or twice during sundry holidays. After one cowboy film he confided in me that he was making a gun. He had most of the parts and had a supply of gunpowder. Bullets were going to be a problem. When I visited his home, the gun was not in evidence; he kept it up in the roof space where I could not be admitted in case his mother came home suddenly. The constituents of gunpowder were well known to us, Rockfist Rogan had made some from kitchen ingredients during an overnight stay in a P.O.W. camp in Germany before beating the german champion boxer, blowing up the barbed wire and, single-handed, stealing an aeroplane or two to get himself home.

  Howard knew where to obtain saltpetre. It cost tuppence an ounce at the smelly herbalist's shop on Woodside Green and was available to us for some time before the man went to prison for doing something nasty to a lady who, so Lily told me, lost her baby. I earnestly hoped she found it again. Flowers of sulphur, neatly packed, were just a little more expensive at Boots the Chemist but a smaller quantity was needed and a single packet went a very long way, in more senses than one. Charcoal required a certain amount of work. Fire grates were searched for pieces of partly burned wood. For some weeks eyes were peeled and small quantities extracted from many sources to be stored in a jam jar kept on a warm shelf above our kitchen stove.

  First experiments with gunpowder were disappointing but, consulting Arthur, I learned that ignition had to take place in a confined space to be effective, a .303 brass cartridge case being the ideal containment for demonstration purposes. These were in good supply as Army and Home Guard alike used them in their smellies - (SMLE, short-muzzled Lee-Enfield rifles).

  The dark grey powder was poured into a brass case, tamped down with the standard .303 pencil followed by a small plug of cotton wool (optional). The top of the case was closed by flattening, preferably with a pair of pliers since there had been sad tales of premature events being caused by hammering. To make certainty doubly sure, the end was also bent over with the said pliers. The next requirement was an empty matchbox. The brass bomb was placed on the matchbox and when the audience was sufficiently distant, respectful and attentive, the matchbox set alight to great effect.

  Empty matchboxes were in shorter supply than explosive devices so procedures had to be refined. My pocket was rarely short of a short candle. A small block of wood with a pair of nails (jacket pocket) supported the charge about two inches from the ground. The candle stub was lit away from the charge then slipped beneath. The usual delay would be about ten seconds, allowing sufficient time for nonchalant withdrawal. A further refinement was to pinch the charge between a closed door and its frame before offering the lighted candle but this method could cause the occasional door to separate from its hinges.

  Such advancement of technique did not supply bullets. I had experimented with a soldering iron and determined that solder, very expensive, melted easily. I had also determined that its principal component was lead. There was plenty of lead lying about on the bomb sites. Many a leaded light had succumbed to german bombs and I had previously been a collector of pretty and shapely pieces of glass. Now I had simply to gather up the discarded lead. I was the owner of a well-chipped metal cup, currently in use for drinking school milk but now to double as a crucible. A gas stove in an empty kitchen was easily arranged.

  A bullet-sized mould had to be designed but I had a wealth of experience in this department. The red-hot poker and the wooden block would meet the case. The gas stove was not the best means of heating the iron which adopted only the dullest red glow so it took some time to make four or six holes of the correct caliber and depth. The lead melted quickly, bullets were cast. Six of them shared a common mantle which had to be shed to produce the definitive article. Howard and I, searching through Dad's tool cabinet, tried a selection of tools with only limited success. The best means of rounding them up was to use the teeth. These under-used tools, always available, were very effective. So much so that we eventually dispensed with the crucible and chewed raw lead producing quite useable plugs.

  Leslie and Howard bonded well which was perhaps to be expected. Eleven years earlier, in the months prior to my birth, I am sure my mother would have regularly walked the few hundred yards from our home to the cinema in the High Street at Thornton Heath to see Leslie Howard, hearthrob of the era, romantically portraying life in black and white. It seems likely that Howard's mother was similarly influenced because close to the date of our births in 1933 his notoriety increased as he received an important Hollywood film award. Sadly, he was killed when the civil aircraft in which he was travelling from Lisbon to Bristol was shot down by enemy action just as my association with Howard began. Nevertheless, I believe it to be fortunate that this association was soon to be terminated, for two reasons. Firstly, a bullet carefully forced into the top of a charged .303 shell then warmed up on a matchbox in the corner of our small back yard, passed through our wooden fence and the opposite fence beyond the passage to scream through the air after striking a house wall, the remains of the brass case making a similar journey in a different direction. Secondly, lead in the diet is not a good thing.

  One smelting day I was a little short of lead and, remembering the length of solder lying in the tool cupboard, I broke off enough for a couple of extra bullets dropping it into the already liquid lead. I was surprised by a loud "Phfutt!" - not quite an explosion. Molten metal escaped upward at speed, a small drop striking my left eyelid, another, just above the eyebrow. As with its earlier encounter with hot metal, my left eye was safe and the damage only temporary.

  Bob and Gerald eventually came home from New Haw. We enjoyed quite a few adventures together, particularly in the school holidays. One day we hopped on a number 12 bus taking transfer tickets for the number 16 tram to Westminster, paying only a few pence each. An hour or so later we were under close scrutiny in the lobby of the Houses of Parliament. As we went everywhere at a speedy trot and practiced sliding on the shiny marble floor amongst the stern-looking statues we soon found ourselves out on the pavement offering abuse to the uniformed attendant eyeing us from the entrance. From there we ran up Whitehall into Trafalgar Square to admire Nelson and his lions but Gerald, particularly, was not impressed and more or less accused me of having over-sold the marvels of London. We beat a quick retreat spending the rest of the day in our local park.

  Dad had an allotment. U.K. readers will not need to be told this was a vegetable garden about 10 yards by 30 yards in close company with another hundred of its kind, rented at a low figure from the Local Authority. Hard work was needed in winter for digging the patch in readiness for the spring planting but tasks varied as seasons changed, some tasks being more suitable than others for small people. Anyone with a bicycle was welcomed, and each bicycle had a crossbar used for moving younger brethren to the allotment, nearly two miles from home. Behind it ran a small fast-flowing stream emanating from the sewage works and flowing with greater or lesser vigour according to the hour of day. This was drawn on for watering peas, beans, carrots, vegetables of all kinds. Fifty yards behind the stream ran a railway on an embankment. In damper seasons the ground below the embankment was flooded and much enjoyed by us and other, more local, lads who floated water tanks and rafts across tree-infested ponds.

  Gerald, Bob and I had the swamp to ourselves one day taking turns to ride a raft made by older boys. Some teenagers approached, presumably the raft owners, and told us to vanish. Bob and Gerald jumped on the raft to join me for protection and it began to sink, or at least to wobble unmanageably. We yelled loudly. Dad, at the stream, came running. We extricated ourselves, good and wet, and he shepherded us away. Why do I recount this? Because as we squelched away another group of lads, closer to my own age, approached. One of them, wide-eyed, said "Leslie! Bobby!" It was a fellow evacuee who had escaped New Haw quite early in the war and we had not seen each other for two years. In other circumstances we would have enjoyed a pleasant reunion but we were wet and being drawn away. His name was Duggie Paignton. I never saw him again.

  David Marriot plus dog, next door, was a good companion. He had not been evacuated and knew many of the local places of interest, some of them an easy bus ride away. His talents held him firmly towards the bottom of 4B where he had some close friends and, through our association, several bridges formed between two otherwise mutually hostile classes.

  Mr Hayden abruptly retired and when a young lady teacher took his place, discipline became lax. I am sure my behaviour was not by any means the worst but she took exception to an impolite comment about her dress and left the room. Mr Baker was absent from 4B, across the corridor, the headmaster taking his class. On her return, I was asked to step into 4B. I did so. The head said: "Ah! Leslie King. Please wait here." He departed, leaving me facing the full class. Crude comment followed, the gist of it being: "You're in for it. How many are you going to get?"

  This was no time for nervousness. The honour of 4A was at stake. I waved a hand at them and told them to get on with their work. The head came back with a cane and the punishment book. Eighty eyes were upon me. I was entered for four strokes, held out each hand in turn and politely enquired, "Is that it?" A nod from the headmaster and I was back in my seat in five seconds, taking with me, I felt, the respect of the whole class 4B.

  David Marriott, in due time, went on to the local secondary school where he learned to read and left on his fourteenth birthday to become a railway porter, two stations down the line. More fun and interest was found in visiting during his quiet evenings at Selsdon Station, often manned by just man and boy so that when the arrival of the 7.25 up coincided with the 7.30 down, David had to be on both platforms at once. On several occasions I replaced my school blazer with a spare railway jacket to examine and collect the spent tickets pocketing, lucratively, excess or unpaid fares. One evening I gathered a ticket from the physical education master at school. He never required homework assignments so he was able to respond with a smile and a wink. I digress.

  The fresh young teacher was not long with us and a more mature lady came to keep better order. The day of the scholarship exams arrived and, on returning from my paper round at 7.30 a.m., Dad wished me good luck. I told him I was nervous because I had failed last year. He looked up at me as he put on his cycle clips (essential with long trousers) and said, "No you didn't! I had a letter but you couldn't go for interview because you went into hospital." This cheered me a little because the import of it escaped me for a while. I had a good day at the examinations, held at Davidson Road school.

  Realization dawned slowly that, ten days after going into hospital I was back at Colworth Road, albeit by my own machination. The interview(s) at interested schools could easily have been arranged, I had indeed matched the performance of Binstead, RF and my year in 4A had been an utter waste of time. It follows that my imminent re-evacuation would almost certainly not have taken place, I would not have been further hospitalized and I would not have begun my long-postponed senior school career a further eight weeks behind schedule.

  In April 1944 I went with Mother for interviews with the Whitgift Schools. A simple process, Mother and I sat in front of the respective headmaster, each of us answering questions about home and family. Then I was required to read aloud from a student text to test for speech defects, fluency and comprehension. It looked as though I had the choice of either school but W.M.S. was the nearer with lower bus fares. On such weighty issues do our lives depend.

  The Whitson holiday brought a week's break from school and, to reduce turmoil at home, an invitation from Tom Wright to spend the week at Beckenham was accepted. Their household now comprised Bob Watson, a telegraph boy with uniform and red bicycle, his mother and Uncle Tom. The older brother, Arthur's friend, was serving in H.M. Forces. Three of us, Gerald, Bob and I found our way there on the bus.

  With Mum and Dad we had been to visit Uncle Tom on a Sunday afternoon in the previous autumn. His home had a pleasant walled garden with a gate leading to grounds of about three acres belonging to a Victorian house readily describable as a mansion. Between Tom's house and the mansion was a former coach house and stable, converted in the inter-war years to a substantial dwelling with its own fenced garden. The mansion was empty; the wealthy family having aged and retired to the safety of the country leaving Tom with a set of keys and temporary custody of the premises. A small part of the garden was still under cultivation, the croquet lawn well kept. A rotating garden pavilion housed mallets, hoops and balls for this sophisticated game. It's roof also allowed access to a productive greengage tree. Apples and pears were plentiful with much other fruit decaying on the ground. A very old hollow tree beckoned seductively to every passing juvenile.

  Tom took us on a tour of the house. One floor of large empty bedrooms looked much the same as the next as we climbed several staircases, descending by a second set of back stairs. The great ground-floor living rooms were shuttered but the fascinating opening and closing mechanisms revealed deep bays looking onto a semi-circular drive leading to and from the main road with wide stone steps rising to a pair of very large front doors. Far and away the most interesting area was the lower ground floor with mahogany-fitted butler's pantry, laundry room, kitchen, larders, boiler room, coal hole, and storerooms. The rear of the house had a great terrace with stone balusters and stairs to left and right. Beneath the terrace were two or three dark, exciting garden rooms.

  On arriving for our week's holiday we were told the mansion had been requisitioned by the War Department as storage for furniture from bombed houses in the region. We would be able to play only in the grounds and on and beneath the terrace, a wonderful place for hide and seek. Bob Watson took us into the huge garden to show us a low, cramped structure made of branches, where he sometimes slept out at night. This seemed a super scheme so we began constructing one of our own. Bob found more material for us from a range of sheds abutting one corner of the great house. He casually mentioned that he sometimes gained access to the house by climbing onto the shed roof and slipping in through a small openable window, covered loosely with a piece of linoleum.

  We constructed our night shelter but it was easily penetrated by the little light drizzle brought on by evening and we went quietly and comfortably to bed, the three of us in a spare room.

  The next day we had a glorious time in the garden climbing and un-fruiting plum and cherry trees, lighting a cooking fire, improving our night shelter. Uncle Tom indulged us by finding some rough bedding which he hoped would keep us warm at night. Bob Watson came home from work but said it wouldn't do because the ground was still wet. He disappeared for a while, returning with a smart roll of linoleum which closely fitted our habitation. Of course, every telegraph boy had a roll or two of lino tucked away somewhere!

  So we played quite late until dark before crawling into our quarters, flashing a torch to find and evict some unwanted insects. I cannot remember why, but it was not Bob Watson's night to sleep out so we were on our own among the many noises of the night. About 11 p.m. Tom found his way to us with a flashlight, a full hundred yards from the garden gate, to see how we fared. Wide awake, we nervously told him it was good fun and he went away. About half an hour later he was back, urgently. He had heard on the wireless that there was going to be a heavy dew and we might get damp, so he had prepared cocoa and biscuits in the kitchen. Heavy dew was indeed a dismal prospect. We were all of one mind. Tonight was not the night for sleeping out. By midnight we were amply supped, washed and sound asleep in bed.

  Later in the week I looked out for brother Bob, having briefly mislaid him. I observed the fruit-picking steps leaning against a shed and saw that the small linoleum flap no longer covered the window. I mounted the shed to look in at the window. It was a tidy drop to the floor but muffled sound beyond assured me Bob was inside. I joined him. The windows were all blacked out; the light may have been poor but the pickings were good. Dressing tables, sideboards, cupboards, chests of drawers, all yielded bits and pieces of good stuff. Crayons, pencils, a fountain pen. These were minor treasures, not much coveted, but they were indicators of better things likely to be found. Then a dozen candles jumped from a drawer. We had our own matches. Meanwhile, Gerald had been shouting for us and we were faced with the problem of building an exit route back to the small high window.

  Genius is never long suppressed. Candle in hand I found my way below stairs to investigate the two known doors to the garden. Each was unbolted but then found to be locked. Another very stout door connected to the void below the terrace. This had two large bolts but no sign of a lock. I worked on the bolts with the heel of my shoe; the door opened inwards to reveal Gerald a few feet away.

  We passed many happy hours in our new playground. In this massive house every room was packed with furniture of great promise. Very little was appropriated. I held on to the fountain pen and a box of pencils. Bob found a pretty notebook which nicely fitted his pocket and Gerald lifted a framed sepia photo of a lady who looked, he thought, like his mother. He stuffed it up his jumper, later placing it on a small table at his bedside.

  On the Thursday afternoon we were working the large rooms on the ground floor, Bob and I in left front, Gerald in right front as viewed from the road. Several candles illuminated each room. Suddenly, the great front door opened and two workmen entered the hall in conversation. As they became accustomed to the gloom they stopped talking. Candle light flickered across the hall. Stepping carefully to a front room door they saw lighted candles. They must have been as frightened as we were. "Halloo!" one called. "Hallo," said Gerald from two feet away. They entered his room as Bob and I bolted through the front door. Here was a dilemma. We could not abandon him for long so we hovered in front of our regular street gate. The threesome emerged from the mansion. "There they are," said Gerald, and indeed, we were. The workmen took note of our address. We were visited that evening by two plain-clothed policemen.

  Gerald had already indicated his entry point, the basement door. No mention was made of the small window and the stepladder was not spotted. I removed it the following day after burning the lino flap on our permanent cooking fire. The police had asked to see our room which yielded nothing but Gerald's newly acquired framed photo which, according to Tom Wright, did not belong there. They took it away as evidence. On Saturday we went back home. Monday we were in school. Tuesday evening the police called at Colworth Road. Bobby and I were formally charged with breaking and entering Government property and stealing an artefact with a value of one shilling and sixpence (7½ pence in modern parlance). Gerald, not yet seven years old, was too young to be a criminal but if we were sent away to an approved school, he might have to share the privilege. Mother was assured that birching was not an appropriate punishment for a first offence of this nature.

  One might suppose the weeks before the Court appearance to have been a worrying time but other forces were bearing down on us and my mind, at least, was engaged elsewhere.

  My eleventh birthday brought a new cricket bat so during the next few days I spent as much time as I could in the local park trying to gather interest for a game. The morning of June 6th found me waiting for companions as I bounced a ball up and down on my bat. A noise approached, causing me to look up. Suddenly the sky was full of slow, low-flying aircraft, each towing a heavy glider. This continued for most of the day. Tens of thousands of allied soldiers were on their way to France, many of them making a one-way journey.

  My memory begins to fail me here and I was hoping family members would, in due time, help me adjust any doubtful chronology. Bob and Gerald were back from evacuation and at Woodside School. Our exploits together may likely claim only limited space in my mental archive because they took place within the mundane family environment and not at a time when awareness was sharpened by insecurity. I have recorded some joint adventures in '43/44 but could not remember what happened to them when the flying bombs arrived. I have lately been told they went back to the Parrotts at New Haw for a few months. In fact it has emerged, following a conversation with Mike Gadd, former celebrated Surrey cricketer, that I visited New Haw in 1944 because I called on the Gadds at a time when Uncle was ill in bed and was soon to depart this life. One might justifiably surmise that I was taken along when Gerald and Bob were returned to their billet in the hope that I too might be accommodated somewhere.

  At school it was decided that the newer fabric of the girls school hall was the best place to house those pupils brave enough to attend. Throughout the war we had suffered as sirens called us to our shelters at all hours of day and night but now we were under permanent warning that we could be struck at any moment. The V1 flying bomb, or doodlebug, had arrived, a rocket-propelled pilotless 'plane, packed with a heavy explosive charge. They roared above at low altitude until the fuel was spent then dived or glided to the ground to the immediate peril of anyone in the vicinity. Fighter planes and ack-ack guns did their best to down them before they reached built-up areas and with a good deal of success, but they swarmed towards London by the hundred causing a great deal of damage, death and injury.

  I did attend the girls school once or twice but thought it utterly pointless. I was better off at home. Mother thought she should let the school know my intentions. She escorted me there one morning in what seemed a quiet moment. We found a few of my classmates and a teacher gathered in a brick shelter in the girls' playground. I made my farewells for there were only a few weeks left to end of term and I was ready to close my account with Woodside School.

  On the way home we had a scary moment as a low-flying doodlebug cut it's noisy engine above us. A lady was beckoning from the door of her brick shelter inviting us into No. 67 Teevan Road. The blast, nearly a mile away, occurred as we reached the shelter. The lady emerged and, noticing that Mother's condition neatly matched her own, took us in and made tea while I made the acquaintance of Ruth, a girl of my age who attended a private school. Both ladies were past their 40th birthday and each gave birth to a daughter within a few weeks. Ruth and I became more closely acquainted four or five years later.

  Adolph Hitler had other plans for us. The V1 flying bomb was followed by the V2 rocket which soared to a height of 70 miles before cutting out to strike randomly in the London area. Evacuation of children was once more under way. Another, lesser, bomb struck in the form of summonses for Bob and me to appear at Bromley Magistrates Court, juvenile section. Mother had already made up her mind that I would be going away and had bought for me the sort of universal blazer that might pass muster at any respectable school. I had new grey knickers and socks to match. Dad polished our shoes. I was at my smartest ever on my day in Court.

  Mother took us to Bromley on the rather expensive Greenline bus. The two policemen were waiting outside the Court but impolitely turned their backs on us when Mother wished them good morning. The hearing took place in a carpeted room, not over-large. Three suited gents in middle life sat at a crude tressle table and another, more important-looking man, sat at a desk a few feet from and at 90 degrees to the table. Bob and I stood about six feet in front of the table, a chair was found for Mother showing proper regard for her condition. Other, faceless, folk, some with notebook and pencil, sat around the edges of the room.

  The important man rose to his feet. He was very tall, definitely a man to be looked up to. He addressed the bench as "Your Worships" which, I fear, brought a smile to my face; a titter was trying hard to impose itself. He made a long statement to Their Worships and asked the senior policeman to verify the assumed facts, most particularly the finding of the framed picture at Gerald's bedside. The policeman was also asked to confirm his earlier estimate of the value of the stolen item, one shilling and sixpence. This done, the tall gentleman, later identified by me as "Clerk to the Justices", a legally qualified person, seemed to argue with himself for several minutes.

  At this stage, none of the magistrates had said a word. The Clerk was explaining the nature of that part of the charge dealing with breaking and entering the premises. As he paused for breath I said in my best voice, to the obvious distress of my Mother, "Please sir, I did not break in to the house. I went in through the basement door and I did not steal anything. Neither did Bobby." The Clerk had lost his flow. Their Worships put their heads together.

  "Thank you, er, King," said the man in the middle.

  They were surprised, perhaps even annoyed. The King thing could speak.

  The Clerk went on to explain to their worships (now lowered in my esteem) that we could be culpable even though the artifact valued at one shilling and sixpence had been stolen by a party not here present. However, he did not think the breaking and entering part of the charge could be sustained because no case had been made for breaking in, but it was nevertheless a criminal offence, under The War Act, 1939, to make unauthorized entry to Government Property. Mother was asked if she would like to make a statement. Her chair was moved to our side. She told their worships we were very good boys and had, on earlier visits to Beckenham, had free access to the empty house. That was how we knew about the insecure basement door. Further, I had lately won a scholarship to a good school and if I were sent away I would lose a valuable opportunity to improve myself. We were ordered to the back of the room. Mother's chair was moved for her. A policeman smiled at us. It was my turn to look away.

  Back in line, the middle man addressed us. We were found guilty of unauthorised entry to Government property, a serious offence in wartime for which we should be punished but they had taken account of the effect this would have on our future and as we had a good home to support us, we would be discharged conditionally. I later learned our guilt would be reviewed if we offended again within two years. During the proceedings Bob uttered not a word. We had not formally been asked to supply or agree our names and had no advocate other than our mother.

  We left the Court with criminal convictions in place and the prospect of a pleasurable fast bus ride home. Their worships and the two brave policemen no doubt went on to a good lunch costing each of them at least as much as one shilling and sixpence, all properly satisfied with their respective contributions to the war effort.

  The next week or two found me reading in sunshine beneath our neighbour's overhanging laburnum tree being bombed by unhygienic sparrows as I scanned the sky and listened for incoming V1s, shouting for Mother and helping her into the back yard shelter when necessary, while Reg and Ken continued at school. Then Reg and I were entrained, via St. Pancras Station, to Kettering, a day or two after an intrusive, shin-barking Morrison shelter was installed in the dining room to protect Mother and imminent baby.

Chapter Six

  The evacuation was organised on a borough-wide basis. There was nothing like the same urgency and panic prevailing in September '39 and, for a person of my age and experience, there was little apprehension. I would find sport whatever happened. On the train I briefly renewed my acquaintance with Mr Williams, still in the employment of Croydon Borough Council. We chatted about the old days and I mentioned Reg was on the train. He kindly enquired about my scholarship result, treating himself to a smile of satisfaction.

  Arriving at Kettering Station I, with about a hundred junior and infant scholars, was bussed to a local school where I kept close company with a lad from 4B by name of Simmonds who lived in Dalmally Road, formerly on my paper round. He had with him a brother four years younger. While Simmonds and I organised a game of football in the school playground the younger brother was minded by Connie Sims their next-door neighbour, who also had a young sister to watch out for. Connie, like me, was just passed her eleventh birthday. I thought she was a pretty girl. I had never spoken to her but felt I wanted to get to know her. Magnetic vibrations were pulsing.

  Our first night away from home was spent on thin mattresses on the floor of the school hall. Before being distributed we were to have a medical examination. Screens were erected allowing a little privacy. The boys were lined up, stripped to the waist, to present themselves to the stethoscope and to cough on cue. In 1944 it was important to record whether testicles were up or down. Next was the turn of the girls. They too formed a line, bare to the waist, just a few feet from where we were putting our clothing together. I found this completely absorbing. Many of the girls had unexpectedly different shapes; some were embarrassed, others not a bit shy. Connie, trying to conceal her little bumps, caught my eye and immediately looked away. I knew then that she would never be my friend.

  Kettering had a pungent smell hanging in the air, quickly identified by me as belonging to the leather industry. Croydon had a tannery which similarly pervaded a small local area. As we were trailed round the roads seeking billets the smell seemed to follow us. I was dropped on the Pratts, whose address I have forgotten. The Simmonds brothers were lodged immediately opposite. It was early July, with only three weeks to go before schools broke up for the summer.

  The Pratt household comprised Mr and Mrs, daughter Eileen aged 21 and Granny aged 83. The very small house had two bedrooms, a bathroom, the tiniest box room entered from the front bedroom and just capable of taking a camp bed, a living room and a kitchen. There was also an outside lav which the over-weight Granny could not manage so she had a commode in the kitchen. The area suffered a water shortage, the main supply being turned off daily at 8 p.m., but each house had a tall tank to collect roof water, preferred on washing day because it was softer. Well, if you believe that --- ! The small garden was wholly cultivated with not an inch of space for cat swinging. I will leave the reader to sort out the sleeping arrangements.

  There was much exploring to do. I was out with the Simmonds boys whenever possible but their home required the seven year old to be in quite early so I often found myself alone and a little unhappy. Mr Pratt, employed in a shoe factory, kept right on top of his garden and did not need help. He would repair and maintain all the household shoes on the living room table which was interesting to watch but interfered with my attempts at reading and letter writing. A letter came announcing the birth, on 20th July, of a sister, Anne Margaret, but it caught me in a sour frame of mind and I wrote a very unpleasant reply to Mother telling her what to do with the infant. I think I resented being away from home and in the dullest of company. Shortly after the birth Mother and baby were evacuated to Ashbourne in Derbyshire and, within a few weeks of receiving my tiresome letter, she found her way to Kettering to introduce our very young sister to Reg and me.

  Meanwhile, at school we had been asked to write our impressions of Kettering. I began my essay eloquently with the observation that "Kettering stinks, and so do the people who live there." The document ran to three pages in similar vein finding its way to the local headmaster who passed it to Mr Williams, the nearest thing to a counsellor. He was sympathetic. He felt much the same but school would be over in about 10 days, the allies were doing well in Europe and we would all be home soon. I struggled on at school, enjoying only the playground breaks and my companionship with Peter Simmonds.

  Before long I sought out brother Reg, also in Kettering. He and his school pal, Bob Maynard, were billeted together in a pleasant detached house with a senior-school teacher and his wife, a lady absorbed by the W.V.S. (Google will explain). I believe they had no children. Tea with Reg was a pleasant affair except that his guv'nor showed too much interest in what I was doing with myself and how I was getting on at school. I suspected he had heard a rumbling in the educational drains.

  There was a Mr George at school who saw himself as a science teacher. He gave us a talk on static electricity, rubbed a bakelite rod with silk then used the rod to pick up some scraps of paper. Very convincing. Static electricity was everywhere, even in our hair. I had been down this track, conducting my own experiment in the dark cupboard under the stairs where we had cowered and cringed on noisy nights when the shelter had been flooded. I had ascertained that after a vigorous combing of the hair a tiny spark would jump when the comb was grounded to the gas pipe.

  Mr George's demonstration was different. Half a dozen of us were called to the front table to watch his next experiment closely. A bespectacled boy was sent back to his seat in case reflected light from his glasses interfered with the balance of nature. A small quantity of water was carefully poured onto the centre of the table, a hair plucked from a nearby head. We were to watch carefully, chins on table, as a bead of water defied gravity and crept slowly up the hair. It did not happen. The hair was too greasy. Another hair was called for and we relaxed for a moment before kneeling on the floor on all sides of the table willing the experiment to succeed. We would see better if our noses were at table height. We concentrated our gaze as the hair was carefully offered and then a fist smashed into the pool of water splashing twelve unsuspecting eyes.

  Eileen would walk with me the mile or so to Wicksteed Park on a Sunday morning where, apart from having the best set of slides, swings and roundabouts I have ever worked, a boating lake allowed me to row a small boat for half an hour for tuppence. Another, smaller, pond was used for racing model yachts; the owners mostly grey-haired men, the yachts including some very fine specimens. When school broke up I found my way there many an afternoon, taking a good supply of candle wax to triple the speed of the monumental slides.

  Walking home one evening I was hailed by a cheerful American soldier on a bicycle. There were several U.S. Army Air Force stations on the flat farmland within a few miles of Kettering. "Want a ride?" he asked. There was an uncomfortable-looking carrier at the rear. I thanked him and climbed on but he couldn't get away so I alighted, gave him a push, ran after him and vaulted on. We managed splendidly. He did not even have to stop when my route branched away. While holding on it occurred to me that this tall young man, though not fat, was wider than he should have been and I could not help observing a strange square bulge in his rear pocket a few inches from my nose.

  I had many encounters with Yanks in the following weeks and, being of a philosophical nature, decided they were often larger than life because they had been better fed. I did not know, at that time, that a good part of their generation also had the use of motor cars during their youth.

  When meeting a Yank in the street it was obligatory for children to enquire: "Got any gum, chum?" I soon learned when an approach was likely to be fruitful and when not. Climbing out of the window of an empty house one day I observed a Captain sitting in a covered jeep. I posed the question and he replied: "No, but I've got some pennies." I held up my hands to his window as he poured out a stream of coin. "This stuff is too heavy," he confided. In all it amounted to nearly eleven shillings. I offered back a half-crown telling him this was half-a-dollar. He seemed surprised but told me to keep it. I should record that the British penny was eight times the size and weight of the U.S. penny (cent) and more or less of equal value.

  The Captain and his driver were waiting for someone to come with a key to the empty house which might prove to be a suitable lodging. I obligingly went back through the window, unlatched the door and showed him over the house, making a mental note to come back later to remove the few possessions I had stored beneath a loosened floorboard.

  Walking back from Wicksteeds early one evening I encountered two African-American soldiers sitting on a roadside bench. I plied the usual question but they shuffled their feet and looked away. They were reluctant to engage in conversation but I persisted and they became less reticent, even chatty. They came from a place called Georgia. I asked what they were going to do that evening. They weren't sure. They thought they would just walk about. I was able to tell them what was on at the cinema but one said they were not welcome there. "What about the pub?" I asked. No. They didn't go into pubs. I sympathized. They seemed a pair of kindred spirits, a couple of lost souls wanted by no-one, but they knew things they were not prepared to share with me and sat there giggling about them.

  One had removed his forage cap and his fascinating curled hair, no more than a quarter inch long, was fully exposed. As I stood behind the bench I could not resist feeling it and I stroked his head - a delightful experience. This produced much mirth from both of them. I would have stayed longer to entertain them but I needed my supper. I told the Pratts of this encounter over supper. Mr Pratt was angry. "You keep away from them damn blackies!", he said emphatically. "Yes," said Mrs Pratt, "They smell bad and you'll catch something nasty!"

  Eileen had a Yank by the name of Louis. He would come to supper then take her off to the cinema or to a local dance hall. I volunteered my company but there was clearly some other game afoot and Mrs Pratt thought I would get home too late. He too, was inordinately broad. I asked him why he had a square lump in his back pocket. He obligingly took it out, explained it was his billfold then complained that English money would not fit in it. Pound notes and ten shilling notes were "too damn large". While waiting patiently for his supper one day he took his shoes off. Each khaki sock had a hole corresponding to the position of the big toe. He deftly changed them over so that the hole, in each case, was less critically located. Not so daft after all, these Yanks.

  During the school holiday the Simmonds boys and I explored the local landscape getting to know which farm produce was worth raiding and looking for hazelnuts. Raw turnips were quite tasty, sugar beet was not. Ripening apples were plentiful. Tiring of the country we checked the edges of the town finding streams to fall in and smaller streams to dam up. Then we tried the railway station for a few days. A bigger boy told us there was money to be made carrying bags from the station to the bus depot 100 yards away. This turned out to be hard work, not very lucrative and left the smallest of us under-occupied.

  The station yard had other interest in the shape of un-lockable jeeps left by personnel with business in London. Early attempts at locomotion only partly succeeded and that by depressing the floor-mounted starter switch, the machine having been left in gear. It would chug round the yard for five minutes or so before the battery failed. However, with a little guidance from an older boy, it was not long before I was able to move them about in the approved fashion.

  Finally we explored the industrial sector where several warehouses and a furniture factory had been taken over by The Red Cross, American Branch, as a distribution centre. Comforts arrived by truck to be unloaded and rationalised for distribution to the several U.S. airfields and hospitals in the area. Here was plenty of work for willing hands. The Red Cross had use of coloured soldiers and white sergeants to organise distribution and we mixed in with them pushing sack barrows laden with cartons, sometimes unloading, sometimes loading the ten-ton trucks. We could expect a few coins by way of remuneration if we waited until the day's work was completed.

  Cartons would accidentally spring open from time to time revealing cigarettes (10 packs of 20 in each box), chewing tobacco (sweet at first but then yukky), funny little rubber balloons for blowing up and floating on the fire service water tanks set at street corners, toothpaste, soap, socks, paper tissues, bandages and many more etceteras. We paid ourselves in kind if the coins were not forthcoming.

  American soldiers did not seem at all keen on chocolate bars or perhaps they didn't travel well. The Hershey equivalent was soft, sweet and squishy leaving one feeling unwell after six or seven bars. If we became properly hungry during these operations we would wander across the large delivery yard to a small barracks housing Italian prisoners, notionally guests of the British but this group was supervised by the Red Cross. On fine days much of their food preparation and some of the cooking was done in the yard. The food took a little getting used to but macaroni with minced beef (instead of jam) was filling and not unpleasant. A good plateful could be acquired for 5 cigarettes, or less.

  At the end of August when the schools re-started I had received no communication about my transfer to secondary education. Doodlebugs had ceased to fall on England but the V2s continued sporadically for several months yet. Mrs Pratt thought I should go back to the junior school to talk to my friend Mr Williams. He was not to be found. I was told to report to the boys senior school about a mile away where Peter Simmonds had been instructed to attend. I thought I would try tomorrow and had a good day at the Red Cross depot.

  I went with Peter next morning and spoke to the teacher who called the start-of-day line-up. He marched the classes away leaving me alone in the playground before returning to say I was not on their list. They did not take in stray dogs. I would have to come back with a note from my parents. Another good day at the depot but I came back at 4 p.m. because Pete needed some cigarettes to sell. For the next week or two he lined up customers and I called in with the goods at end of day. I would have preferred the morning but storing stuff overnight was a problem. The main requirement was for chewing gum and for Lucky Strike cigarettes which I sold initially for 3d (froopence) the pack of twenty which is what the soldiers had to pay. One boy asked for a dozen packs and had to wait another day for completion. I doubled my price but we still traded satisfactorily.

  When I braved another tea-time visit to Reg his guv'nor screwed me with his beady eye. The usual questions elicited the vaguest answers:

  "Which school was I attending?" I mentioned Peter's secondary school.

  "Did I have school dinners?" Yes. It seemed the proper thing to say.

  "Which teacher was on dinner duty today?" I don't know his name.

  "I know his name. It was me!"

  The game was up. I reported to school in the morning and, stray dog or not, was signed on.

  The following day the Simmonds boys went back south. I never saw them again. I think they must have moved from Dalmally Road. I felt very sorry for myself. I knew no-one at the school, apart from Reg's guv'nor who carefully avoided me. I sat on the ground under a play shed at break, playing with a set of dabs from my bottomless pocket. A lump came to my throat. Briefly and unseen, I sobbed, mourning the loss of my friend.

  The evenings were dark and lonely, sometimes finding me plodding streets in the rain. Many streets had brick air-raid shelters built on them, each corner of the structure illuminated by a small oil lamp behind a red glass. A favoured means of lighting my cigarette was to kick out the glass lens without extinguishing the light. If I did not succeed I kicked out another to get a result. I was observed in this by a man with a bicycle, probably collecting loan subscriptions or insurance premiums, or both. As I walked past him he grabbed me saying he was going to take me to the police station. "No you're not!" I informed him. I lifted the front lamp from his bicycle and threw it across several gardens. Lamps were in such short supply, and he could not use his bike at night without one, that he released his hold to recover it. With or without his bike, he could not catch me. I will not record the words he used to describe my antecedents and character.

  School was a pain. I was moved from class to class to class until a kind gent sat me near his desk and found an algebra book for me to work with. The other class members were mostly 14 year olds who had been accepted for apprenticeships but were to round off their studies and leave in December. I sat next to the other boy in class who wore short trousers. I was with them for about three weeks when I realised I had a good collection of small spots. I diagnosed scabies.

  The school sent me to the clinic, the clinic sent me to a municipal warehouse where a workman in bib and brace asked if I had had a bath lately. I was sure I had, just before I left Croydon ten weeks earlier. He accepted my assurance and, because the nurse had not yet arrived, he painted me from chin to toe with a white lather using a shaving brush. It is in the nature of this affliction that my dirty face was spotless. Leaving me naked, he took away my clothes and canvas shoulder bag containing a book, some chewing gum and cigarettes, to place in an oven for twenty minutes. This did nothing for the book but the gum survived. The cigarettes disappeared. My shoes began to disintegrate from that moment. I was climbing into my very hot clothes when the nurse appeared. She looked me over and decided I was a bad case. I must go to a children's hospital at Oundle for isolation and further treatment.

  Another car ride, another series of baths and four days of utter loneliness with no reading material. During this isolation I determined to stay awake all night to enable me to doze my way through each monotonous day. I had a distant church clock for company but only once did I hear midnight chime. Nevertheless, I managed to sleep through part of the day and, as I awoke from one long nap, my exposed eye contrived to refract the incoming light so as subjectively to bathe the room in a beautiful deep blue which I found ecstatically enjoyable. I lay perfectly still for some two hours knowing that, at my next movement, this delightful colour would be lost. I did try to reproduce the effect, without success. One need make no further enquiry as to my favourite colour.

  After four days I was off to a boys general ward holding about 20 lads. One poor fellow had a weak heart and was not allowed out of bed. Another was a Croydonian of my own age with a broken leg from a school known to me and within a mile of my home. We had a lot to talk about though we could find no mutual acquaintance. I was expected to stay in bed but I declined and asked for the return of my day clothes. The sister did not respond. I explained that I was physically fit, no longer infectious and wished to wear my clothes. She insisted the rules were that patients would stay in bed until discharged.

  I became angry and belligerent. I told her this was a matter for the police, my clothes having been stolen from me. I would need to use the telephone to call them and I wished to speak to my father at his place of work. I walked out of the ward and made my way down to the office in my hospital nightshirt and plimsolls.

  The sister found another nurse; the pair of them manhandled me back to the ward. Ten minutes later I opened a small window in the corridor between ward and bathroom and prepared to climb out. It was a mere twelve feet to the ground, no big problem. I had one bare leg across the sill when Sister saw me from the ward and screamed. She relented; I had my clothes. I now demanded pen and ink so that I could write to the Town Hall at Kettering to report on my seriously bad treatment. More argument ensued. If I wanted to write a letter a member of the office staff would do it for me. I gave up on the letter and decided to go for a walk in the grounds. As I went through the entrance hall a nurse and a clerk moved quickly to bar my way. After the briefest stand-off they stood aside to let me pass.

  The hospital grounds met with my approval, most particularly the large iron gates at the road entrance, and I went back to the ward to be companionable. The following day I took the air again to discover that a trainee nurse had been detailed to keep me company. She was a cheerful soul. We passed a happy couple of hours together on a pleasant autumn morning. She was keen on dancing and we practiced the fox-trot together on a well-kept lawn. As we parted I told her I was going into town that afternoon.

  Sister came to tell me I could not possibly leave the premises. She was upset by my questions: had I been committed to the hospital by the local magistrates? She did not think so. Was I here as a voluntary patient? Yes, perhaps I was. Had my father forbidden me to go out for a walk? She did not know. I told her I would go to the town after lunch and be back in time for tea.

  When I reached the gate it was locked. A gardener was keeping me under scrutiny so I asked him to open it. He turned and went away. It took just a few seconds to demonstrate my expertise in gate scaling. In town I bought some comics and cream buns and enquired about the times of the bus to Kettering. As I returned to the hospital the gardener kindly opened the gate for me. I informed the lady in the office that my hospitalisation eighteen months earlier for the same disorder had lasted ten days and I would therefore be leaving on Friday. On Thursday evening a lady doctor asked if she could apply her stethoscope and I saw no reason not to oblige her. She told me a car would take me to Kettering in the morning. With the assurance of transport I felt able to acknowledge the kindness of my fellow Croydonian who had twice sold me his tea-time piece of fruit cake for a threepenny bit. As I made my farewells I gave him a half-crown which, I fear, left him in tearful confusion. Not every evacuee received a regular pocket allowance.

  The Pratts were not pleased to see me; their home had suffered the indignity of disinfestation while neighbours looked on from behind their curtains.

  I would sometimes go to the cinema and wait in the foyer to find an adult to buy my ticket for me; under-sixteens were not allowed to see an "A" film unless accompanied. Yanks with a girl were a likely target because the man would want to impress his young lady by appearing friendly, even generous. I, of course, wanted the cheapest seat whereas he had to take his lady to the most expensive. Sometimes this was no problem but if the cashier was not obliging I would offer the explanation that we were all together but broken glasses necessitated my sitting at the front. That worked once. Another time a Yank waved away my contribution and bought three tickets costing a total of 8/3d. I sat next to him in the central lower circle until his chocolate box had passed a couple of times, then excused myself and went down to the front row to see the film.

  One evening Eileen came to the cinema with Louis just as I was being taken in by a lone black soldier. He was from New York and not at all shy of conversation. My custodian sat with me near the front. We had a pleasant evening chewing gum, exchanging cigarettes and enjoying Jimmy Stewart putting the world to rights.

  The next morning Mrs Pratt confronted me angrily. I had been with those darkies again. My navy-blue raincoat, like everything else in those days, smelled of tobacco smoke. She took it down from behind the back door to see if it smelled of blackies and gave it a shake. Not one, but two packets of Lucky Strike fell from the pockets. I refused to explain but took my coat and left without breakfast. I ate with the Italians that morning and helped with logistics for the rest of the day.

  Thousands more American soldiers were daily flying into the European war zones. The army hospitals were filling up. Life at the depot was frantic. My job was to keep blankets on the move.

  I did not go home that night, the prospect was too unpleasant. I worked through the evening and slept on a pile of blankets in the warehouse taking breakfast with the Italians. The night guard, a corporal known as Mac, brought me some undrinkable coffee and tasty fruit bread before locking us in for the night. On the second evening he persuaded an Italian P.O.W. to keep an eye on the place while we went to the cinema. The Yanks seemed pleased to have me about, running errands, confirming doubtful counts of material and correcting calculations. My tick on a clipboard was as good as any other. They knew I lived in London and that I didn't go home very often but they were disinclined to ask questions. I visited one or two of my customers at the school gate over the next few days and used the playground lavatory, but I kept a low profile and continued to sleep in the warehouse.

  Backing up an empty truck to the wharf, I jumped down to check I was close enough and felt a hand on my shoulder. A smiling policeman said "Leslie, we've been looking for you." This was Thursday morning. On Friday afternoon Reg and I were met by Dad at St Pancras station, courtesy of a police travel warrant for two juveniles. On Monday, properly washed, I sat in class 2c at Whitgift Middle School. It was mid-November. I was eight weeks late and, I believe, the only boy in school delayed by evacuation.

Chapter Seven

  In the bosom of my family loneliness was gone. I had a clear program of work and a degree of encouragement from parents and brothers to make a success of it. At school I missed the start of several discreet subjects some of which I was quickly able to catch up on, others, such as latin, history and geography left me floundering, unable to find the interest, energy or support to make sufficient progress. In fairly short order I was in difficulty through not delivering compulsory homework and regularly found myself in detention on Wednesday afternoons when I should otherwise have been playing rugby.

  In the Spring of 1945 the war was close to its end although, daily, new horrors were coming to light as allied forces over-ran the death camps. Cinema newsreels did little to suppress graphic evidence of epic cruelties inflicted by the nazi regime, leaving many a sensitive 12 year-old emotionally disturbed.

  At the end of April Hitler was gone; the much-sung singularity of his testicle unconfirmed for another 25 years. Winston told us we could all have two days holiday when the imminent victory was secured so that, a week later, I felt confident I could postpone my homework in favour of a game of cricket in the local park. On the evening of 7th May I was bowling when the shout arose that the war (in Europe) was over. I felt an enormous surge of joy and relief as I hurled the ball towards the wicket. It was as if a great burden had been lifted. I had enjoyed many a happy moment in my twelve years but, for the first time, here was elation, an experience rarely repeated in later life.

  Over the next few days we celebrated by dancing in the streets around huge bonfires but without the fun of fireworks. Victory in Japan three months later was anticlimactic for us because the Pacific war had for some time been moving in the allies' favour. The end was so drastic and sudden that our jubilation was subdued by the horrific nature of the means applied.

  November 5th brought further occasion to light large fires. Fireworks were now in the shops. I was disappointed by the performance of a damp squib or two including one tuppenny rocket on which the fuse failed. I decided to encourage it on its way by applying a sparkler to the business end while holding it at face level. Suddenly it took off in low flight across adjacent gardens, faintly burning and deeply blackening my fingers. The surface of the left lens of my glasses was melted by the blast and my eyebrows singed. Once again, my eye was safe and ready for yet another life.

  I had been at my new school about twelve months when, one wet Wednesday, rugby was cancelled. I found myself eating my lunchtime sandwiches at home. Father came in from his new job at Williamsons, grocers. Over lunch he suggested we go to The Empire at Croydon, a rather run-down music hall, to catch the matinee performance. Most shops in the area closed on Wednesday afternoon and, on such a wet day, a good house could be expected. Top of the bill that day was Max Miller, a stand-up comedian whose saucy monologue could be expected to be more risqué without the constraints imposed on his occasional radio performances. We braved the elements and went off on our bicycles taking our detachable front lamps into the theatre in our raincoat pockets. Incidentally, a few weeks later I had a dynamo lighting set as a Christmas present and I no longer had to include a 10d lamp battery in my weekly budget.

  At The Empire I found the colourful tap dancing, juggling and acrobatic acts enjoyable, more so than the fake ice cream during the interval. Then came the principal performance. I smiled and chuckled at Mr Miller's verbal witicisms encouraged, no doubt, by his impeccable timing and peculiar mannerisms, but I lost the thread in his story of an american soldier walking the narrow cliff path above Beachy Head and meeting a young lady coming in the opposite direction. The soldier's offer to toss himself off instead of blocking her passage was, to my mind, taking chivalry much too far and I was troubled by the prospect of his launching himself from the cliff but Dad, in a seat adjacent to the aisle, burst into a loud guffaw before suffering a convulsive fit and falling to the floor with dentures lying beside him and tears flooding his cheeks. I have to say I was embarassed by his literally rolling in the aisle for what seemed like several minutes while the house continued in uproar. I became sadly aware that the world had once more passed me by leaving me without the wisdom to appreciate the poignancy of the moment. I later came to realise Dad had a more earthy sense of humour than might be expected of a respectable father.

  While I pause to think of The Empire I cannot avoid reflecting on the fact that it backed onto our school's lower field just beyond the rifle range where it had emergency fire doors set in a high brick wall. Whilst the robust wooden doors withstood constant beatings from tennis balls and other sporting activity, including knife throwing, they did eventually succumb to a mixture of potassium chlorate and sulphur secreted from the chemistry laboratory, my role in the affair being purely advisory. The Empire survived the war by only a few years, music halls in the south generally being unable to compete with the advance of television.

  Once in a while Dad would take several of us to the cinema on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon for a performance starting about 3.00 p.m. and ending some three hours later. Cinemas were often heavily subscribed in the pre-television days and one might sometimes expect to join a long queue before gaining admission. One dark evening we emerged from The Savoy at Broad Green into an evil-smelling fog. Visibility was extremely poor, traffic virtually at a standstill. There was no point in waiting at the bus stop so we linked arms, stumbled across the London Road into St James's Road and, to keep warm, trotted briskly along the centre of the road. As we reached The Leslie Arms we caught up with a 59A bus as it was led towards its destination at The Black Horse by the conductor bearing a torch. We clambered aboard for a rest and, in the absence of the conductor, took a free ride, at walking pace, as far as Colworth Road. It would be several days before my chest cleared enough for expectorations to lose their sooty deposits and another eight years before a Clean Air Act was introduced to banish the London Smog.

  Family outings were rare. There was no money for holidays but Mother did take some of us to the sea at Brighton on two consecutive August Bank Holidays using the very crowded special excursion train from East Croydon while Dad busied himself on his allotment. On the second occasion Reg and I were keen to demonstrate the swimming prowess acquired during our regular visits to Croydon Baths. We determined to swim to the end of the pier and back along it's far side. We had little trouble in reaching the turning point because the tide was ebbing but the return leg proved to be a long struggle, leaving Mother anxious for our welfare. Neither of us had much to say when we re-joined the party but I think we both felt that sea-bathing was of a quite different order to the fun-filled half-hours spent at the crowded local baths.

  Brighton was an attractive venue for a summertime outing by bicycle. I met up with two school pals early one morning in the school summer holiday and by 9.00 hrs we emerged from suburbia into the countryside just beyond Coulsdon. We pedalled energetically along the A23 for the next three hours on a very pleasant day, reaching the sea at about 12.30. Our lunchtime sandwiches were supplemented by fizzy lemonade and ice-cream as we fed pennies into various machines on the pier so that "what the butler saw" added graphic detail to the biology lessons in which we three always sat together in front of an evil-smelling elephant hide.

  We were sensible enough to realise we should make an early start for home and set off at about 14.30 by which time my legs, at least, were showing signs of fatigue. The first few miles were indeed hard work as we tackled the ascent of the South Downs. We were greatly relieved, on passing close to Hassocks, to find it was not uphill all the way. As we gathered momentum on a downhill slope Flash Gordon's chain came off and jammed in his rear wheel. He fell off his machine as Johny White and I sped off into the distance. Sadly we had to climb back up the slope to come to his aid. Our spanners enabled the removal of the wheel and the release of the chain but it was broken and could not be refitted. Flash's bike was connected to my saddle by means of a canvas shoulder bag allowing me to tow him for the next few miles but it was hard work and progress was slow. We took to walking up even the most gentle slopes. After one long climb we separated ourselves for the exhilarating dash downhill. As we picked up a good speed the inner tube of my front wheel burst with a loud bang. Progress once more came to a halt. Off came the wheel but the tube was beyond repair. We passed half an hour gathering long stems of grass, twisting them tightly together to fill out the tyre but the stuffing, unfortunately, did not stop the tyre coming off after just a few yards.

  At about 19.30 we were three miles south of Crawley, little more than a village in those days, and we had a sense of the day beginning to close as we hungrily plodded northward. The main route (A23) by-passed Crawley but we thought we would go into the village in the hope of finding some help or at least reporting to the police office because, in 1946, only a small proportion of homes had a telephone and the standard method of dealing with a calamity was to use the police as a messenger service. As we approached the village a milk-float rattled past driven by a dairyman on his way to fill bottles for his evening milk-round. He observed our distress, put the two damaged bicycles on his machine, taking them and us to his dairy while Johny rode alongside. The dairyman offered to lend us ten shillings against the security of the bicyles and said he would take us to the station for the train to East Croydon but he thought the police should be informed. We rattled off to the police station with Johny on his bike but holding on to the float.

  The police sergeant approved the arrangements and, taking our names and addresses, said our parents would be informed. In fact, a policeman, with a road-worthy bicycle, called at my home about 30 minutes later. Our benefactor took us to the station where we bought three half-fare tickets and a bike ticket for the surviving machine. An hour later we emerged from East Croydon station, Johny entirely confident of being able to cycle in the dark to his home at Norbury. Flash and I walked to our respective homes in Addiscombe, arriving about 22.30. A few days later, cash in hand, the two of us went by train to Crawley to collect our damaged bikes, both of which, to our surprise, had been repaired by the dairyman. We thanked him for his kindness before riding the machines only as far as Three Bridges Station, thence by train to Croydon. Undaunted by the experience, a few weeks later on a Wednesday afternoon, Johny and I cycled to East Grinstead to spot a King Arthur Class steam locomotive on the East Sussex line, a round-trip of some 60 miles.

  At school we worked a six day week with seasonal sport on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons. If two Wednesday detentions were earned in any one week, headmaster's detention followed on Saturday afternoon! This was the pattern of my academic progress until the age of fifteen when I gave myself a good talking to. In my last year, for I had long assumed I would leave school, like brother Reg, at the end of the fifth year, I disciplined myself, found some stability and, though I say it who shouldn't, even a measure of popularity. I left school after the School Certificate exams in 1949, against the headmaster's advice but with his recommendation, to take a position as junior clerk in an insurance office in the City under the close eye of an Old Boy of the school.

  In my second term at school I decided to join the Army Cadet Force. On Monday afternoons the uniformed cadets lined up in their platoons at 2 p.m. marching and wheeling before retiring to classrooms for instruction in field craft, armaments, military history, and all manner of essential military knowledge including the construction of a latrine and how to tie a reef knot. Uniform for those under 14 was WW1 style with peaked cap, long brass-buttoned tunic, webbing belt with brass buckle, knee britches and black boots. Between boot and knee was wound an ever-slipping khaki bandage known as the puttee.

  My parents were taken aback when I brought home the uniform and told them I must have new black boots. They had not recovered from the financial shock of having to buy a school uniform, including sports equipment, and a full set of textbooks when I joined the school just a few weeks earlier. However, Mother was now employed at Freeman, Hardy and Willis, a national footwear chain, just a few doors from the school's main entrance so, logistically, the requirement was not too demanding, especially as clothing coupons were not needed for this military item.

  The immediate benefit of being a cadet was that the history lesson on Monday afternoon was foregone and with it, the prospect of having one's bottom fondled across the lap of the ancient, if not senile, Mr Snuff prior to the gentlest rythmic application of a gym shoe, the whole process taking about fifteen minutes. Other benefits arose simply from being with boys in other years. Our instructors were older lads many of whom were not prefects, a few having a clear predilection for army life. The Company Sergeant Major was a chubby lad in the lower sixth and two senior prefects were under-officers. My platoon sergeant was a fifth-former.

  I was soon in trouble for failing to shine my brass to the proper standard and was put on defaulters which meant I had to stay a little later on Monday to wash cocoa cups in the orderly room.

  The Cadet Force had a drum and fife band, the fife also known as the B flat flute. I cannot think why I joined the band as a flautist but I went to band practice in the Art Room on Thursday after school for several terms before succumbing to the urge to lapse. Mr Bird, the bandmaster, pleased with my early promise, wanted me for a second flute but as I was the only second flute, this did not work too well. I was happier playing the melody as loudly as possible. However, before I could perform in public I had to gain experience of marching with the band so I was given a triangle to tinkle. Another novice, a lad twice my size learning the larger F flute, clashed the cymbals and, in the assembled company, we flanked the leopard-skin clad bass drummer. Immediately in front of us were the two tenor drummers who, like the bass drummer, required space to spin their drumsticks.

  My first outing with the band was on Founder's Day 1945 when the entire school, led by the band, the Cadet Force in uniform, the Air Training Corps, the Head and Staff in gown and mortar board, the school in year order with the bowler-hatted senior porter Horace bringing up the rear, processed from school to the large Parish Church in Old Town. At the same time, the other Whitgift School, in much the same sort of order except for the inclusion of a company of Boy Scouts, and benefiting from a louder and better sounding drum and bugle band, processed from their location in South Croydon to the same destination.

  Our route took us down Crown Hill, a steep granite-cobbled street, alas no longer cobbled. The steel-tipped heels on our boots were not best suited to this smooth sloping surface and the tenor drummer in front of me lost his footing, sitting down with a painful shock to his spine while his drum came loose and accelerated down the hill. Tripping over the casualty, I broke ranks, collected the drum from the pavement some 20 yards below, rejoined the ranks in his place and carried the heavy drum, without supporting harness, all the way to the church. Our colleague was able to resume his position for the return journey. A few days later I was stunned, at 6.15 a.m., to see myself on the front page of the local paper, struggling with the large tenor drum.

  The Cadet Force lost its glamour after a year or so and I stopped attending. Snuff had been sent on his way, his character evidently unimpeached because he later took an honorary office with the Old Boys Association. For me, there were better things to do on a Sunday evening than polish brass buttons, badges and buckles. It seems I was missed in the band room because a piccolo-playing under-officer, who had recently recruited me to perform in an inter-house athletics competition, was asked to approach me. Again, I was ready to respond to a pleasant senior person with whom I had developed some rapport. There was a big parade coming up at Caterham Barracks. All regional cadet companies would be present and there was to be a band competition. I agreed to rejoin.

  The formalities of re-enlistment were waived. I was given the distinctive badge and rank of Drummer; I was no longer a private! My uniform was a problem; firstly I had grown, secondly I would be the only member of the band in WW1 regalia. A full year from my 14th birthday I beat the system gaining a WW2 battle dress with drummer's badge stitched to my lower sleeve.

  The Victory Parade, held on my 13th birthday, was a long event on a very hot day. The inspecting general stopped to ask how old I was. I replied: "Yesterday, sir, I was twelve. Today I am thirteen." He conferred with his attendants before moving on. They were, no doubt, able to explain that whilst the Queens Royal Regiment generally recruited lads of 14 into the Cadet Force, schools were privileged to recruit at an earlier age. Our band was soon eliminated from the competition but had the delightful compensation of large helpings of cake and custard served by Italian P.O.W.s still awaiting their release from captivity. Another three months and my black boots were painful to wear. I returned the battle dress but have the flute to this day.

  Gerald, Bob and I went carol singing with the flute. Surprisingly, people stopped to listen to us instead of turning us away with a copper or two. We borrowed a junior hymn book from Sunday School and, with a torch, were quite an organised party. We were invited into sitting rooms of several houses in Northampton Road and thereabouts, and asked to perform specific requests. Initially, Gerald adopted a languid style, borrowed from the radio, singing of peeese and lerv instead of peace and love but ultimately, with reluctance, followed the speedy, stacatto lead of the flute and enjoyed an equal share of the takings.

  I was now accustomed to wearing spectacles which I used as an excuse for avoiding detestable rugby if, perchance, I were not in detention. I had a bicycle for my twelfth birthday, essential for travel to and from school so that lateness, punished by after-school detention on Tuesdays, resulted only from my own poor management. I had very good friends, mostly bright lads but, like myself, often lacking in drive and incentive. One teacher, a strict disciplinarian but not without a sense of humour, I esteemed because I knew exactly where I stood with him and, during the three years of our association, two of which he was our class tutor, I was a leading pupil in his subject. He had the onerous task of managing the inter-class rugby schedules. Partly to oblige him, I kept myself from detention in my final year and became a rugby referee.

  School was not always a burden. I found the evening athletics matches pleasant and relaxing whether simply watching or, in my last year, performing. A few of my friends were very keen on cricket and I would sometimes shed school uniform on Saturday afternoon to join them as spectator or, on the one occasion I entered the main pavilion, as scorer of an inter-school match. The upper playing field was a pleasant place to be, generously sized for cricket or for two simultaneous games of rugby.

  The wider of the two lanes leading from school to the Wellesley Road entrances was lined with 100-year-old lime trees, a great loss to Croydon when the school site was redeveloped in 1965. I was scooting my bicycle along this avenue about 4.15 one afternoon, expecting a prefectorial shout ordering me to walk, when an airgun pellet became painfully embedded between my shoulders. A group of sixth-formers about 20 yards behind me began to disperse, isolating a red-capped prefect holding an awkward bundle. In my anger, I mounted my bicycle and rode the remaining 50 yards to the exit. The avenue and this event came to mind in recent years as I planted out something like 600 lime trees, curiously approximating to the number of boys at the school in my day. I churlishly discarded a weak-looking tree as I briefly recalled a certain act of unkindness.

  Routine discipline was in the hands of prefects, sixth-formers aged 17 and 18. I fell foul of these people early in my school life, through running in walking zones, arriving without a cap, whistling in the corridor, propelling a missile when not on the lower field. Usual punishment would be 50 lines but greater offences were rewarded with a caning at a Prefects' Meeting. I had strong objection to corporal punishment at anyone's hand but most particularly from fellow scholars.

  Occasional, sometimes vicious, slaps on the cheek, cuffs about the head and "caning" were taken for granted, a daily hazard avoided by training and skill. The leather-bound military swagger stick was much in evidence in classrooms in the post-war years. One stroke on the hand was a fair trade for a neglected biology homework whereas an automatic two hour detention for neglecting French was not. Mr Smith, who re-joined the school after several years as a sub-mariner, was a twitchy, nervous man, quite unable to keep order in literature classes. In one moment of frustration, following the violent explosion of a treacle tin filled with coal gas in the chemy lab, ignited and left on his window sill, he lined up the whole class to strike our buttocks with a heavy gym shoe, bringing many a tear to many an eye. Fortunately my neatly folded woolen scarf was in my satchell and became suitably relocated as I waited in line. I was less fortunate when the Headmaster ordered a group of us, who had "disgraced the school" by sending rude signals recorded in the 1948 school photograph, to see Dr. Shutt, his deputy. He was a very tall man with a long swing to his military stick. On that occasion I had time only to put on an extra pair of gym shorts which he compensated for by taking three speedy strides before landing his blows.

  Towards the end of my fourth year I was due for four strokes at a prefect's meeting in the gym for inappropriate language when addressing a prefect, but there was a standoff because I refused to remove the home-made whacking undergarment for which I had become well known. I insisted my underwear was a private matter and told them they would whack me as I was or not at all. I invited the School Captain (head prefect) to come with me to the Headmaster to explain himself. He declined.

  The whacking took place with the utmost vigour, though the rules did not allow the striker to run at the target. Each stroke caused a loud bang. I could not contain my mirth and nor could many of the prefects. The following day I stopped the Captain in the corridor and told him I would not play that game again. If any prefect tried to lay a hand on me I would leave the school immediately. The good fellow did not respond but was clearly disturbed by my approach. I believe I may have been treated thereafter with some caution though, at about that time, influenced perhaps by the beautiful girls at church, I made a determined effort to toe the line.

  Did someone say that schooldays are the happiest days of your life? It is doubtful if mine were. I did gain some heartening distinctions in athletics. Each season pupils were encouraged to achieve standards in the various facets: sprints, distance, jumps, throwing, etc., to obtain an All-Round Badge. In my final season I earned two such badges, uniquely. Other, less worthy, distinctions concerned the number of detentions worked in any one year, the probability that I was the only pupil credited with a criminal conviction and the unacclaimed certainty that I was the scruffiest boy in school. History may show, perhaps, that I was not the only scholar to have been thrown out of Parliament. Nevertheless, the five-year association with teachers who were mainly Oxbridge graduates inculcated some erudition and facility with language, enhanced by exposure to Horace Clayton's daily ramblings in Big School. The familial Londonese twang, afflicting those born just a little beyond the sound of Bow Bells, gradually escaped enabling me to slip smoothly into professional life in the City.

  School, though important, was not by any means the only significant area of activity in my life. When I should have been doing homework I was often playing cricket or soccer in the park with the local peasantry, and on Friday evening there was to be a Scout meeting.

  Gerald, Bob and I, and possibly Reg for a brief period, had been sent to Sunday School at the nearest location, St. Mildreds, just three hundred yards from home and adjacent to the eminently scaleable park gate. The lady in charge of my section was a Miss Cat. With such a name she had little chance of maintaining discipline. I did not feel I belonged there. I was cynical and argumentative; it was all such a lot of silly nonsense. Miss Cat decided I was incorrigible. She asked me not to come again. Mum and Dad clearly wanted peace and quiet on their Sunday afternoon and insisted I try again at the Methodist Church about a mile away.

  There I was interviewed by Miss Gratwick, proprietress of the undertakers just across the road from the church whose business was evidenced by a large painted sign bearing the respectable name of Gratwick & Sons. She was senior to Miss Cat by about 80 years, give or take a generation. As regards nomenclature, we were off to a better start. I joined a small group of senior boys and girls including Henry Jones, a former classmate at Woodside, and Charlie Smith whose paper round crossed with mine each morning. Bob and Gerald were assigned to the junior group in the church hall.

  Charlie Smith was a good chum. We met for a couple of years soon after 7 a.m. each morning where the Addiscombe Road joins Outram Road. On many mornings, as I approached the junction, the Headmaster's Hudson Terraplane flashed by as he went to school for a surprisingly early start. If I saw him coming I would stand to attention and salute until he sent for me to ask me not to draw attention to myself in this way. At this section of the road large mid-Victorian houses were in multiple occupation, some with multiple letter boxes, all with steep stairs. Sometimes, as Charlie and I exchanged tittle tattle, we were joined by George, a paper boy in his early seventies. George would emerge breathless from the gently sloping Outram Road and Charlie or I would sprint up stairs to make his deliveries for him. This contact ceased when Reg went to work in the City and I took over his round for an extra shilling or two. Some three years later I was re-introduced to George William Pearson, O.B.E., my girl-friend's grandfather, and, yet more years on, he and his wife graciously attended our wedding.

  Back to Sunday School. Our meeting took place in the main body of the church. There were long, high-backed pews and a sound broadcast system linked to the bull pit. Pleased to be among friends and a little unsure of myself in the company of older girls, my conduct was quieter, less obtrusive. I was quite keen to go again the following week and arrived early.

  With a little practice I found I could approach the rear of the pew furthest from the altar, mount it in one leap then step forward to the back of the next pew and progress, precariously, all the way to the middle transept. This was just wide enough to allow a jump down, two steps and a leap up to the next block of pews and ever onwards. Henry couldn't manage it at all but then he was a little over-fed. Charlie was just getting the hang of it when Miss Gratwick, who wore a hat from morning till night, came in choking with anger. She directed her wrath, not at Charlie atop the pews, but at me standing quietly by. I had not removed my school cap on entering the church! Her assurance of my permanent damnation was a comfort to me when, a little later, I came to consider questions posed by some religionists of my gender always wearing hats in church, and by the sad condition of the several true hermaphrodites, featured in a front page article in The Daily Telegraph, who would never know how to behave in church.

  Another Sunday Charlie and I slipped through a small door in a corner and found ourselves in the bell tower. A narrow wooden stair led up to the single bell mechanism which we studied for a minute before noticing, in the gloom, a flimsy ladder leading upward ever upward into the point of the steeple. It was clearly dangerous but irresistible. The class had begun without us when we emerged covered in dust and cobwebs.

  The minister, the Reverend George, looked in to talk to the group but it was the lads whose attention he sought. There was an established Girl Guide group at the church and he wanted to start a Scout group. He had found a scouter willing to take on the job and hoped some of us would be interested. Henry and I consented to come on Friday evening, 1st March 1946. Charlie was already in the Sea Scouts elsewhere.

  I went along with brother Bob, very soon to be of scouting age. Henry and another boy connected with the church attended. The minister and the scouter, Stanley McGill, made six. It sounded promising. Next week Henry brought along Willie Evans and Roy Turner, both known to me from 4A at Woodside, and Ian Harvey, a diminutive lad, previously in 4B, the good-natured butt of everyone's ill humour. These lads were at the Davidson Road Secondary School though Henry was shortly to transfer to the Croydon School of Building. From such small beginnings the Scout Troop prospered and became an important element in my life until my late teens.

Me and Bill

  As the 49th Croydon Group increased in size other Scouters came to help. Some became very good friends, entirely dependable, well-motivated and supportive. Others were of decidedly villainous aspect. A Cub Scout section was formed and, when Bill (Willie Evans) and I passed the age of 16, a Senior Scout section was established with Bill as patrol leader while I was appointed to the general rank of troop leader. Incidentally, my erstwhile school chum, Flash Gordon (first names: Crighton Charles), was already troop leader of the larger scout troop at St Mildred's. Some of us were hardy campers passing many a winter week-end in the local countryside. Bert Berlin, the Sunday School superintendent, a local house builder and founder of the church's 14 to 20 Club, had purchased a small farm at Chelsham, a few miles out of town. The scouts could camp there at any time.

  The day came when Charlie Smith was released from his obligation to attend Sunday school. I decided I too would go no more. Dad said I should continue. I said I would not. He said he would punish me for disobedience. I said I would cane his backside if he tried. At nearly 14 years of age we were now of equal height and I felt I had the measure of him. Negotiations ensued. I agreed I would take little Anne for a walk in the park for an hour instead. With Reg playing football in a Sunday league, Ken having joined the army and Arthur being married and away, Mum and Dad had a fair chance of having the house to themselves for their weekly bath.

  At about this time Dad's father, Alfred Henry, came to stay for a week. He was now 84 years old and could walk only slowly with a stick. I was a little surprised at his lack of mobility because his father, Henry, born 1835, had died only three years earlier at the age of 108, reputedly the oldest man in Britain. On Henry's final birthday in 1943 the Evening Standard had printed his views on those wicked nazis and japs who would surely perish. The article also recounted something of his distinguished railway career and energetic lifestyle in his later years.

  I went to the park with Alfred on my arm and Anne, aged 3, holding my other hand. He sat on a bench while we played with a ball. The return journey was altogether too slow for Anne so I allowed her to skip about and bounce the ball on the metalled exit lane which sloped a little towards the road. Inevitably the ball rolled off with Anne in pursuit. I abandoned my elderly charge and sprinted flat out for thirty yards to snatch her as she reached the road while the ball went beneath a passing car. Protective railings were later installed at the kerb suggesting that some other child may not have been so well guarded.

  I believe Grandpa Alfred much enjoyed his week with us apart from his exposure to my offering of hymn tunes using black notes only on our squeaky piano. He tried to put me right and to change the rules of the game but his arthritic fingers sadly let him down. He survived his visit by only a few months though I feel no guilt in this regard. His occupation is shown as Church Army Evangelist on father's birth certificate at which time he was organist at Axminster Parish Church. I have never understood why he gave up this sober life to take employment with a brewery amongst the hop fields of Kent but I feel indebted to him for this relocation of the family. In later life I had a home a few miles from Axminster and regularly saluted the church as I passed by. I did not, however, succeed in finding the house in Chard Street where our father was born.

  A singular event occurred early in 1948; the church burned down in mysterious circumstances. The church building was utterly destroyed but the shell of the large hall was preserved to be converted to a new place of worship, opened in 1951. On the evening following the fire, Bill and I found our way into the roofless hall in an attempt to salvage the scouts' equipment contained in a large chest. The floor was dangerous and the chest badly charred but we had some success before being warned off by the obsolete caretaker. Other churches took us in so that worshipers, Sunday school meetings, guides, scouts and others, assembled in their church halls.

  Bill had two younger sisters. The elder, Margaret, was a year younger than me. When we were 14 and 15 respectively we decided we were in love. This went on for a year or so until the Evans's moved to another part of London about 10 miles away. Our evening trysts, twice or thrice each week, impacted on my will to complete homework assignments and they tended to coincide with her parents' support of the darts team at a local hostelry, The Leslie Arms. All pubs closed at 22.00 hrs so very soon thereafter, Margaret too had to leave the Leslie arms on hearing the signal from Bill, watching at the front gate for his parents to turn the corner. It was not at all practical for me to cycle to Brixton to see her on a regular basis, other than in the long summer evenings, and our mutual passion soon faded. Bill, however, maintained his connection with the 49th Croydon Scout Group until national service took him off to join the military police with whom he served in Kenya during the Mau-mau uprising.

  I briefly renewed my acquaintance with Margaret early in 1950 when I invested £16 in a 1928 Raleigh motorcycle with over-sized Villiers engine. This took me to Brixton where Bill and his chums showed too much interest in the machine and, between them, damaged the clutch and broke a lay shaft in the gear box. A bump start enabled me to ride it home in top gear but the repair cost was beyond my stringent monthly budget so it rested in the bike shed for a few months until I located a replacement shaft. Ron helped with the repair then bought the machine from me for the sum of thirty shillings.

  The annual scout camp was as close as I ever came to taking a holiday until my late-teens. In the summer of 1948 we camped on a farm near Haywards Heath in Sussex, helping with the wheat harvest. A steam tractor provided power through a long belt-drive to a threshing machine into which we energetically fed stalks of wheat using pitchforks. Our tents being pitched on a river bank we swam and occasionally washed in the cold water.

  We older lads challenged ourselves to making a midnight hike on a six-mile circuit using map, compass and torch. This was not greatly demanding but turned out to be memorable as, a mile or two into our journey at a point where the lane divided to form a grassy island, we encountered many hundreds of glow worms, a breath-taking spectacle rarely to be seen in England in later years.

  In the summer of 1951 the 49th Croydon camped at another location near Haywards Heath. By this time I was an Assistant Scoutmaster having a student reading list to pursue so I volunteered to mind the empty camp while the others passed the day by the sea at Brighton. As I was sunning myself, only partly dressed, a visitor arrived to inspect the untidy camp. He was the local District Commissioner who introduced himself as Baden-Powell. I had to ask him to repeat his name. He was the son of the founding father of scouting who had died in Kenya 10 years earlier. We passed a pleasant hour together, his lordship describing some of his wartime experiences and allowing me to ride in the open Mercedes German Army staff car he had claimed in 1945, and me taking him to a disused barn to spend a few minutes with a family of owls.

  There were occasional events when Scouts and Guides came together for semaphore competitions, social evenings, Christmas parties and the like and some friendships began to emerge. I recall walking home in a group of about a dozen scouts and guides one evening at a time when neon signs first came to light up local garages and shops, evoking distant memories of pre-war night life. The street lamps had already been back with us for a year or so.

  As we toured the sights our numbers thinned. I was left in the company of Ruth Benbow. I found myself in conversation with a female of the opposite sex and an intellectual equal - a unique experience for me. We discussed chemistry, maths, ambition and other sensible topics. I walked with her to her front door where we chatted a little longer and I reminded her we had briefly conversed on that very spot in the summer of 1944. Thereafter I looked out for her as she plodded slowly to school on an over-sized gents bicycle, wishing her good morning as I sped by. One Sunday morning our wind-up door bell whimpered. I looked up from my homework to see her on the doorstep. She told me she thought I should come back to Sunday school. A young adult group had been formed and it would be nice if I joined the number. I could see no way of refusing such a flattering request. She would call for me that afternoon.

  The Sunday afternoon group was notionally for folk aged 15 and up. At this time the national school-leaving age rose from 14 to 15 which may have influenced the church school's restructuring. I walked into a room of seven girls of my own age. There was no other lad to be seen. I was not unduly perturbed by the experience which seemed to balance out my exposure to male company at home and school. It was not long before I was invited into lower-middle-class homes for Sunday tea and the ensuing mandatory attendance at evening service. Walking out with a group of girls after evening service gave further opportunities for gender mingling so that it was a matter of geography, now better understood, rather than any structured choice that determined with whom I might brush lips at the end of the day. I did spend several evenings solely in the company of Ruth Benbow but I sensed that she was interested only in practicing at courtship with a view to eventually landing a better catch.

Family Group at Ken's Wedding

  Ken, now a regular soldier, was married in 1948. Lily and Arthur had previously taken the leap but Ken's wedding was special in that it was the first of, I believe, only two occasions when our parents were together in the presence of all nine children. We all attended Gerald's wedding in 1961 and there was, arguably, yet another occasion when we were all assembled: at Dad's funeral in June 1966 Mother was briefly in company with her nine children.

Brothers in 1961

In July 1967 Anne was married, given away, in the absence of our father, by Ron and delivered to and from the church in his 1949 Bentley Mark V. This was the final occasion when the siblings were all met.

Final gathering in 1967

  But we have again run ahead of the narrative. In the summer of 1948 Reg and I camped for a week-end under the Brooklands race track where it crosses the Wey close to the former West Weybridge Station. I had previously had several camps on the spot with my scouting friends, clambering about the derelict race track, wading upstream, fishing a little and enjoying the booming of the bitterne. On the Saturday we cycled to New Haw, had a chance encounter with Bernard Church and Herbert Keating before having tea with Michael, Auntie and her new husband Mr Lambing. Michael had outgrown me by a good margin and speech training had seen off his lisp.

  Somehow I found time at this busy period to go with Reg to the 14 to 20 Club meeting on Tuesday evenings, now, after the fire, at our earlier haunt, Davidson Road School. The main attraction for me was the gymnastic hour when I enjoyed "flying angel" leaps over a large vaulting horse. In season, the Club turned out to train for and participate in athletics competitions in which Reg excelled and even I took a medal or two. The dancing lessons were avoided. I had done my ballroom dancing at the Palais with Arthur in 1944 when I found the bright lights attractive, but I knew I could never hope to match Ron's professional prowess and looked to spend my energy in more macho endeavours. Most male members disappeared from society, aged 18, when national service claimed them but the Club provided Reg with a bride just before his number was called.

  In 1949 Tom Wright, in financial difficulty, asked us to leave Colworth Road to enable him to sell the property. It had been suggested to him that the house might be worth as much as £3,000. He offered temporary accommodation in his ample home at Beckenham and compensation for any additional expense resulting from the move. Mum and Dad moved there with the four youngest children. Reg was with us for just two weeks prior to his marriage and we were later briefly joined by Arthur, his wife and 5 year old daughter. Tom serviced his other lodgers in an improvised kitchen in a tiny front room. During my last few weeks at school I had an additional 8 miles to travel each day which was recognised by Dad buying, for my 16th birthday, a new racing cycle with Sturmey Archer four gear system, at a price of £29 paid for over a two-year period. His pay at Williamsons had risen to nearly £8 per week.

  The mansion had been turned into multiple dwellings for the unhoused so there was a good attendance on November 5th for the celebration bonfire in the grounds on a very wet evening when my smart new business suit from Fifty Shilling Tailors (but it cost me £7) irrevocably changed its character. I followed suit.

  The Colworth Road house eventually sold at the lower than expected price of £1,750 and, at the turn of 1949, Tom gave Dad a cheque for £100 with which, at the age of 57, he opened his first bank account. With this new wealth and a private mortgage he was able to buy a small house for the remaining dependents in the lower reaches of Shirley, Croydon. If I may be permitted an irrelevant observation, the purchase price of the new dwelling was very little short of the final sale price of our larger comfortable home; the major disruption, including significant unpaid additional expense suffered by our relocation to Beckenham for several months, being yet another ironic twist in the unravelling family saga. Parking in Colworth Road on a visit to the doctor sometime in the early-seventies I observed building activity at an empty No 5. Imposing myself, I made a full inspection of the house as it changed into three meagre apartments.

  After a year in the City I realised my earlier decision to leave school was mistaken. I left my job and signed on at the local polytechnic to work for the newly introduced 'A' level qualifications in science-orientated subjects. An early-morning paper round was to put a little cash in my pocket but before starting this new life I was persuaded to spend a week with Grandma Mary Ann who had lately become re-married to a Mr Pettit, an octogenarian, previously a life-long valet to a member of the Horne family, proprietors of Horne Bros, a chain of good-class tailors and outfitters.

  The newly-weds had set up home in a small cottage surrounded by farmland on the edge of Iden, Kent a few hundred yards from the local canal. Mr Pettit had his origin in this village which was within reasonable reach of a 17 year old with a racing bike living in south-east London. The cottage had a water tap but no drains and one of my obligations, during my stay, was to collect the night soil and discharge it beneath a hedge on the opposite side of the road. Our new Grandpa was a dapper gent, usually performing this duty while wearing a very tidy pin-striped suit. The large bucket in the outside privy was cleared by a neighbour each week for the sum of half-a-crown though my curiosity as to the destination of it's content was not satisfied. Another obligation, in the light of an oil lamp each evening, was to read aloud and comment on a chapter of the bible. This seemed to give them great enjoyment. Their life together was of no long duration. When my wife and I visited Iden seven years later I was relieved to find the cottage had been demolished. The hedge across the lane was luxuriant.

  Now we must write and read the epilogue.

  The mid-point of the 20th century finds Little Leslie at the verge of adulthood with most of his friendships arising from alliance with the Addiscombe Methodist Church. Having been too short-sighted for national service, he would become a Scouter with the 49th and, aged 20, Superintendent of the Sunday School but, before that time, surrounded by concerns for the wider world, he must be considered grown up. As the tale is put to bed let it be known that all nine siblings were surviving 70 years on at the end of the year 2006, that the Methodist Church obliged Leslie with a wife and she obliged him with delightful children and grandchildren for whom these memories and observations are written. As he slowly dissolves into obscurity it is his fading hope that in the fulfilment of their lives his successors will, with open mind and valuing reason above superstition, escape the nefarious influences of the bull pit and continue steadfast in the worthy quest to find that elusive clockwork steam.

gpl 2007

Principal characters: Arthur Richard Clifford King Annie Kathleen (nee Warnock) Lilian Marian Ronald Alfred Arthur Frederick Kenneth Tudor Reginald George Leslie Richard Robert John Gerald Roy Anne Margaret

Born   5 Oct 1892 17 Aug 1903 24 Oct 1921 3 Oct 1925 31 Mar 1927 8 Apr 1929 10 July 1931 3 Jun 1933 28 Mar 1935 12 Oct 1937 20 July 1944

Dad in India 1918 Kent Cyclists Btn, Royal West Kent Regiment

 Post Scripts:

1951 My lady friend (later my wife) and I went by train from Croydon to West Byfleet, exploring Holly Avenue and its environs. The house building was complete with Selbourne Avenue and The Broadway extended. Holly Avenue had been re-numbered but I was able to identify the former No 66 (now No 54) by its proximity to the nearby streetlamp. At the junction with Grange Road the sub-station had vanished but the conker tree looked much the same.

1954 (Feb) I was returning late one Sunday evening from an engagement at Haslemere, standing in the corridor of a very crowded train carrying many sailors from Portsmouth to London. The train slowed as we passed Woking station. A sailor, perhaps a little older than me, peering into the darkness confided to a perfect stranger that he had been briefly evacuated to a place near Woking called New Haw. I remarked on the coincidence. His strongest recollection was of collecting conkers from the grounds of a demolished house known as The Mansions.

1954 W.M.S. changed its name to Trinity School of John Whitgift and eleven years later moved from Central Croydon to the site of the Shirley Park Hotel about three miles away, leaving its main entrance gateway to posterity. A picture of the old school, and its history, are found at:

http://trinity-school.org

1957 My wife and I went to Kettering on our James 200cc motorcycle. We were well received by the Pratts who seemed surprised I had not yet come to a sticky end. Granny was long since gone, Eileen was married, though not to her Yank, and lived nearby with husband and daughter.

1964 We would sometimes escape the grey streets of Croydon on a Sunday afternoon taking our two daughters to Hampton Court to splash about the River Thames. We went on to Weybridge and as far as the Wey at Addlestone where I visited New Haw School. I was able to look through some familiar windows and venture into the play area behind the school, now rather larger without the two extensive air-raid shelters. The play area was bordered by the same high mesh fence with the ploughed field beyond sadly lacking a two-horse plough and the sight of pigs running about. Later in the sixties we motored past the school site to find it subsumed within the new M25 motorway but the nearby prickly gates to the Veterinary Laboratory were intact.

1976 I parked at 14 Semley Road, Brighton and crept along the service passage to view the garden. The potting shed was gone but the fuchsia bush remained in full flower.

1985 I was invited to Davidson Road School, no longer a school but a Teachers' Centre, to deliver a lecture entitled "Numeracy for School-leavers". One of life's practical jokes!

Dec 2006 I enjoyed a conversation with Bernard Church who still lives in New Haw. He had a long career as a coachbuilder at Addlestone. He sees Herbert Keating occasionally but had no news of the Gadds.

Jan 7 2007 Gerald, the youngest brother, died this morning from a liver ailment.

Apr 2007 My wife and I had a pleasant day at New Haw in company with Bernard Church and his good lady. The conker tree had spread and been maintained well in the 65 years since I had climbed it. It was heavy with blossom. I learned that my very young friend, Brian Clark, had been married to Bernard's sister until his untimely death in middle life. A few days later I made contact with Michael Gadd and had a long conversation. Having devoted much of his life to cricket he did not have time to find a wife. His mother, Helen, known to me as "Auntie" or "Nell" to her friends, died in 1974, aged 78 years. Michael looked after "Pop" Lambing until his death at age 85. Michael, born 1934, lives alone, battling with indifferent health. His brother Peter married and had children but died recently.

Nov 2008: sister Anne, together with brothers, Bob, Leslie and Reg attended Arthur's funeral in Lincolnshire.

The End

Back to the Depot?

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Book Two

Up the Ladder

Chapter 1 - Setting up home and all that

  Returning to my parents' home in Croydon in September 1955 from an educational year in the U.S. under the auspices of the Methodist Church, I had misgivings about my earlier intention to seek a career within the church and decided to defer this aspiration. Weighing heavily in the decision was the five-year relationship with my intended which would otherwise have to be extended for several more years before a union could be contemplated. Prior to the period in the U.S., I had worked for three years in the City of London in a respectable merchant bank and was aware that a career in banking could be a good prospect, though I did not wish to return to my former colleagues and preferred to avoid the City for the time being. As my account with its balance of £17-3-6d was with Lloyds Bank I thought I might favour them with the benefit of my services.

  The interviewing staff manager was sympathetic to my temporary aversion to City life welcoming me into the fold in early October with an assignment to the Tadworth, Surrey Branch, an easy journey from East Croydon station. Before joining the bank I bought a wooden extending ladder costing £5 at the local ironmongers shop, charging the expense to my father, and completed the house painting job begun by my brother Arthur the previous year. With a day or two to spare, I applied the residual paint to the ladder so as to extend it's life well into the distantly forthcoming millenium.

  My lady friend lived with her parents in a rented house at 32 Freemasons Road, Croydon from where she pursued her teaching career at a New Addington primary school. Work at Tadworth was not unpleasant and not at all taxing, given my earlier banking experience. Some of the work practices were a little quaint, relationships very formal and the senior staff continuously lamented any trend towards modernity. High stools, leather-bound hand-written ledgers, copperplate writing by means of steel pens (brass nibs frowned upon as positively rakish) were imminently to be abandoned in favour of mechanised accounting, a change fully welcomed by me and the younger element at the Branch. My interim ability assessments were decidedly positive; the manager thought I was worthy of fast-track training when my probationary year was done.

  In the Spring of 1956 the Pearsons, parents of my intended, found themselves living in the home of an elderly gent in need of their care and they were anxious about the empty house at Freemasons Road. As a formal betrothal was now in place they proposed we should marry to keep the house warm for them until their return. This seemed a good a scheme at the time and, 50 years later, it is beginning to work out well enough. We married on 4th August 1956 at the local Methodist church. The bank manager thought it was all rather hasty as I was still a probationer but, to his regret, staff no longer needed the Bank's permission to marry and female staff, as yet on two-thirds pay, were no longer required to leave the service on such an event though they still had to to retire at the advanced age of 55. My junior status would not normally allow me to take leave in August as the school holidays were reserved for staff with school-age children but, recognising my determination and not wishing to lose me, he consented to my having a week of annual entitlement. I could not, however, be spared for the morning of my Saturday wedding which had to be scheduled for later in the day.

4th August 1956

  The nuptials of Miss Mary Pearson and Mr Leslie Richard King were not long past when the Pearsons' elderly charge slipped away leaving us all crowded into the one small house; a most uncomfortable arrangement! We decided we must buy a home at the earliest possible moment, there being few renting opportunities which were generally for furnished rooms or, with luck, a self-contained furnished unit. The provident wife had saved a modest sum from earnings in her first two years of teaching and with two salaries on hand we could afford a light mortgage.

  We looked about Addiscombe for a low-cost house choosing 25 Meadvale Road as a likely contender. This was a 3 bedroomed semi-detached house, 40 years old, at an asking price of £1,950; an offer of £1,875 was immediately accepted as the vendors were keen to be on the move. The identical adjacent house at No 23 was also in the market at £2,150, the difference in value partly due to its having a more recent coat of paint but mostly because our target home had a solid brick and concrete air raid shelter close to its rear entrance. These houses were leasehold with a ground rent of two guineas p.a. enjoying good-sized gardens because the bankrupt builder in 1915 had failed to build an intended service road at the rear so that additional space was added for a peppercorn rent.

  Another identical house, by the same builder, was available in Woodside Court Road nearby for £1,650 but it was very close to its neighbour with little light between adjacent front doors and a less attractive garden. At the bank I did not qualify for a house loan by reason of my short service but the manager was shocked by my proposing to take a commercial mortgage. Bank staff did not do that sort of thing! He insisted I would need Head Office consent before committing myself to such a debt and spent a long half-hour in conversation with Administration who agreed, exceptionally, that I could have the usual bank loan at 2½% p.a. I was very promptly transferred to permanent staff. In mid-December we moved into our own home which we filled with mostly second-hand furniture, some of which still graces our parlour today.

  About four years later the Pearsons had the opportunity to purchase 32 Freemasons Road for £400 which sum they had available from their savings. A further sum was spent on a hot water system and pipe work to the bath, already housed in the third bedroom but filled as required, dangerously by modern standards, from an electric wash-day boiler. The external W.C. was also re-designed to provide weatherproof access. The apparently low purchase figure arose from their having a joint tenancy secured by statute for the period of the life of the survivor so that the ageing owner could not hope to recover the vacant possession value of the property which, at the time, would have been about £2,000. I insert these comments because the property features in another transaction later in this narrative.

  We lived at Meadvale Road until 1965 by which time we had two children and a nursery school running in the house. A local builder had cut an opening, for the sum of £34.15/-, between the two living rooms allowing ample space for little legs to run energetically. I had remodelled the kitchen and installed a ground-floor W.C., with a little help from brothers Ron and Arthur, temporarily in business together. This was a very useful feature for the nursery school which was licensed by the local authority for 12 children; on one inspection 14 were present but the issue was fudged because two of them were permanent residents. An assistant being essential to the licensing, the reliable Mrs Mace attended with her four year old son for a modest cash wage.

  During this time I had begun to develop D.I.Y. skills, painting the house using the ladder acquired from my father for £3, putting the rooms into reasonably tidy shape and accepting help and advice from a former scouting chum, Bill Evans, a man without a ladder, who had lately bought a house in Alderton Road nearby. His father had worked all his life in the building trade enabling Bill to pass on many a useful trick. Paper-hanging was taught and learned, fences replaced, concrete paths and aprons laid, fancy new-fangled copper plumbing sweated into old lead pipe using Russian tallow and moleskin to wipe the joint, new-style 30 amp ring main circuits studied, understood and installed. Mastery of pipe bending, BSP threading using stock, die and pipe vice, allowed work to be done in the houses of colleagues as well as at home. The coke boiler, unusually placed in the dining room, was moved to its rightful place in the kitchen and a chimney provided. I later replaced it with a larger, more economic beast. A new tessilated fireplace was cast in the dining room and, with help, lifted into place and secured.

  The brick air-raid shelter was in service for a while as a bicycle shed, once the heavy screen wall had been broken up by me and the rubble collected from the kerb-side by a local builder for a fee of five shillings. The sturdy shelter stood its ground, more of a threat than a challenge. Bill provided a 10lb sledge hammer and some large chisels but was generally not to be found when I was free to address the structure on my half-day. Neighbours with young children soon complained if I set about this task during the evening. It took about four weeks for me to break up the brickwork. The builder called each week to collect my offering, the final constituent being the massively heavy concrete foundation and floor. The space was much appreciated. When I bought a good-sized shed Bill was suddenly available to help me put it together on a newly-cast concrete base at a more appropriate distance from the house.

25 Meadvale

Meadvale alterations, and helpers, Aug 1963

One Year Later

  Meanwhile, at the bank, I had passed 5 years at the main City branch and had gone on to a large West London branch. We now aspired towards moving to a larger house in Addiscombe with scope for garaging and rooms big enough to take in the nursery school. Our target was 60 Morland Road, built in 1901 on the corner of Amberley Grove, a 5 bedroom end-of-terrace and an easier walk to the Station. The price asked for the new home was £6,000, the expected sale price for Meadvale Road was £3,900. The house enjoyed a tradesmen's door directly entering the cook's domain of kitchen and skullery, leaving the sturdy principal door in its ostentatious entrance porch for untroubled use by the family. Three of the bedrooms were of lofty proportions, the others in the lower rear extension.

  Finance looked to be a problem. A tentative approach to the bank met resistance. I had no strong reason for moving and, being married with two, I was expected to live in a cheaper 3 bedroom house. I approached Croydon Borough Council who were mortgage lenders favouring young marrieds in the hope of reducing the impossibly long list of applicants for rented Council housing. They were about to put up their rate from six and one-eighth percent but the very helpful executive pulled out all the stops and we received an offer within the prescribed few days.

  The nursery school transferred smoothly but only for the summer term because, the girls being 4 and 5 years old and the elder already in the local Woodside School, it was time for mother to return to her teaching career. She was welcomed into the infants department at Woodside and, for the first term, our younger daughter, perhaps cheating the system by being slightly under-age, was in her mother's class. A charming consequence of this was that she would sometimes forget herself and, perhaps at meal time, would ask "Mrs King" to pass the cake.

  60 Morland Road was improved by installation of partial central heating and a double-length garage, the garden tidied and a door imposed at the open rear entrance. But it was not the happiest of houses. We had under-estimated the impact of traffic noise and fumes from the busy main road and had not even considered the noise from neighbours parking against the flank of the house in Amberley Grove. Much of this nuisance could have been mitigated by double-glazing but the industry had not yet taken off and reasonably-priced replacements for the boxed sash windows were not available. Within 3 years we had begun to search for a home in a quieter environment. Unhappily, the house market was now biased very much in favour of the purchaser, selling was difficult. We struggled for some months before a suitably deranged party agreed to pay us £5,600. Our second step up the housing ladder had been onto a broken rung.

  Our new target was 85 Gladeside, a bungalow, economically built in 1924 standing in an L-shaped ½ - acre garden in the lower reaches of Shirley. The agreed price was £6,500 and, as appraised by the senior management of the large banking branch, not entirely unsuited to my advancing status. The bank came up with a loan of £4,500 at the very favourable 2½% pa.

  The elderly couple vacating the house had been there since they built it. They had acquired a 2 acre plot in 1922, when the whole neighbourhood was developed from farmland of the Monks Orchard Estate, but they had no resources to enable the build until, two years on, they sold off half the plot where, eventually, three properties were built; two bungalows on quarter-acre plots, one behind the other, and a full house enjoying half an acre minus a strip allowing entry to the rear bungalow. So the Dartnalls began building, mainly at week-ends, whilst living at their rented home in Sydenham, constructing a four-roomed bungalow in which they raised four children. A few years on they sold another quarter-acre for the construction of a pair of semi-detached houses and a further plot for another pair in a cul de sac at the foot of the garden. This left their bungalow, "Ardern" before street numbering, with its roomy L-shaped plot. Their children had all left home before a good-sized extension was added some 30 years later.

  We acquired the property in December 1967, but did not complete the sale of 60 Morland and move for some months allowing brother Arthur to instal a gas-fired central heating system financed by Lloyds & Scottish, a hire purchase subsidiary of the bank happy to do business with bank staff without prior approval of Administration Department. I believe the cost of this was £400 but the invoice was adjusted upward to provide for another immediate expense, some glass-wool insulation in the roof space. During the plumbing operations Arthur had a nasty experience when copper pipe came in contact with lead-sheathed electricity cable dating from the 1920s. He stopped in mid-course to re-wire the house at very little additional cost. A good deal of further work was needed, particularly the removal of a prominent chimney piece which should have been demolished when the bungalow was extended in the 1950s and which partly obstructed passage between old and new segments. A plasterer of our acquaintance, raised and married in Freemasons Road, who had done useful work for us when we remodelled Meadvale Road, did some excellent clearing up behind my energetic demolition.

  Before long a new roof was on the agenda because the existing asbestos shingles were not easily replaceable and the character of this material had long been under suspicion. Lloyds & Scottish were happy to finance this with a fresh advance. The main inspiration for the new roof was the removal, by brother Ron this time, of the now-redundant fire places and chimney corners of two rooms used as the girls' bedrooms. The unsupported joint chimney stack had to be removed leaving a hole in the old roof. Ron did some other work enabling us to rationalise the available accommodation. 85 Gladeside was our home for 14 years.

85 Gladeside, re-roofed

  1968 found me earning my keep as Manager's Deputy at Battersea Branch and keeping a close eye on the activities of one Norman Bristow, a trained carpenter but lately a self-styled builder, who had contracted to build an extension to the Branch. Some of the work had to be done outside normal office hours, including week-ends. Being on site as security superviser I joined in whatever work was of moment earning useful credit with Norman in addition to generous overtime payments from the Bank. So it was Norman I turned to when I decided to build a kitchen extension with the aid of a further advance on my house loan. Arthur was conveniently on hand to move the boiler to its new location.

  In 1969 the more modern and better-built bungalow adjacent to the bottom of our garden, part of the original Dartnall plot, came to the market at £6,700. The plan was to sell 32 Freemasons and have the Pearsons move to a home accessible to us through a hole in our boundary hedge. The girls being 8 and 9 years old it was very convenient to have a granny on the doorstep to cover in case of illness and to escort them to and from the nearby local school. No 89 Gladeside was bought in the name of Mary King using her parents' sale proceeds of some £3,000 and a building society mortgage. The house needed a central heating system and roof insulation costing £600, reserved from the mortgage advance. The Pearsons settled in comfortably though it was a long walk for them to reach their retirement clubs and maintain the association with Addiscombe Methodist Church where they both sang in the choir.

  Initially, our two small cars were housed in a series of decrepit sheds at the end of a muddy drive but, in due time, the sheds made way for a concrete-panel garage 12 ft wide enabling them, when cautiously positioned, to lodge side by side. This edifice, together with a new concrete drive and front gates, was put in place by my own effort with some help and a lot of support from wife and family.

  Arthur was the proud owner of a 1951 Bentley Mark VI saloon car which, in its day, had been a very nice machine. It was obviously acquired as a trump to Ron's 1949 Bentley Mark V. Somewhere in the late sixties he left it at the bottom of our garden for later collection but it was soon claimed by the Receiver in Bankruptcy from whom I bought it for £35. At about this time the new Ten Year Test regulations, fore-runner of the M.O.T., came into force and I could not indulge myself to the extent of £80 simply to fit four new tyres. Instead, for a similar sum, I built a garage around it which became known as the Bentley Box. This vehicle stayed in its new home for about 8 years before I conceded it had no place in a lower-middle-class family and sold it on.

  From Battersea Branch I moved on to Peckham in 1970 where, as Assistant Manager, I argued and negotiated with many trades people about abuse of their overdraft facilities and, on Fridays, whether they could cash their weekly wages cheque. One of my sparring partners was a joiner with a small workshop. The 1950s extension to our home incorporated deplorable Crittall windows. A former bedroom of good size was now in use as the principal sitting room and the joiner was persuaded to make, for the reasonable sum of £35 (the price of a sorry Bentley), a pair of full-length framed doors with window wings to replace the wide steel window. Cutting the opening to fit in the doors was very hard work; the earlier part of the house was of lime mortar construction, the later of much tougher cement mortar, both using 9" solid brick and render. But I accomplished the change, including new glazing, in the course of a few days leave. This gave direct access to our pleasant garden. A later operation would be to cast a concrete base for a cedar wood and glass conservatory which, as evidenced by Google Maps, appears to be still in place today. Unhappily, a recent visit to the site shows that all my work is undone, house and garage now merely a pile of rubble on a building site, eventually to be replaced by eight new dwellings.

New doors and garage

  At the bank I moved on from Peckham to Norbury finding more work for Norman Bristow and his young assistant, John Horlock. Suburbia had suddenly awakened to the need for central heating and bank lending exploded following a demand for expensive unsecured loans for this purpose, other home improvements and the ever-increasing number of motor car sales. The double-glazing industry was beginning to stir but did not expand quickly until later in the seventies as fifty-year old wooden windows began to expire. Inflation took off uncontrollably, fuelled in good measure by profitable, albeit sometimes reckless, bank lending. In 1973 a Chelsea Building Society representative called at the bank to say they had surplus funds (in recent times there had been mortgage queues) and were considering re-mortgages. We were asked to keep them in mind should any customer require that service.

  Our two girls were becoming disenchanted with the privations of our regular holidays in a touring caravan so we took a break on the Kent coast and looked about for a holiday home. We settled on a detached three bedroomed bungalow with warped Crittall windows and a garage, located on the shingle at Greatstone and bearing the name Spindrift. The R.H. & D. miniature railway abutted the rear of our plot with no fence between us so we could walk along the track to reach the sea 200 yards away. The price of £7,000 was financed by a 60% mortgage readily on offer without reference to personal status, and re-mortgaging 89 Gladeside with the Chelsea B.S. which property, in the few years of my wife's ownership, had significantly increased in value. Our income amply covered these monthly commitments; our basic home loan was reducing quickly.

  Some minor improvements were achieved at Greatstone with Arthur providing a free gas boiler for a central heating system, my glazing the useful open verandah and acquiring some comfortable furnishings. An electrician, known to me from bank branch improvement work, obligingly spent a long Sunday with me to re-wire the house. Replacement of the windows was a little beyond our reach. The girls had new bicycles awaiting them in the bungalow which they thoroughly enjoyed. A little later, following knee surgery, I treated myself to a new bicycle to aid convalescence. In due time this also went to Greatstone, along with another ancient family bike, so that the four of us were able to make long, enjoyable sorties over the flat and extensive Romney Marsh.

  Neighbours had constructed a substantial ramp on the shingle beach, acquiring, for ten shillings, a rusty but sturdy winch enabling boat launching and recovery. I joined the syndicate and bought a 17ft yawl with dual keels and a small cabin. A robust outboard engine enhanced safety and equipped the boat for hasty fishing expeditions when the "mackerell" shout went up. The boat was launched from and recovered to its road trailer, the whole, including masts and sails, fitting well enough in the garage.

Spindrift, Roberts Road, Greatstone

Me and my truck

  In late August shoals of mackerell would come in-shore at Dungeness and drift slowly past the Denge Marsh towards and beyond Greatstone, each shoal identified by hundreds of greatly excited sea birds ducking and diving into it. With other locals I would launch and steer through acres of fish while my six or eight passengers, some of them unacquainted with me, would slip lines of "feathers" bearing six hooks into the water and regularly draw in a catch of six - a full set. On one occasion we had the company of a half-dozen gannets, initially diving in spectacular fashion but then floating quietly beside us as they could gulp no more.

  The girls had grown beyond the local school and, as homework, Saturday music school and Sunday morning orchestra activity built ever busier lives, grand-parenting was less in demand so that, in 1977, the Pearsons felt they would like to move back to Addiscombe. No 89 was sold to the Richardsons for £13,500 and a neglected house in respectable Sherwood Road identified and acquired for £11,000. Another, tidier house in the same road was considered at a price of £13,250 but both houses lacked central heating. I was allowed access to the empty house for four weeks prior to completion using every ounce of spare time (time was measured thus in those days) to clean, repair, decorate and install while Arthur put in a central heating system. The estate agent who sold us the house came to see our work saying he thought he would be able to sell it quickly for £14,000. I have to say this planted the germ of an idea in my head because I had spent just £1,000 on the upgrade and only one month had elapsed. The agent, Keith Terrell, later came to be a good friend.

  Life at Norbury Branch was generally pleasant and not overly demanding but I began to feel, after five years there, that my career had lost direction and that altogether too many people were making too many demands of me. I was also disenamoured by very personal comments recorded in an inspection report by an Inspector who, in my view, should have excused himself duty at Norbury because of a former close social acquaintance with me. Other issues were looming in that we would imminently suffer reduced university grants by reason of our respectable salaries and, in 1977, my lucrative overtime earnings were being taxed at 60%. We each needed a car to get to our work but, as employees, these travel costs were not allowable against tax. In fact the greater part of one salary was used in meeting annual motoring costs.

  After five summers, the bungalow at Greatstone was no longer so great an attraction to the girls as they now looked for continental holidays to widen horizons and advance language skills. With a possible change of occupation in mind I went to a rather quiet market after the summer of 1977 and found that, although the market had risen elsewhere, seaside bungalows in the quieter parts of Kent were not much in demand.

  A house at Littlestone, a mile from Greatstone, caught my eye at that time. We made an appointment to view a splendid residence, designed by Lutyens in 1931 but placed with some vulnerability facing the sea 50 yards away. The plot was protected by its own sea wall with robust gate to the beach. The vendor agreed there was usually a little storm damage to the extensive roof tiling each year but he had no record of flooding. 200 yards offshore was a failed Mulberry Harbour pontoon which had not quite made it to Normandy at the 1944 invasion. The asking price was £27,500. Our home in Croydon had a similar value with only a slight mortgage. My design was to move our principal residence to the coast and have a lower value home in Croydon. This was not unrealistic because mortgage funds could have been found to bridge any gap. The complicating factor was the unwillingness of our Greatstone home to sell. While I contemplated this, someone else stepped in and took the Littlestone bargain. A big fish that got away!

  Greatstone sold in November for £9,500 but left only a modest sum once the mortgage and costs were discharged. A few days after the sale I learned that brother Gerald had contracted the purchase of a similar bungalow some three hundred yards away. He was very keen on sea fishing, at the time.

  The Gladeside mortgage had shrunk to £2,000, the house having a value of the order of £30,000. I decided to transfer the mortgage to Abbey National leaving our liquid assets of about £3,000 intact. There was the briefest flirtation with the idea of taking my capital from the bank pension fund, either to re-locate it or use it in a proposed new business, but I determined to leave this cushion in place for the benefit of my dependents should my intentions go awry. I also took out an endowment policy, with profits, in the sum of £20,000. This seemed a good figure at the time but, at maturity 20 years later when capital additions had been reducing steadily in the latter years, the £43,000 received was a little disappointing.

  I bought Properton Limited off the shelf for about £60, put in £1,000 capital from my back pocket and gave three month's notice at the Bank The Staff Manager sent for me to ask why I was leaving, explaining that he was expected to dissuade me. He was relieved by my determination because there was a glut of staff awaiting promotion and he had someone ready to pop into my slot. My plan was to draw no income from the Company but to work as my skill and wits would allow to build a capital base. The family would then rely on the teaching salary to meet its needs. Taxation and the university grant outcome would be much more favourable.

 Chapter 2 - On My Own

  My cherished pick-up truck (every bank manager needs one) was sold to Properton for £1,000, though it was worth rather less, and my fellow director also had the benefit of a company car for her daily journey to school. Since the general plan was to buy and sell dwellings there was no real benefit in registering for V.A.T. because materials used in renovation would have to bear the tax, only new work attracting a zero rate and allowing tax recovery on purchases. Registration would also mean closer scrutiny of financial transactions; not a good idea.

  During my last few weeks with the bank in February 1978 I located a house, 34 Grant Road, Addiscombe, dating from 1868, its creation inspired by the newly opened railway terminus 200yds away. The house had finally lost its statutory tenant after 30 years in which the fixed, uneconomic rent had left no room for maintenance. The slate damp course had failed leaving wet tide marks up the walls, some floor joists were badly rotted and the roof had an obvious sag. In fact, a delicious little number for £10,000. I took my senior to look at the property; he thought it quite a good prospect, agreeing to an overdraft limit of £8,000. His discretionary lending limit had just risen from £4,000 to £10,000 and this was his first unsupervised commitment to so large a sum.

  My own contribution of £2,000 was available but I was decidedly light on working capital. This I borrowed from brother Reg enabling me to engage a certificating contractor to provide a chemical damp course and deal with the floor structure and its essential disinfestation of woodworm. Other kind folk contributed by asking me to undertake plumbing and decorating work, my earnings from this all being allocated to upgrading the property with central heating, a bathroom fitted in the smallest of the four bedrooms, modern circuitry, some essential re-plastering and reconstruction of the sizeable kitchen extension to provide a cloakroom with shower space.

  My final effort went into a 6ft close-boarded fence towards the bottom of the garden, isolating a pair of stables in need of some roof repair but with garage-style doors accessed from a separate service road. Most of the input came from my own two hands but I used John Horlock, now separated from Norman Bristow, for some risky ladder work and Arthur's son-in-law and one-time assistant, Dave Connolly who had lately registered as a C.O.R.G.I. plumber, to fit the central heating boiler.

  This property had been supplied, on 1st March 1978 (the day after I left the bank), by Keith Terrell. The girls helped with decorating during their school vacation enabling me to go to market in September at an asking price of £19,500. A sale was completed at £18,750 in early December, Reg and the bank were repaid. In the intervening period I had been able to earn reasonably well so that, at the end of the year, Properton had £10,000 on deposit account, the family had its first new car and another property was in prospect.

  Meanwhile I had terminated a rental arrangement for one of the stables behind the house. I used it for storing my own equipment while Ron kept his in the adjacent space remembering, occasionally, to make a rent contribution. My stable had a fireplace and chimney. His had an original hay rack in place.

  A 1930s 3 bedroomed semi-detached house became available in Marden Road, Thornton Heath, at a low price following a poor survey due to a rotting window sill having admitted dampness to a flank wall. The house had failed the mortgage test. I knew John Horlock had the necessary ladders and skill to break away the blown rendering and replace it, so I offered £16,000 for the leasehold. Lessees now had the right to buy the freehold on free-standing units and, according to the sales detail, the previous lessee, now deceased, had lately agreed to take it for £300. The offer accepted, I went on to buy the freehold but the vendor saw a fresh opportunity and, in the event, I had to pay £750. A second charge on 85 Gladeside left my former colleague at the bank happy to allow the Company a suitable overdraft limit. 

  John turned up with his ladders to make a good repair of both window sill and rendering for a modest reward. Some missing roof tiles and a gutter repair were also within his reach. The extensive repaired patch was lost beneath an improving coat of stone paint. This work, a few other repairs and fresh toilet, basin and some plumbing adjustments were put in hand during the four weeks between exchange of contracts and completion. I then consulted Dave Connolly about a central heating system but he became very enthusiastic about the property and wanted me to sell it to him and my niece Carol. Houses were suddenly in short supply on a rising market.

  I did the sums and agreed they could have it for the favourable price of £19,750. I would provide the materials for central heating and he would be responsible for putting it together and any further tidying up. Thus I withdrew from the property after 2 months activity having earned a net £2,000. While standing with Connolly looking into a floor cavity, confirmation came through on the radio that Margaret Thatcher had swept away the Labour government. By this time I had been out of the bank for a full year; my earnings in that period were more than twice my former bank salary. Properton had no imminent liability for tax but, months later, made a very small contribution to the Exchequer in respect of a year's net profit.

  A customer from my banking days, an octogenarian living in the Norbury home of a not-so-young lady friend, stopped me on a visit to the bank to ask if I had any bits and pieces of firewood. I was able to oblige him and found myself taking tea at their home. The lady mentioned an acquaintance living alone at 86 Galpins Road, Thornton Heath, a good-sized semi already made into two self-contained flats, and that the property was in the market. I made enquiry and bought it for £19,500, the upper flat being vacant. In my view the empty flat, with just a little tidying, was itself worth almost that amount but aspiring purchasers, who would mostly be first-time buyers, would not ordinarily be able to arrange finance for buying the whole.

  Renie, the ground floor tenant, was a widow in her seventies, mostly confined to one room. She scratched about in her distant kitchen once or twice a day, usually on her way to the outside lavatory. During the few weeks I spent tidying the upper flat I got to know her well and helped with shopping and other errands. She was on a regulated tenancy, soon due for review by the local Rent Officer but I deferred the review accepting her £34 per month for the time being.

  In preparing the upper flat for sale I had to repair its external wooden staircase which provided alternative private entry and access to the garden area. This I demarked into two separate lots, allocating a small garden to each flat. An oak garden seat found its way onto my truck and sits, still in fairly sound condition, outside my Dorset home today. David Richardson, our neighbour, did the joinery repair to the staircase and was pleased to receive £10 for his evening's work.

  In fairly short order the upper flat sold for £18,500 to a newly-married lad at the bank, my profit being represented by the tenanted flat and a £50 annual ground rent from above. Because of the controlled rent, and for tax reasons, the lower flat stood at a quite small figure on the Company's balance sheet.

  Brother Reg had the ownership of a studio flat at 62 Ashburton Road occupied by his wife's mother, Mrs Rippingale. When this good lady passed away in 1980 it was evident the flat would need some tidying and re-painting before being sold on. Reg was content to sell it to me for £8,500 and I spent several weeks on the venture. I had to approach the freeholder because a chimney stack was letting in dampness which should have been a shared expense. In the event I mounted a ladder to do the repair myself but not before learning that the freeholder was in his 86th year and not unwilling to dispose of his interest. He was sticky on price so I had to pay £500 to obtain full control over the fabric. As the ground rents were trifling it would be many years before this sum was recovered. In selling the flat at £10,250 after a few months I did raise its £7 p.a. ground rent to something a little more realistic.

  I now turned my attention to making Renie's life more comfortable. Her flat comprised two good-sized rooms and a breakfast room adjoining a small kitchen. Coal shed and oft-frozen toilet were beyond the back door. With some help from brother Ron and a positively disposed building inspector, I opened the drains, installed a full bathroom suite within the breakfast room and re-defined the kitchen space to advantage. Now was the time for a rent review which raised the figure initially to £54.50 and eventually to £75 per month. This did not much disadvantage Renie because the major part of her rent was covered by a housing allowance boosting her state pension. The neighbour who drew her pension at the Post Office also managed the mechanics of the monthly rent payment.

  While pursuing my own projects I felt obliged, from time to time, to undertake work on behalf of solicitor friends with whom I had professional contact in my banking days at Norbury and who gave me favourable terms for my frequent conveyancing needs. I also had some commissions from Keith Terrell with a number of managed properties under his control. Talking to Keith in his office one day I learned he had a problem with a flat he was selling at 405 Lower Addiscombe Road. The vendor possessed the freehold of the property, converted to two flats in the 1950s, but the purchaser's mortgagee would only advance against the leasehold interest so that the freehold had to be disposed of in a hurry, preferably to a third party.

  Ground rent for the flats was fixed at £20 p.a., for the 999 years term of each lease. The vendor called in by chance during our conversation and I agreed to pay him a nominal £50 to take the title off his hands. My solicitor friend provided a transfer form and obligingly lodged it at H.M. Land Registry without charge. For the next 25 years I received £40 p.a. before, in tidying my own affairs, I sold the title back to the current lessees for £2,000. Although the leases allowed me to enter the premises for an annual inspection I never did pass through the communal front door.

  Keith offered me another property with a regulated tenancy. An elderly gent, a Mr Bunster, known to us by sight for a number of years, slipped away leaving his son to deal with his estate. Many years earlier Bunster had bought a neighbouring house, 45 Sefton Road, and it was currently tenanted. His executor had no interest in retaining the property which, like most secure private tenancies at the time, was in poor condition. My offer of £6,000 was accepted. I met the tenants, enquiring why they had not offered this sort of money for their home which, with vacant possession, would be worth £20,000 more than this. They had no explanation. The rent of nearly £100 per month was paid regularly and I did no work on the house other than to replace a few missing tiles to cure a patch of dampness. 2 years later Keith told me he had enquiries from a large property company willing to buy protected tenancies at 50% of vacant value. As the principal bedroom bay window looked as if it were about to fall apart I was happy to accept £12,500 i.e., 50% of Keith's own valuation. I felt obliged to call on him one evening with a small brown envelope.

  Some of the work I agreed to do for other parties was new work, a fitted kitchen for a solicitors' clerk, for example. To be competitive I needed to register for V.A.T. so I formed another company, Properton Services Ltd., to achieve this end. I could now recover tax, levied at 8%, on most building supplies and, more significantly, any petrol for which I could produce a receipt. Properton took a handsome loss in selling the pick-up truck and other items to this new company which I took care to see earned only enough for absorption of capital allowances.

  At about this time I was approached by the purchaser of 34 Grant Road to see if I would part with the stables. Another storage opportunity was available at the rear of Miller Wilkins & Co, in the Lower Addiscombe Road, where Keith was now a partner. Ron and I moved our gear, and I sold the man the end of his garden for £2,000 plus costs.

  On two occasions my solicitor friends set up new offices in the locality asking me to do preparatory work for them. I used Ron and a Saturday lad to good advantage on an office suite at Selsdon and did other work in a central Croydon office, mainly at week-ends because of parking difficulties, as the two partners separated. I also worked in their private homes and, in setting up a new office for the senior man some 12 miles south of Croydon, employed David Richardson as he took a few days sick leave from his Local Authority job, and William, a young man of my acquaintance on vacation from university.

  Brother Gerald, in business as a printer at Coulsdon, took an office/shop lease closer to his works than his existing office at Purley. I was called on to prepare the grubby basement as a drawing office and later, when he profitably parted with this acquisition, I was required to tidy up the Purley premises. A new guillotine at the printing works required a 3 phase electrical service. This and some essential plumbing also fell to me. I began to feel I was moving away from being an entrepreneur towards the life of a jobbing builder. Time, perhaps, to stop and think.

  Keith had on his books a property in a respectable part of Shirley, 23 Barmouth Road. The lady owner lived on the ground floor but had ill-advisedly let the upper rooms to an ageing couple, Mr & Mrs Bridges, he at 67 years of age supplementing his state pension with casual work at a local filling station, she, a little older, enjoying a South Eastern Gas Board pension arising from a life of clerical service begun when she was 14 years old. They had married quite late in life and had no close relatives. Although the letting was on a furnished basis it had nevertheless fallen under recent legislation making it a protected tenancy. The owner wished to sell up and move on but could not oust her tenants. The vacant house, with tidying, would fetch more than £25,000 but with a tenancy in place on half of it, I was able to secure it for £12,000.

  The Bridges were both heavy smokers, he with the sort of cough that would cheer any undertaker. I offered to find a small house which might suit them better than their upstairs accommodation. We had recently visited Lincoln where a range of tidy houses could be bought for £4/6,000 and I knew of houses on the Norfolk coast on offer at £6/8,000. They thought this a grand scheme and we organised a long day away to look at specific properties. I also took a trip to distant Dorset to evaluate the market in and around Gillingham where my sister lived in a modern house for which she was struggling to obtain £13,000. On that day, I found time to spend an hour with my Mother in her new quarters at Sturminster Newton.

  A young Indian couple heard of the vacant downstairs rooms and pressed us to let them move in on a one-year furnished agreement. Perhaps I should record that all occupants had to share the single bathroom and toilet. Mr Bridges had an imminent hospital appointment which postponed our outing and, in the event, was given very bad news about his health. In six weeks he was gone. Dolly, however, had some mileage left in her (time was measured thus, in those days).

  The bereaved Dolly would now have company in the house for the next few months giving us time to sort out alternative accommodation for her. With this in mind I purchased 34 Carew Road, Thornton Heath, a substantial late-Victorian house on three floors, for the sum of £25,000 with the intention of converting it to two flats. It would take a little time for me to make the drawings and obtain planning consent.

  Life was moving along on the home front. Both girls were at university and the elder was shortly to be married. My fancy was to have a smaller, cheaper living unit in the Croydon area from which to pursue our respective occupations and a principal residence on the Dorset coast where we could enjoy week-ends and school holidays. My yawl, tucked away in the Bentley Box, had not seen the sea for some time. A few days after the wedding in July 1981 we completed the sale of 85 Gladeside for £55,000. A good portion of our effects was transferred to 34 Carew Road where we had sufficient kerb space to base our daily sorties, to relax in easy chairs and to roll out of bed onto a viciously sloping floor. The remainder, including the baby grand piano, was stored in the commercial portion of our newly acquired Barclays Bank premises.

  Some basic decorative work was done to the ground floor of 34 Carew Road, once a chemical damp course and wood-infestation treatment had been completed. An en-suite bathroom was installed, the kitchen/dining arrangements much improved. Dolly was shown her new quarters which she settled into happily, perhaps under the impression that we would be her close neighbours for the forseeable future. The young couple duly vacated 23 Barmouth Road after expiry of the agreement and the house was now ready for re-furbishment. After a month of hard work it sold for £30,000 with one sadly sagging ceiling, no central heating and no garage space.

Chapter 3 - Working in a Bank - again

  At the corner of Canning Road and the very busy Lower Addiscombe Road stands the substantial red-brick and Portland stone edifice built in 1882 for The London and South Western Bank Limited. A direct consequence of the Indian Mutiny in 1857-8 was the closing, in 1862, of the East India Company's military training college occupying some 200 acres of Addiscombe. The site was sold to The British Land Company for £33,600 in 1864. They demolished the principal buildings and sold the land to various developers for the construction of good middle-class villas, mostly on four floors, some with coach houses, generally for the use of professional gentlemen travelling daily to the City from the newly-opened railway terminus on the Lower road.

  During the 1860s development parallel roads linking Addiscombe Road and Lower Addiscombe Road were named after Outram, Havelock, Elgin, Clyde and Canning, all honoured colonial dignitaries with service in India to their credit. To make way for the 1882 construction, two modern houses, Nos 1 and 2 Denbigh Villas, facing the Lower Road were demolished. A six-roomed maisonette, presumably for occupation by the manager, sat above the banking offices and basement with vault, together occupying half the building. The other half, during our ownership a substantial residence on 4 floors, was clearly intended to provide for expansion but was initially let for commercial purposes and, in 1898, to Bowditch & Grant, long-standing estate agents in Addiscombe. The original lease signed by these two gentlemen rests in my personal library.

  No such expansion took place and in 1918 Barclay & Company amalgamated with the then London, Provincial & South Western Bank to form the Barclays we know today. They closed this branch in 1981 at a time of computer-driven rationalisation, there being a busier branch a mile away at the Black Horse and others in nearby Croydon.

  The sale board had caught my eye and, on enquiry, I discovered a potential sale at £65,000 had fallen through. My offer of £62,000 was accepted. The residential half of the building was occupied by an impecunious young couple, he a former clerk with Barclays but now a van driver's assistant, she a shop worker.

  The front yard of the building had been acquired by the Local Authority many years earlier for the purpose of road widening which never took place. This was a nuisance because pedestrian traffic to and from Canning Road always took the short cut past the bank door and, on one occasion, the motor cycle shop opposite chained a couple of machines to the iron railings protecting our basement windows. I raised the issue with the Local Authority to no immediate effect.

  The rear yard provided useful parking. A large, but vulnerable, garage held the boat and some work-a-day machinery. I used the banking hall and basement for general storage and the strong room for items needing more security. A lockable steel deeds cupboard was sold to one of my solicitor friends for his branch office at Selsdon. The manager's small office was equipped with a built-in desk and matching chair, the basement also held an adequate washroom.

  Our home, at 34 Carew Road, was far from comfortable as we awoke each morning to the unpleasantness of tobacco smoke rising from below. Completing the separation of the two flats now became urgent. The lower rooms had independent access from a convenient side door so that the units became maisonettes once I had closed off the connections to those rooms from the front hall. I made a fresh opening between the front sitting room and the side hallway to facilitate movement within the ground floor unit. The planning consent had specified doubling the thickness of the ceiling between first and second floor. This did not affect Dolly but we would have to move out while brother Ron put this heavy, messy work in hand.

  Many years earlier a cast iron foul water sewer, collecting from the backs of several properties and choosing our house for its passage to the main sewer in the road, had fractured beneath our rear wall. The gent next door, who had lived all his 74 years in the same house, was most descriptive of the stench prevailing for weeks before the flood beneath the floors of the several houses was discovered. The foundations were damaged and our rear wall slipped something like a full brick course, having to be substantially rebuilt. An effect of this was that two rear rooms on the first floor had tricky slopes to be corrected. The roof ridge beam had also cracked when its supporting wall slipped but I propped it and managed the floor corrections with a little help from Ron. He was reasonably content with his pay at £25 per day so long as it was cash in hand.

  We relocated to the maisonette at Bank House, 122 Lower Addiscombe Road, pleased to be at a distance from Dolly and, for once, I was working to improve my own quarters. Arthur returned to Croydon from Winchester to where he had moved with his family. He was assigned to the central heating installation both here and at the upper flat in Carew Road where the electric circuitry also had to be divided. He briefly moved into Carew Road with fresh wife and dog to enable him to finish the work more briskly. Once the flat was ready for sale he went to work for brother Gerald to convert a coach house to a dwelling. The flat sold quickly for something above £20,000.

  The tenants at the bank (No 120) had previously been approached by Barclays to accept a contribution towards their relocation but, by my interpretation of their account of the proceedings, it seemed they expected the bank to buy a home for them with minimal expense to themselves. I offered them £10,000 towards a new home and suggested they look away from Croydon where prices were uncomfortably high. As encouragement I took the husband on a tour of Poole, looking at a number of new estate properties available at the £20,000 mark, but I was unable to inspire them towards home ownership and soon gave up on the idea.

  At the Bank House maisonette I installed secondary glazing in the principal living rooms, successfully excluding the worst of the traffic noise issuing from the busy main road. I had found a tenant for a seven-year term on the bank offices and was close to completing the deal when the door bell rang. On the doorstep was a Mr L.F. Dove, joint owner, with his twin brother, of a nearby British Leyland motor agency and filling station, formerly Turners Garage, and of other motor businesses. He had approached the selling agents a day or so after we secured our deal with Barclays and was disappointed to have lost the chance to acquire the premises. Mr Dove had been curious about our advertising a tenancy and came to view with agent's details in hand.

  I had not envisaged our being there for any long duration so I was able to chat a while and eventually agree a deal. The agent finding our business tenant would need to be compensated and we had significant costs to recover. We also had to look for another home and sell the baby grand piano. The outcome was that he stepped into the shoes of the intending tenant, taking the commercial lease and allowing us some rental income for a few weeks while he had immediate access to the commercial premises. He accepted that we would not wish to rush completion, agreeing to pay £80,000 for the freehold.

  Perhaps the whole Barclays episode was a little too hurried because I did not detect its full potential. Some two years after the deal a letter from the local authority was forwarded to me in respect of the requisitioned front yard. This was then transferred to the Doves for a nominal consideration enabling them to build a low fence against the busy road. This was later followed by a substantial privet hedge. Soon afterwards they abandoned car selling in Addiscombe. The subsequent owner built a good detached house in the rear yard and converted the whole bank edifice to apartments though I would not have relished the prospect of removing the substantial strongroom door which could, conceivably, have been pulled out through the basement window.

  Back to 1982. Consulting the Pearsons, we found a slightly up-market 5 bedroomed house with integral garage at 60 Sefton Road, the plan being that they would occupy the roomy ground floor and we would pass our working week in the comfortable upstairs rooms overlooking the Addiscombe Recreation Ground. The house at Sherwood Road sold well enough, bringing in a little over £30,000, and we paid £55,000 for Sefton Road. We also bought for £40,000 a four-bedroomed modern house, with swimming pool, a mile from the sea in the Oakdale district of Poole in Dorset. The yawl had to be relocated. Our good friend David Richardson at 89 Gladeside helped with this while we had a not uneventful journey with our furniture in a hired van.

60 Sefton Road

21 Cherita Court, Oakdale

  We stayed in the Poole house for only one year because we felt the swimming pool might become a liability and I thought there ought to be a less tidy house somewhere awaiting the attention of my hammer and chisel. We sold this home for £41,000 and bought another, for the same figure, dating from 1933 - a very good year despite the Crittall windows. This was located close to the inner harbour at Sandbanks where, hopefully, I might be able to moor the boat in season. There was much scope for improvement.

37 Panorama Road, Sandbanks

Sunny side

  In September 1982 I decided to withdraw from the Croydon property scene in favour of a more orderly existence. I took employment at £9,500 p.a. with Kent County Council as a lecturer in accountancy and other financial subjects, at a further education college at Dartford. I bought a tidy suit of clothes for £20, Properton bought a new Subaru for £5,000. There were still a few jobs from Keith needing attention but Arthur was able to bring them to a conclusion. The main attraction of my new employment was 14 weeks annual leave. With each of us having a company car and university grants no longer in the frame, the salaried life was not so much a problem.

  A 'phone call from Dolly's neighbour gave us some concern one evening. He was unable to obtain a reply at her door. Madam and I drove to Thornton Heath. We found her unconscious in bed and called an ambulance. A few days later she was back home, partly recovered from an excess of a new heart medication. She no longer had the confidence to visit the High Street for shopping but the neighbour, now in charge of the spare key, procured her essentials including her daily pack of twenty. A few weeks later she was back in hospital. She was able to supply the name of a cousin who, another week later, was called upon to tidy her affairs. Properton lost a tenant but was able to sell the maisonette for £21,000. This brought on a small surfeit of capital leading to a second Subaru. The modest sums we had been able to extricate from the Company were tucked away neatly in the stock market.

  I knocked our seaside home about to remodel the kitchen with gas-fired central heating boiler in place of a 1930s cooking range, and installed a wood-burning stove in the lounge. I found the energy to strip off all the wall paper but never quite got back to decorating the rooms although our younger daughter made a good show of her own room after the iron windows had been replaced with modern double-glazing. We had some enjoyable sailing moments and eventually I acquired a mooring in the harbour which led to the acquisition of a smaller boat and engine for splashing about and reaching the yawl.

  Both daughters were regular visitors at week-ends and holidays and we would often call on our elder daughter at Bracknell on the way back to town on a Sunday afternoon. This became more of a duty when she had her first child. In the summer months the world and his family came on day trips to enjoy the sea at Sandbanks and, there being space for several cars in our front yard, visitors begged to be allowed to park at £3 a time. But the busy seaside did begin to lose some of its charm for me and I fancied having a quieter patch where I could be on my own.

  I found a distant mid-19th cent cottage with modern extension in 13 acres at Upottery in Devon. We bought it for £75,000 from a couple attempting to live off the land to some extent but now going their separate ways, she with a baby daughter, he with a fellow teacher.

Ye Cottage

In the orchard

  When we took the property they had failed to remove their livestock: chickens in their houses, geese at large and ducks on a tiny pond. A small-time farmer who continued to rent the grass keep had agreed, it seems, to keep them fed but on my first few Saturday visits I found them close to starvation and even came across a dead goose in the porch. I mentioned the problem when chatting to another smallholding neighbour and, when I returned a week later, there was no stock to be found. In another two weeks the former occupant turned up with a trailer to collect his stock, surprised they were no longer about. He was Gent by name, though perhaps not by nature.

  I made some useful improvements to the cottage but there was a permanent problem with ingress of water at the ill-designed junction of the extension and the cottage. Another difficulty was the water supply which came from a collecting chamber below ground up the slope on a neighbouring property. There was only low supply pressure which improved a little when I removed a large frog from the exit pipe of the chamber. When drawing a glass of water from the tap it was strange to see larvae actively lurking within. The nearest mains water was some half-mile distant. I did enjoy my days and holidays in the country but it was clear Madam would not wish to settle to so remote an existence and, while, some three years later, I was searching out the problem of total failure of the water supply, the immediate neighbour propositioned me. He had an offer for his quaint house, a mud and thatch dating mostly from the medieval period and in a wooded three acres. Rather than move away, he wondered if I would be prepared to sell to him. His wife owned a horse and was already using some of our acres for grazing and horse training.

 We agreed to sell in 1987 for £95,000.

  I spent four years at the college at Dartford. During the last two years I attended a day-release course at Croydon College to qualify as a Certified Teacher, a useful qualification to add to that of Chartered Banker. Towards the end of the course I invited a dozen or so classmates to come to Poole on a day when nothing much was happening. They had a splendid time sailing beyond the harbour at Sandbanks on a perfect day, swimming in the sea and dining in our ample house and yard. One of the group who was in charge of all banking studies at Croydon College had been very glad to make my acquaintance. In addition to my usual duties at Dartford I found myself lecturing two evenings each week at Croydon.

  In 1986 I moved my employment to NESCOT at Epsom, a larger college which turned out to be a more relaxed regime and with much better dining facilities. It also meant an easier exit from suburbia on Friday evenings. After a term or two I was able to keep free from lectures on Friday afternoon so that Madam, who used that time as an administration period, could meet up with me at mid-day allowing us to avoid the worst of the traffic.

  I had not for long been working at Epsom when the Pearsons, who had never been happy about being left alone at week-ends and, more particularly, during the academic holidays, had the opportunity to go into protected housing close to the centre of Croydon. They had for some time been on the Methodist Homes for the Aged waiting list, hoping eventually to achieve that aim, but this new opportunity appealed to them and they left 60 Sefton Road. We promptly sold the property for £113,000, courtesy of Keith Terrell, and bought a ground-floor maisonette at Epsom for £52,000. I could now walk the few hundred yards to my employment and the bosslady had a shorter journey to her Special Needs establishment at Wandsworth.

Rear garden, 1 Invermene Court, Ewell, Epsom

  Suddenly we had news that Renie had gone into a care home. Her flat was on Properton's books at a low figure so I was able to sell it some way below market value, on account of its grubby condition, to my younger daughter. Properton generously made her a modest loan. For the time being the flat was used for storage only but, a few months on, when her movements were better known, it went to market achieving a net £38,000 and leaving her with a useful gain to advance her aspirations. We had earlier assisted our elder daughter when she set up home and so a further, balancing sum was passed in that direction.

Chapter 4 - Over the Border.

  Missing my 13 acre playground I continued to feel a need for open space; a few acres to call my own. I searched for some woodland to absorb surplus energy but any within easy reach was scarce and expensive. We looked at several plots in Wales. They were up to 80% packed with conifers, often at a distance from civilized centres and usually at the end of narrow tracks. As we sheltered from the elements in a burned-out cottage, on offer at £1,000, we formed a strong impression that the English were not welcome in wooded Wales.

  I took off on my own for Scotland in the Whitson break of 1988 to evaluate 150 interesting acres at Plockton against a large loch and not far from the Skye ferry. This was the better part of two day's drive from our home on the South Coast, much of it through stunning scenery. I turned south and picked up more "for sale" details from Cleggs in Edinburgh. The next property I inspected was Kyleshill and Backlea Plantations, formerly part of the failing Marchmont Estate. The property ran to 122 acres backing onto, and with several entry gates to, the extensive Greenlaw Moor. About half of the property comprised mixed conifers in need of thinning, the remainder included some 30 acres of rough grazing and heather, 20 acres of mature softwoods ripe for felling, an enclosed wood of about 8 acres known as Steel Plantation and a 2 acre strip, East Steel, giving a second access to the Greenlaw - Duns road. A small, bridged stream fed a pond some 50 yards from the road. This strip bore about 80 mature beech trees, some having fallen from elemental battering.

  Other remarkable features included a former road-stone quarry covering 2 acres, partly infilled with agricultural waste, a dead car or two, builders' rubble, road breakings, soil and old machinery. Evidently it was still used for tipping but there remained some flat space for parking cars and a good area for placing a cheap caravan to provide a base for further exploration.

  As I walked an overgrown track at the side of the quarry I disturbed a dark snake coiled in the sun. It slithered into the heather. Noticing another, I promptly withdrew to avoid disturbing it. Both creatures were dark to the point of being almost black. I had yet to discover the River Blackadder some three miles away.

  Crossing the 30 acres of open space, bearing grass, heather and bracken in equal measure, was a 30ft deep gorge known as Red Score because much of its exposed surface was the same red stone/dust as the quarry cliffs. In parts the sides of the score had grassed over and, at my first viewing in late May, I observed a half-acre sward of primroses in flower. A spring arose at its head flowing, mostly inaccessibly, for a quarter mile until reaching lower ground and passing into a neighbouring field. In one of the plantations, about 200 yards from the quarry entrance, was a small brick-built dynamite shed which I did not discover until several years later.

  I was very impressed with the productivity and interest of these acres and decided, subject to wifely approval, that I would make an offer. Also available, but from another owner, was a patch on the other side of the Greenlaw/Duns road, about 400 yards beyond the East Steel entrance, amounting to about 5 acres. I briefly explored to find it comprised a small, derelict village hall and three dangerous unroofed or partly roofed former dwellings, the whole described as Polwarth village. The ancient Polwarth church with viewable crypt containing several stone coffins, close to a small cluster of occupied houses, was about half-a-mile distant. I was less inspired by this offering, perhaps because it represented the kind of work I was trying to avoid rather than a place where I might relax from my demanding academic duties.

  I returned to Edinburgh to report to Cleggs and, on the way, looked at another fascinating property, some 67 acres, one side of a deep but narrow valley running at right angles to the A1 about a mile north of Grantshouse and some 16 miles from the Kyleshill property. This wood, densely packed with maturing conifers, had a fast stream flowing in and out of the dry stone wall boundary along the valley bottom. Where it found its way into the shady wood it had gouged out deep pools, alive with brown trout. The plan showed a dam upstream and some hydrological works but the wood was not easily penetrable so my exploration was less than thorough.

  In Edinburgh I posted details of the Kyleshill property to Madam at home and shuffled through my papers in the Post Office. I had a couple more woods to locate and assess over the next few days. This involved motoring towards Stirling where one 60 acre wood contained a 40 acre loch. It was fairly close to the town and showed signs of regular visitation from townsfolk, hardly the place for an absentee owner. Here I learned something of the Scottish common law right to roam. Another wood was unattractive because it was largely on a steep hill and with a shared access.

  On arriving home I was fairly clear in my mind that I fancied Kyleshill and the watery Bowshiel Wood at Grantshouse but I had not entirely ruled out the few acres at Polwarth whose details I must have left behind in the Post Office. The next week-end we drove to the Borders where Madam inspected these woods and agreed we should offer for them. Our offers had to be delivered by a Scottish attorney in a clearly defined legal format. Any offers received had to be opened on an advertised date, the highest offer taking precedence. We acquired Kyleshill for a price of £65.000 in time for the summer vacation of 1988 when we passed a contented five weeks in good weather in a modest little caravan on the floor of the quarry, getting to know the wood, the Borders generally and enjoying days out in Edinburgh. A local builder's manager came to enquire whether they could continue dropping rubble in the quarry. We agreed to the existing terms.

  My preliminary enquiries into the forestry trade showed that earnings from sales of forest produce were "outside taxation", the general principle being that if it took 80 years for a tree to be nurtured and harvested it would be inappropriate to allocate the sale proceeds to one particular year. However, landowners had to be caught in the Exchequer net so farms and forests attracted Schedule B tax, soon to be abolished, which was easily defrayed by listing expenses incurred in maintaining the property. Each parcel of land in Scotland was also assessed for the value of its shooting rights and a small local tax imposed. Value Added Tax, however, was all-pervading. We registered our commercial partnership for V.A.T. adopting the name Dorset Timber and soon recovered the tax on our acquisition costs and substantial travel expenses. Properton Services Ltd. had been laid to rest when I went into full-time education.

  The offer on Bowshiel Wood ran into difficulty over failure of the vendor, the Forestry Commission, to provide a good title to the main entrance track. It was a full year before I took the initiative by accepting a qualified title, during which time the purchase price of £29,250 sat in our solicitor's bank deposit account earning a mean 12% p.a. This useful sum covered all our legal costs and more besides. I did make further enquiry about the Polwarth land to learn it had been quickly taken up. This turned out to be a blunder on my part because, within a couple of years, planning consent was granted for the erection of five substantial houses, though none was ever built during the sixteen-year period of our owning woods in Scotland.

  I must turn the tale back to life at home. In 1987 our elder daughter moved from Bracknell to Frome as her husband joined his family firm, Butler & Tanner Ltd, Europe's largest privately-owned colour printers. This was a great opportunity for him but he stayed with them for just a few years and a sad footnote of 2008 is that the Company went into liquidation after 150 years. The name, however, lives on in a newly-formed printing company. Whereas we could previously slip off the motorway on a Sunday afternoon on our return to Epsom and be with the family in 15 minutes, Frome was a different matter. Our daughter, with two very young children, was in need of as much support as could be mustered. Comfortable as we were in our seaside home we nevertheless decided to move closer to her. On a trip to Frome we noticed a newly-built house on the southern slopes of Shaftesbury about 20 miles from Frome, close enough but not too close.

  The house, grey and plain, had a splendid view across part of the Blackmore Vale and beyond, with ample rooms and garden backing onto quiet pasture. We scraped together our savings, losing a little on some of our well-spread investments, raised a modest mortgage for comfort and bought the house in a great hurry because the builder, Berkeley Homes, insisted on putting up the price by £5,000 if we did not exchange contracts within seven days. We completed at the end of May 1988 paying £160,000 for Plot 1, Lower Blandford Road, Shaftesbury. What other name could we apply but "Woodlands"? There was, as yet, not a tree on the premises. Being on high ground and with a south-westerly aspect we seemed always to be in the teeth of a gale. At our request Berkely Homes tried, unsuccessfully, to draught-proof the windows. We had been in possession only three months before we decided the banshee wailing from the wooden windows was unacceptable. They must be replaced with something better engineered. Heavy duty tilt'n'turn picture windows were fitted to the front elevation and the porch closed in. A few months later winter north-easterlies forced a similar adjustment to the other elevations.

Woodlands, home for 18 years

  Sandbanks was prospering, property in great demand. There was little time for further tidying. We made a leisurely move to Woodlands then marketed 37 Panorama Road, as summer closed, at £175,000 selling it amongst competing bidders for £187,500. We left the boat with a neighbour who was pleased to arrange its sale for a small commission. Some two years later we had an enquiry from the Coastguard who had found it on a Dorset beach with signs of contraband aboard.

  In the Spring of 1989 I peered through the dense foliage at the bottom of the Woodlands garden to locate the source of a mildly troublesome noise. Heavy excavators were digging along the valley bottom. We found what appeared to be a footpath leading from the adjacent field into the valley. Forcing our way through unpleasant thorns and over a low fence we slid down onto a track which seemed to connect somewhere to a track on the opposite side of the valley. We were only briefly in the valley when a stout gent appeared in the garden of a bungalow on the far side, about 250 yards away as the crow might fly. He shouted, gesticulating in an unwelcoming fashion. The gist of his bellow translated into "there is no footpath!" Tails hanging low, we fought our way back to lick our wounds. The following day I thought I might introduce myself to this distant neighbour, if only to offer an apology.

  He was a pleasant enough man, not in the best of health, and retired from a career in further education in South London. At least we had something in common. His wife and 40 year old son lived with him, the son having had an army career connected with horses and still hoping to make horsiness his profession. For this reason, seven years earlier, they had taken the bungalow, a barn complex and 21 acres when it was sold off from an adjacent holding as a family inheritance was divided. The horsey thing had not worked out, the son being enormously lacking in energy and very short on realism.

  I mentioned my possible interest in acquiring a piece of land enabling me to plant a few trees. He explained he and his wife had decided the partnership with the son must be ended and they had actually found a buyer for their house and land which included a large, asbestos-clad barn, in some disrepair but with 7 respectable stables about it, and a range of dangerously neglected sheds/stables sharing the barn platform above the valley. A manege, expensively laid out and fenced, shielded by a high roadside hedge, served for dressage exercises which the son still pursued to little effect. They had exchanged contracts on the sale of the entire holding to a scientist from New Zealand who was going to set up a micrarium and schools study centre. This gentleman died, probably from DVT, on a flight from New Zealand before the matter could be completed. The Morris's, my new acquaintances, absolved the widow from her liability to proceed.

  There was no interest in selling only part of the land which, I have to admit, was not easily to be divided. It would be all or nothing. I realised there might be scope for developing the barn and manege area and retaining the valley land which abutted our garden fence. On selling the Sandbanks property I had, perhaps unwisely, repaid the mortgage on Woodlands and no great sum was available for a fresh purchase. However, a saw-miller at Duns had agreed to take the 580 mature trees on the Backlea Plantation for the sum of £29,000 and his cheque was in the post. My dealings were with the senior Morris whose health was fast failing. I agreed to buy the valley, barns and manege area for £90,000, leaving them with a useful grassy patch between their home and the manege. He also retained a small margin of land at lower level to extend their rear garden in the hope of making their home more saleable.

  I went shopping in the local high street to buy a fresh mortgage on Woodlands enabling us to complete the deal, though not before Morris senior had slipped away. The level land and buildings were acquired by Properton for £65,000, the valley land bought in our own names. Financially this was an unhappy time because inflation was at threatening levels, base rates going as high as 15% for a brief period, mortgage interest running even higher. For a year or two, while I did battle with the planning authority, our monthly budget declined to balance, but this was no big worry to a capitalistic ex-banker. Prior to arranging the borrowing I had allocated £21,000 to acquire a bungalow in the Borders from which we were able to service our interests there. This was 16 Blackadder Crescent, Greenlaw to which I added some heating lines from the living room back boiler and fitted new carpet throughout. Some useful furniture was found locally.

The large asbestos-clad barn

  David Morris, the erstwhile son, thought of by me as Morris Minor, stayed on in the valley and stables under an agistment agreement for one year. He immediately used his new liquidity to buy a splendid mare in foal for £14,000 while his widowed mother attempted to sell their home. The plan was to buy a small farm. A year later they were still in place when I was plotting the sale of the manege so I had to speak firmly to him. He lodged his horses nearby with a friend and began a more determined search for a new home for them.

  Property in Scotland was, at that time, surprisingly cheap. It was almost as if the nation was stuck in a time warp. Soon after we acquired Kyleshill, formerly part of the Marchmont Estate, the whole of that estate of about 2,000 acres came to the market on the order of Prudential Assurance who had been financing the unprofitable and badly-managed farming operations. The Estate comprised three farms, one believed to be successfully tenanted, and several hundred acres of woods and lakes with attendant shooting enterprise. The incumbents, lately represented by Lady McEwen and her children, had given away the enormous 18th century Marchmont House some years earlier when it was put to use as a Sue Ryder home. After 20 years or so it became unviable. At the turn of the millenium the building was converted to residential apartments. In recent years Lady McEwen had resided at Whiteside, marketed as a separate estate by the Liquidator. She left there as it was sold and took a small house at nearby Polwarth.

  In the 1960s, the reasons being obscure, the 120 acres of Kyleshill and Backlea were hived off from the estate into a trust benefitting Lady McEwen. In the fencing and planting that followed an extra 2 acres were borrowed from the moor which, at that time, was only tenuously connected to Marchmont and was thought to be, in the minds of the locals, common land. A little later the moor was fenced by a neighbouring farmer to protect his stock and eventually became part of his title by the scottish equivalent of adverse possession. As her ladyship fell into penury her trustees disposed of Kyleshill (to us), the capital likely to yield some £6,000 p.a. compared to the existing revenue from the property of about £100 p.a. The 20th century history of the Marchmont aristocracy is an interesting, if tragic, study.

  We had been in possession at Kyleshill for about three months when the estate came to market and I consulted our legal adviser on the possibility of bidding for one or more of the dozen cottages and small houses on offer. A bid went in for a terrace of empty houses but in the event the whole estate was acquired by a London property dealer, Oliver Burge. I made a direct approach to him but while he was not unsympathetic, he needed more time to check on what he had bought, how much of it would be needed by estate staff to be retained or added and what his advisers might suggest. He seemed puzzled as to how we had lately purchased the Kyleshill property and he had not.

  During our vacation in the quarry we had gone daily for water to Greenlaw where the town's largest employer, Henry Steel & Sons Ltd., had an outside tap in their builder's yard. The part-time yard warden directed us to the former council bungalow at Blackadder Crescent. The owners, Mr & Mrs Smith, had moved to a modern maisonette in an old folks block a little further down the road at its junction with the High Street. He gave me their 'phone number and I went to the call box in Greenlaw High Street. I had to wait a while for the booth to vacate and, as I stood champing at the bit, I noticed I was being observed by a pale face at a window opposite. I kept the face in view as I dialed but it turned away in a startled fashion. Believe it or not, it was Mrs Smith.

  When the deal was done I sought out the yard-man, a Mr Johnson, and pressed £50 into his hand. He became quite excited as this was a very useful sum. His remuneration for yard duties came in the form of reduced rent for the tiny yard cottage. We came to know him and his family quite well.

16 Blackadder Cresc

  This turned out to be a good sale for the Smiths because, apart from being amazed that their investment of £4,000, four years earlier, had produced more than £20,000, Mr Smith had thoroughly enjoyed his garden whereas we had little time to bend our backs in that way. He used the garden for several years more so we could rely on a good supply of vegetables when we were present. His son, Doug Smith, lived immediately opposite our house and kept a close eye during our long absences.

  At Kyleshill I had a local contractor erect a steel profile barn, ten metres square, to house a powerful tractor and other bits and pieces. Several times this attracted attention of trespassers, some metal cladding being ripped away on two occasions. A skip operator tipping at the quarry enquired of our neighbour, Doug Smith, whether the tractor could be borrowed for use at another site. This was declined but, three days later, Doug found the barn door had been forced and the machine, evidently having been towed clear of the barn ready for loading onto a lorry, had run off down the slope to rest at a worrying angle in a ditch 150 yards away. I decided the tractor was too valuable to leave unattended and returned it, for a good price, to the supplier. I replaced it with a heavier, older machine acquired cheaply from Robert Little who came to build some roads for us.

Bonnie Barn

  Oliver Burge made an approach through our mutual forestry adviser enquiring if we might be prepared to sell our holding, thus reuniting it with the Marchmont estate. It seems he felt it had good shooting prospects. In our short time in possession I had spent £4,000 on a new road, £6,000 on a new barn, contracted the sale of 580 mature trees and entered into a tipping agreement with the Local Authority for their road breakings. We had also acquired and equipped the small house in Greenlaw. I added up our outgoings and sent the message that, whilst sympathising with his objective, I would be looking for a handsome sum to compensate me for the time and effort put into finding the place and for the time and effort needed, at a distance, in finding a replacement stamping ground. He was not deterred.

  I suggested the sum of £110,000 which he rejected out of hand. He appointed an independent estate agent to value the woods and negotiate with me. This agent largely agreed my case and eventually my figure which Burge then accepted. His legal adviser sent the appropriate form of offer to my attorney. The deal was under way and he asked me to stop the tipping lorries immediately. I told him this was not possible but gave the necessary three months' notice of termination. He also asked me to stand down the saw miller, but I had not built this into the equation and the mature timber clearance was part of a major felling, replanting and road building scheme agreed with the Forestry Commission. The saw miller's cheque was already in the bank and the funds allocated elsewhere. The miller resisted Burge's offer to return the £29,000 telling me he expected to earn £40,000 from the timber after paying the costs of harvesting. This was a step too far for Mr Burge and, not fully alert to the extent of his commitment, he sought to withdraw from the transaction.

  My attorney was adamant. It could not be done. I explained to Burge that the clear-fell made no great impression on the general aspect nor the viability of the wood. Indeed, the cleared 20 acres gave occasion for the subsidised planting of a total of 50 acres. I suspect his view may have been more towards maintaining the existing hunting and shooting potential. We had no wish to move on being quite happily established in our extensive, interesting domain. I calmed the attorney, offering to pay his expenses, but he demurred saying he had never come across the like in the course of a long career.

  We became well acquainted with many folk in the Borders. Neighbours who came to the woods to dump refuse in the quarry or collect firewood or rabbits. Local tradespeople, including farmers and forestry workers, gamekeepers looking for the favour of bringing clientele to stalk deer and, not least, a forestry consultant who arranged drainage, ploughing, planting, thinning and felling as required. He also helped expand the landfill business in the quarry. A local fishing club presented us with trout on two occasions after leaving us with proceeds of an annual trawl of their lake for pond weed and the detritus inevitably left by unwelcome visitors.

  In the post-war years there had not been the housing shortage experienced in England. A young couple could marry without worrying about finding a home, there was always property to rent. The English statutory tenancy rules did not apply.

  In the south, any tradesman worth his salt now had to ply his trade as an independent contractor. Henry Steel, the local builder regularly using and tidying our quarry, had plumbers, plasterers, bricklayers, tilers, painters and decorators, lorry drivers, electricians, even a draughtsman working "on the cards" and happy with a fixed weekly wage. The firm obligingly came to our rescue when our chimney caught fire causing superficial damage and requiring a new chimney pot.

  Before contracting the sale of the thousand or so tons of softwoods it was necessary to build 550 metres of road for heavy transport to remove the material. A magnificent road was constructed by Robert Little, four metres wide, (the road, I mean, not Robert) some 2ft above the general ground level with adequate drainage ditches, and using stone dug from our own quarry, for £7 per metre run. The road was, of course, equally useful for tidying brash, admitting the fire service when things went wrong, transporting subsidised new plantings for a 50 acre plantation and generally accessing the hinterland. I did not hesitate to use this contractor on several more occasions.

  Within a hand-full of years the local economic scene had changed, Henry Steel & Sons began to fail and was bought out by a Kelso company which, itself, soon went into liquidation.

Chapter 5 - Down in Dorset.

  We were now a little pressured by debt and the way forward seemed to be tied in with the future of the large, unsafe and unsightly barn and the acre of near-level land abutting the Higher Blandford Road. My first thoughts were towards seeking permission to build a good-sized house for our own occupation. An informal approach to the local authority was not discouraging. Madam, however, was quite comfortable where she was and I was persuaded to think again. I consulted a planning expert submitting, in due time, an outline application for two sizeable detached dwellings. I was told to expect that the generous plots would fetch £80,000 each. The application failed due to a misconstruction by the planning department, only to be approved some months later on appeal to the government inspectorate, an expensive exercise. The Authority was held to have succumbed to a misunderstanding, was not demonstrably at fault and therefore not obliged to contribute to our considerable costs.

  We now had a marketable asset but the market had plunged to unforeseen depths; negative equity had been coined, tens of thousands of property owners were locked in. Several developers looked at the site and one mentioned he would have to acquire the barn to demolish it in order to make the site attractive. I took the hint and, for the cost of about £1,000, removed all asbestos cladding from the huge barn and removed its steel roof trusses, leaving the extensive block work and stables in place. The much improved skyline quickly caught the eye of one of the developers; we settled on a price of £100,000.

  I specified the site was to be used for no more than two dwellings but the developer was able to acquire from the Morris's a small patch adjacent to the site, not quite large enough for a respectable house. He asked me to adjust the covenant so as to allow part of our site to be used for a third dwelling. I agreed and the planning department approved but this acquisition left him short of cash so I accepted £50,000 for one half of the site and sold him a 2 year option for £2,500 allowing him to buy the remainder for a further £50,000. He had other properties awaiting sale and was able to take up his option within a few months.

  The first sale went a long way towards relieving our financial pressure. I was able to begin reconstruction of the barn, substantially reducing the height and pitch of the roof from its former level and cladding the whole with green plasticised steel sheeting. I followed on by demolishing the unsafe sheds/stables and imposing a second, smaller barn, part timber-sided, part black steel profile.

Greater barn with lower profile (length 90')

Lesser barn (with stable at rear)

Lesser barn precursor

  All this work, including removing the asbestos from site, cost approx. £10,000 so that, when the second £50,000 came in, the entire purchase and barn improvement costs had been covered, leaving only the substantial interest costs to be borne from income.

  The Morris's had their sights on a house and land in Devon where David intended to keep sheep in company with his horses but their home, an insubstantial Woollaway bungalow in a reasonable 1 acre plot, would not sell. I contemplated the purchase but felt I did not want to be the person who added to the widow's discomfort by making a low offer. In the event, the vendor of the Devon property, Peter Dewe, thought it might serve him and his wife for a while and an exchange was arranged. Dewe, never willing to raise his voice, muttered something about £85,000 which I took to be the level of the transaction. At that figure, I would have been happy to engage myself. It was another one that got away. Ten years later it sold on for £240,000.

  Properton still possessed a residual platform above the valley of approx. half an acre containing the large, but lower, barn having three stables within the structure and four more plus tack room in a lean-to block extension, the whole on a footprint of 4,000 sq ft. The site also had the smaller re-constructed barn with rear stable attached and a gated entry track to the valley. An excellent 20ft-wide gated track led from the road into ample parking and turning space. This land still had agricultural user when it was sold by Properton to ourselves for £8,000 in 1992 following approval by the District Valuer.

  As the years ticked by I was aware that the Blackadder house, owned by us jointly, could bring a capital gains liability, so we passed it to Properton, again with the approval of a District Valuer, for £32,000, our individual gains thus lying within the perm