Latest Moan From You and Me 2024

My first home as a kid -



Tiny wee one bedroom flat, but we left there when I was around 3 to 4 and moved into the hom I've got the fondest memories of:



Ours was the one that has the red Peugeot in the drive. The gent on the left (Noel) that can be seen chatting just behind the car was our neighbours along with his wife (Hilda) - when my parents split up and I was left pretty much as a latch key kid, they were like second parents to me. Indeed, I think more of that man there than I do my own dad - sadly, I learned that he passed earlier this year.

I had a really good friend that lived in the upper maisonette with the brown door on the left, I was born in a hospital that is no longer there, but was roughly where the tree was on the horizon and just beyond that tree, there was a dog park and a fairly large park that we played in most of the time.

The downstairs maisonette on the far left of the picture, was Cathy & Vince - - Vince worked on the dust and had jam-jar bottom glasses... every weekend he would pop down to his garage, bring out his Morris Minor, wash it, dry it and then go and put it back in the garage. It never went anywhere.



Looking in the opposite direction, on the horizon you can just see the small spire of the church at what became my secondary school, with my primary school sitting just beyond that (the other end of the playing field of the secondary)... and there is a story involving that cemetary behind the house, but I am not sure if anyone would be remotely interested.

 

My father was brought up in a 3 bedroomed tenement type house in the East End of London with his parents, his married sister with hubby and two kids and eight other brothers and sisters. Outside toilet only. It was a bit cramped!

My first couple of years was in a one bedroom flat with my parents and sister. But we avoided having to live in a hole in the road.

 

You might not approve of this one...

This cemetery has two sides - the 'old' side and the 'new' side...



The 'old' side is the area edged in blue; the new side is the area in yellow. Back then (40 years ago now) there were only a handful of graves in the new side, right at the top (so nearest the bottom on this image) and that strip of tarmac down the middle ended in a T, roughly where I've put the red box - and it was all brand new, clean, no holes and more importantly there wasn't a certain neighbour around... you see, there was a man who lived in the bottom flat on the end, here:



His name was Mr Ewing, and he was a grumpy old sod. We would ride our bikes up and down on the pavement in front of the houses, never crossing a road as we weren't allowed (8 years old), and Mr Ewing used to shout at us. There was another chap in the top flat, Wullie Trainer who was the polar opposite of Mr Ewing - he was a lovely old fella, used to sit on his balcony smoking his pipe and watching the world go by and he would often stick up for us, shouting back at Mr Ewing. Anyway, Mr Ewing had escalated by coming out of his flat onto the grass in front, collaring us as we went past which then led to our dads having a bit of a heated argument with him. Us boys (just the two of us really) didn't want to have the shouting and aggro, and had seen this bit of brand new road being laid in the cemetery... so, we wondered if we could get our bikes in there for a shot.

The entrance was through the 'old' side here:



There was a path from my back garden (shown in red on the overhead view above), through our neighbours garden (they were happy to let us, and in fact encouraged it!) onto a little abandoned driveway thing and then into the 'new' cemetery - but, our bikes wouldn't fit. On the main gates, they had one of those turn-style style gates, where you walked into it and had to push it round to get out the other side. We figured out that if we stood our bikes up on back wheel as we went through, we could get the bikes in - - so we did.

It may not look like it, but that strip of tarmac is on a hill, going down toward where our house was, so we cycled up and down the hill, getting more and more bold with our new found almost private play road. Boys being boys, we decided to see how fast we could go, so off I went down the hill on my little Raleigh Strika, going like the bars of hell.. as I approached the bottom, I braked and 'ping' the end of the brake cable snapped off! So I am now headed at one hell of a rate, rapidly toward the end of the road. The road was edged by drainage channels like these:



Now, it is quite surprising just how much elevation an 8-year old on a Raleigh Strika can get when hitting one of these channels at speed. I took off into the air, came down with a hell of a thump but managed to stay on the bike... but not for long. The ground beyond the end of the road was heavily churned/rutted, so I was thrown off the bike... it went down sort of to the side of me and I then flew, superman style across the top of it, catching my thigh on the teeth on the crank, tearing into my muscle. As you'd imagine, there was much tears and blood. I immediately abandoned bike and my friend and limped my way home the short way, going in the back door into the kitchen where my mum was washing up. Cue much 'Oh my God' etc etc.. and a trip to the hospital (my friend recovered my bike with the help of his mum)

After the hospital, our next door neighbour, Hilda, came in to see the patient (now boasting 8 stitches and feeling a bit sorry for himself) - - during the conversation, Hilda was (gently) telling me off for playing in a cemetery as it was disrespectful etc and me, being me, turned round and said "Well... nobody got up and complained" My mum was mortified. Hilda laughed and would often remind me of it even when I was older - and I bet if I mentioned my Raleigh Strika to my mum, she would remind me too