It was suggested that I write about the early years of my life. I am 81. What do I remember, and how far back? I don’t remember the last world war. i was born in 1943 in London, and during an air raid, my mother told me. We called these raids the Blitz. We borrowed the German word, Blitzkrieg or lightening war. It was terrifying by all accounts and I arrived in the middle of it. Even today I jump at loud bangs.

So I don’t remember the war but I remember war damage. There was still plenty about as I started to form memories. We lived near Portsmouth about this time, so I remember the magnificent Guildhall gutted by incendiaries, and also the old Theatre Royal standing alone amidst the rubble, and as I recall still putting on plays. I can picture whole streets gone, what were once rows of shops, now identified solely by the names in mosaic in the doorway floor. I remember buddleia growing amongst the rubble, aptly named the bombsite plant.

I remember the late king George VI who died in 1952, and our late queen, then Princess Elizabeth being acclaimed queen on holiday in Kenya. I kept a scrap book of the king’s funeral, which didn’t seem strange at the time. Today it might be considered an odd thing for a child to do. I vividly recall a blood stained photograph of the monarch lying in state in Westminster Hall flanked by four soldiers. It had been used to wrap meat and I rescued it for my album. We didn’t have hygiene in those days and butchers and fish shops used old newspapers to wrap their wares. Fish and chip shops did the same. That is where we took our old newspapers. Eric Sadler was our local chippie. He stirred the boiling fat with an old piece of wood which looked as though he had found it on the seashore. Then he wrapped your fish and chips in someone’s old newspaper. No one was shocked by this. We had survived bombing, don’t forget.

About this time we were still living above our shop. I remember my brother being born in 1948, about the same time as King Charles, so a big gap between us because of my father being away in India and Burma from 1944 to 46. I remember bits about living there. I had measles and was ill for two weeks in a darkened room. Nobody was vaccinated against these diseases, dangerous as they were. They were called childhood diseases, measles, chicken pox, mumps etc and you had them and if you survived you were immune for life. I don’t remember having mumps. My father had it and was hospitalised, as this was a dangerous illness for men. My brother had whooping cough, very young, he was in his cot at the time. I can still see my father holding him upside down like a rabbit, while he struggled for breath. That was horrible to watch, but he survived, I am pleased to say

I started school at five years old. There was no pre-school or nursery school in those benighted times so we were later learning to read than children today. In fact I got off to a bad start, as I was enrolled in the local catholic school, which are very good today, but at the time was very poor. I was moved to the state primary school, and at six years old could not read or write. I caught up quickly enough, and was there until 1954, when I took the iniquitous 11-plus examination, and was one of the few that passed to go to a grammar school. Grammar schools, for those who don’t know the term, date back to the c16 when they were founded in the reign of Edward VI. Grammar meant Latin grammar, by the way, which in those days was the lingua franca throughout Europe. I was taught Latin incidentally, as it was essential to get in to some universities whatever subject you were studying. That changed in 1960

I say iniquitous, It was like separating the bright from the not-so-bright at a very early age. People like me were given an academic education learning Latin for example. The others went to so-called secondary modern schools, and their training included woodwork, domestic science etc as though they were destined for some form of artisan employment. This was to change with the advent of the comprehensive system, when it was recognised that children were all different, and developed at different speeds, and deserved the same training. Even this system needed modification until it was perfected to what we have today

I had intended only to write about my early years and what stuck in my memory. In 1951 when I was eight years of age, my father took us on the train to London to the Festival of Britain. That was a memorable day, and of course 100 years since the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park opened by Queen Victoria. i will try to keep to what i actually remember. I remember the Dome of Discovery which celebrated British achievement in science and technology. I don’t remember details. It would lack the sophistication of today naturally. We had shortly come out of a world war, and had not yet recovered. The festival was about optimism and hope for the future. Crown pieces were minted. I think I have one somewhere. I remember the Skylon, although what it did, goodness knows. I remember the Royal Festival Theatre which is still there today.

Between 1951 and 54 were my early school years before moving on to secondary education. I cannot think of anything worth talking about. I do remember kids with leg irons, due to deficiency in diet. terrible when you think about it. We had free milk daily which must have helped. That was stopped by Margaret Thatcher when Education Secretary in 19 seventy something. Thatcher Thatcher milk snatcher was the cry. Even today children’s diet is wrong only for different reasons. Girls did handstands against the wall, with gym slips tucked into their knickers. Boys didn’t do handstands, which was wise. Girls did a lot of skipping chanting doggerel to the beat. i don’t remember the doggerel. There was quite a lot of fighting in the playground, otherwise football. We were organised into work parties for gardening during lesson time. We dug out quite large tree roots. Imagine that today. parents would be apoplectic. Dancing round the maypole was something else that was done as a showpiece for visitors and quite accomplished as I remember.

Well th ose are a few snatches as they come to mind and take me up to 1954