1947
Life in Herongate
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My mother was a superb dressmaker: smocking was all the rage
Herongate Road was my home for the first 8 years of my life. It was a carefree time. I managed to play in the street outside my friend’s house but apparently was not allowed to play in our street as my mother considered it common. But I was sent out to collect horse manure (for the garden) from the rag and bone man’s horse - a task that I did not enjoy being seen doing! I was very late to acquire distinct speech; my sister was asked to interpret what I was saying, and my mother took me (via multiple bus journeys) to see various specialists and speech therapists.
We had a wondrous dolls house for Christmas one year : likely 1950. It was bought second hand , kept down the cellar in the house, and my parents did it up, made curtains, furniture, etc., after we went to bed at night.
I had the large back bedroom. Hazel a smaller one in the centre of the house: there was also a small boxroom at the front, which Mum's cousin, Lloyd ,occupied at one stage when he was studying architecture in London. I remember one Christmas Eve when Hazel was sharing the double bed in my bedroom (probably with a bolster down the middle!) and we stayed awake and heard Dad come in to fill up our stockings . Christmas puddings had sixpences in them - and it was always us that found them! Nan and Grampy, my mother's parents, would always come for Christmas
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The Roof Garden theatre is no more
The annual family holiday in 1947 was at Felpham, Bognor Regis I vaguely remember being terrified going through a tunnel on a ghost train!!
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| Sunny weather in Felpham/Bognor |
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| .Slightly young for a ghost train?! Playing in the back garden of Herongate Road | |