A different rabbit warren to explore

Since last week, I've been involved in yet another research project, this time on a different subject altogether, but before I get into that, I'll give a couple of updates on the boat/faring front.

As most of my European friends and family are aware, summer is unofficially over; unofficially because we're all meant to be taking our holidays now and enjoying basking in wall-to-wall sunshine, ambling through the countryside on long walks, eating al fresco meals and, in my case, faring gently along canals dappled with warm sunlight between the overhanging trees. Instead, most of us have pulled out our winter woollies, found our wellies and are putting on our macs every time we step outside.

The consequence is that preparations for our departure have stalled and we'll definitely be waiting for some light at the end of the rain tunnel before we cast off. S'la vie, as we've learnt to say.

Anyway, apart from making a replacement panel for my Vereeniging's exterior (the old one was suffering from rot) and almost finishing a new hatch for the Hennie H, outside work is far too wet to contemplate. Instead, I've been busy burrowing down a new rabbit hole. I haven't finished the project I was writing about last time by any means, but I'd committed to write a piece for an anthology I've contributed to for the last few years. As time was marching on I thought I'd better get on with it, so I've made a start and, as with my other project, digging into the past has got me thoroughly distracted. 

In this case, it's my own past. What some of you may not know is that I grew up in London. Like my brothers and sister, I was born in a clinic in Avenue Road near Regents Park. My parents were living in a flat in Charlbert Court off Allitson Road, so it was the nearest hospital to their home. 

Charlbert Court

We were all born there, but being a family of six in a small flat became untenable so after I was born, my parents took the last ten years of a lease on a house off the famous Abbey Road of Beatles fame. At the time, it was a remarkably cheap option; in the post-war fifties, even St John's Wood was a place with council flats and ordinary folk. In our road, this meant that we lesser mortals rubbed shoulders with the other half, including actors, bankers and aristocracy. 

But in 1967, the lease expired and the rents for leasehold properties were set to quadruple or more. Buying or even renting in the district my parents had lived in for twenty-seven years was impossible*. We not only moved; we moved out of London completely. 

Springfield Road

For the anthology contribution, I decided to write about my memories of living in our house from the time I was three, which is when I first remember anything at all, until I was eleven in 1966. It was a unique period for a number of reasons and so I started doing some fact checking, a process that led me to a fascinating website about St John's Wood. 

The menu for the site allows you to focus on specific streets, so when I looked up ours, I was pleased to find a brief biography of the actress, Adrienne Corri, who lived down the road from us. We didn't know her, but we and everyone else in the road knew her Bassett hound, George, because he was always escaping, a fact that wasn't in her bio. 

However, I was hoping to find something about Dick Bentley, a radio presenter, who also lived there and with whom my sister and I sometimes chatted when we took our family dog for a walk. He was such a nice man. His biography was missing, which was a disappointment, but because the site invited former residents to share their memories by email, I sent off a message asking if his story could possibly be added.

The house where actress, Adrienne Corri lived is the
first white one on the right

Well, imagine my surprise when not just one, but two emails came back almost instantly asking me to write about the years we'd lived there and whether I would like to contribute something about Dick Bentley as well. I then got into email exchange with one of the writers, a woman who lived in the road that backed onto ours. She told me she'd written about her own childhood, so naturally I had to look it up.

It was such a delight to read her story. So many of her memories and experiences corresponded with and matched ours. She shared information about the local shops we all went to and the businesses that came calling; she wrote about the routines of their household, many of which were similar to ours and how children simply played in the street or in each other's front gardens. 

Nevertheless, those were the days when parents were a good deal stricter about table manners and behaviour than they are now and I laughed when she recounted how she'd had to sit for hours on her own with a plate of cold rice pudding because she refused to eat it. I had to do the same with a plate of macaroni and green beans until a lodger staying with us rescued me with a bottle of Heinz salad cream. Later, I found I preferred mayonnaise to salad cream and to this day I put it on almost all my food.

Of course, many of my memories will be inaccurate and possibly rose-tinted, but I've been chatting to my sister and in principle we agree on most things. Sadly, I cannot include all our recollections in the piece I've written as there's a word limit, but I am now so inspired I'm thinking of developing it into a full length memoir, which will need even more digging. Isn't research a wonderful thing? 

Well, that's it for this time allemaal. I don't have any personal photos to share of my old stamping ground, but those I've added are screenshots from Google maps to give some context to the post. Meanwhile, there are always boats. 

*These days, a house in Springfield Road would cost in the region of six million pounds. Yes, totally unreal, isn't it?