Blood, Sweat and Beer

By Peter Williams

A tale of an innocent and naive little boy, born during post war austerity to a lower working class family. Told initially through the eyes of a toddler it goes on to describe in great detail his struggle to make sense of an ever changing world, through childhood and adolescence, into adulthood and beyond. Determined to live a life less ordinary the story is a roller coaster ride of adventure, love, violence, and tragedy. Desperately seeking happiness the journey leads through years in the army including a Northern Ireland tour, a life of biking, a bad marriage, serious injury and illness, all peppered with a liberal dose of irrepressible humour and honesty.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Williams
• Release date: Jun 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310394034

Peter Williams

Peter A Williams is Professor of Polymer and Colloid Chemistry and Director of the Centre for Water Soluble Polymers at the North East Wales Institute. Has published over 170 scientific papers and edited over 30 books. He is Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Food Hydrocolloids. His research is in the area of physicochemical characterisation, solution properties and interfacial behaviour of both natural and synthetic polymers. Recent work has been involved with the determination of molecular mass distribution using flow field flow fractionation coupled to light scattering, rheological behaviour of polymer solutions and gels, associative and segregative interaction of polysaccharides, development of polysaccharide-protein complexes as novel emulsifiers.

Book preview

Introduction

With strength I stride and pride unbroken

my head in fear will never turn.

When in my eye there grows a tear

it cannot flow so left to burn.

Leaving pain and grief unspoken

absorbing blows from each stone cast.

Breaking ties I once held dear

and catching dreams as they float past.

Peter Williams 2014

The world has changed incredibly during my lifetime, perhaps more so than any other period of sixty two years in history. I did my best to hang on to it's tail the best I could, at times failing miserably, until recently when I took the conscious decision to drop out of the rat race entirely.

Moving to a quiet area of Suffolk to earn my living as an artist, albeit with only moderate success, the pace of life slowed to a much more comfortable rate. I realised that now I had a wealth of quality time in which I could think so much more clearly, to contemplate my journey through life up to this point. More time to consider the people, events and experiences that moulded me into the person I became.

So many memories to cherish but perhaps not as long left as I would like to dwell on them. The more I thought about the past, the more clearly defined became the images flooding back to me. My life, although ordinary certainly had it's ups and downs. Periods of excitement, boredom, periods of happiness, hilarity and some of absolute misery. As I approached my sixty second birthday I decided to write it all down before I forgot it all.

My brothers and I have always been and still are very close. Although sharing the same early life, being brought up in the same circumstances in the same places, I am aware that their most memorable moments are very different to mine. They would have seen life from their own perspective, what seemed to be important to me and to have an effect on my life may have passed them by, some of my memories may even be incorrect. Whatever, I am writing this entirely from my own point of view, initially through the eyes of a toddler and eventually through the eyes of an ageing hippy.

There are a few gaps in some of my recollections so I have filled them in as best I can with a bit of 'artistic licence', I hope not wandering too far from the truth. Some of the people I write about have merely touched my life, others have ripped great chunks out of it, totally unaware of the effect they would have. They are not all portrayed in the kindest light. To save embarrassment to any of them or perhaps members of their families who may somehow get to read this, I have changed names where I think appropriate.

BLOOD, SWEAT AND BEERS PART 1

Chapter 1 Knella Road

So there I was, bent double with my head firmly stuck in a wooden railing fence, blood in my ears and a generous splodge of warm lard dripping down my neck. To make sense of this you had better read on.

The year was 1952. It was a time when cars were black and adults still wore hats. I made my unremarkable entry into this world on January 31st, at Peartree Farm maternity hospital in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire. I joined my two older brothers Roy and Graham and was soon followed by another named Malcolm, all four sons born within six years to Winifred and Samuel Williams.

I have a very strong memory of being parked in a large metal pram alongside a tall hedge. I must have been just a baby, and there being two women peering in at me making cooing noises. I don't know if it's normal to have a memory from this early in one's life, but it's very clear. I can still see the dark, bouffant hairstyles, the thick mascara and red lips typical of the 1950's. I'd recognise them again! I have a feeling I was parked outside the house in Peartree Lane, number eighty nine where my grandparents lived along with the rest of my mother's family the Welches. Mum had two full older brothers, Tommy and Harold Welch. There were also many half brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts from my grandparents' previous marriages, a family tree still far too complicated for me to understand even now. Believe me, I've tried.

My uncle Tommy had been the first of them to come to Hertfordshire from Suffolk, as a young lad looking for work in the mid nineteen thirties. It was the largest and most profound economic depression of the 20th century. Leiston, a small town in East Suffolk was suffering worse than most, but Tommy got on his bike and found work at the Anglia Match factory in Letchworth. He got word back to Suffolk that there were plenty of jobs and houses to be had in the area and the rest of the family soon followed.

Tommy's career at the match factory was short lived after he managed to blow himself up one day, returning home without any eyebrows and a completely blackened face, never going back.

Not long afterwards war broke out and he went into the RAF, probably a little safer. He was a talented footballer and also boxed a bit, often entertaining us later in life with fabulous stories of his exploits. He served with distinction, finishing up in the South African Air Force before completing his service.

In the early nineteen fifties the second world war was still very fresh in everyone's mind, the country still struggling to recover from the trauma. Food rationing was still in effect, the signs of destruction and rebuilding were everywhere and times were hard for working class families such as ours.

There was real poverty, the country was full of ex-servicemen who had been through hell and were trying hard to put their lives back together. It can't have been easy and I believe a lot of veterans struggled for the rest of their days to cope. Men who had seen horrific sights, men who had been forced to carry out horrific deeds. Nowadays they call it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but back then people just had to get on with it as best they could. It meant that there were many damaged men who received no help. Men who drank too much, had too short a fuse, displayed mood swings and became violent too easily. My father I believe was such a man, but one who did manage to cope in his own way.

It wasn't until many years later that he told me of some of the horrors he had experienced, it wasn't surprising that in my family's early days he did have a bit of a short temper and certainly always liked a drink.

Mum hadn't fared too well either, having lost her first husband to illness just before the war. She had a whirlwind romance with a sailor in the 1940's and became pregnant, so as you did in those days she quickly arranged to be married. This man she later described to me as the love of her life, but not until after my father died did she disclose this. Two weeks after the wedding her new husband was mortally wounded in battle and died in hospital soon afterwards. She also lost the baby shortly after it was born. All this before she reached the age of twenty three.

After the war, at the age of twenty seven she met and married my father Sam, a Lancashire man eleven years her senior who had come south looking for work. Knowing a bit of her history now, I'm not surprised that even as a child I could sense that the marriage was far from perfect and her bad moods and harsh temper were probably a result of the frustration of having to settle for less than her dreams. In later life Mum changed considerably for the better. Always intelligent she also developed a fabulous sense of humour and became a great personality. Someone we all looked up to and who we all still miss terribly to this day.

Of course we kids were never told this back story until very much later in life, after we had reached adulthood. We just tried hard to keep out of the way as best we could and if we were caught misbehaving we had to accept a walloping and get on with it. We didn't cry much, crying made things a lot worse for you. If you did cry, Dad would shout I'll give you something to cry about! and belt you again.

He had left school aged thirteen and struggled to read or write, this probably didn't help with his mood either. Always a bit of a rebellious child, Graham I think got the worst of it with me running a close second. I don't ever remember Roy taking much of a beating and recently mentioned this to him. He replied with the obvious answer that early on he had realised what would happen if he misbehaved, so rarely did. Malcolm being the baby of the family was thankfully forgiven more than Graham and I, though he did get his fair share.

As a child I was constantly in awe and often in fear of my father, but I will say this. He was the hardest working man imaginable and as honest as the day is long. Furthermore, if one of his family or any of his friends were in trouble, he would stand up for them no matter what. At just a wiry five foot eight inches tall I remember seeing him face up to men seemingly twice his size and very few people would mess with him. He set a good example to us boys in a lot of ways and I respect him for that, I just wish it hadn't hurt so much.

Knella Road is where we lived, the family having moved from a smaller property in Barnard Green in the weeks after I was born. A cast concrete house, later they were known as 'prefabs', cheap and quickly built temporary housing which didn't offer much in comfort or luxury. Ours was built in the nineteen thirties so by the time my parents moved in to number seventeen in 1952, it was already approaching its sell by date. Cold and damp with just a single working fireplace to heat the whole house as well as the boiler for hot water. There was a garden which backed onto a small grassy area known as the 'Back Fields' which was fringed with poplar trees.

I spent many a happy hour in the Back Fields, often alone lying on my back in the lush long grass which grew unkempt at the bottom of the trees. The sweet smell of fresh untainted grass, combined with a gentle summer breeze was intoxicating. I would stare up into the trees, listening to the silvery green leaves rustling and whispering above, watching the sparrows and finches darting to and fro, allowing my imagination to wander.

I had read about and been taught about exotic foreign lands rich with jungles and fauna. Places I could never ever hope to actually visit but which I longed desperately to see. I imagined what it would be like if the world wasn't concave as the globe I knew it to be, but convex so that it curved thousands of miles up into the sky. On a clear day I would be able to see Africa in the distance, emerald green jungles and burnt orange savannah, sparkling blue oceans edged with white sandy beaches. I wouldn't be able to make out the elephants or the lions in the jungles, or the great blue whales deep in the oceans, but I would know that they were there. That would be enough for me. I wonder what happened to that innocent, dreamy little child.

We had chickens at the top of the garden which mysteriously disappeared just before Christmas each year, and a vegetable plot which supplied a good proportion of our intake of groceries. If it wasn't in season then you didn't have it until it was. More exotic things such as oranges weren't available to us although you might get one wrapped up for Christmas if you were lucky.

Another very early memory I have is recorded by a small black and white photograph of me aged about two years old, standing in the garden laughing my head off and holding a booklet. I can remember that photograph being taken and although it can't be made out very well in the photo, I also remember the booklet which contained pictures of aeroplanes. It was a pamphlet from DeHavilland where some of my uncles worked, much later to become British Aerospace, which will become relevant later on in my story.

My next childhood recollection is not so pleasant. The front garden of seventeen Knella Road was kept nice and tidy by my father. Flowers and shrubs grew there as well as what in those days passed for a lawn, bordered by a copper beech hedge. Obviously people could see this part of the property from the street and he wouldn't want the passing public to get a bad impression of our family. So we boys were not allowed in the front garden to play, he put up a fence around it to keep us out.

The fence consisted of wooden railings kept apart by a couple of horizontal rows of tough, twisted metal wire. Well of course, when you are three or four years old you always want what you can't have and I wanted to get in that garden. One afternoon, after finishing at nursery school I put my head through the railings and tried to squeeze myself through. It was too tight, no amount of pushing and scrambling would get me further through than my neck. I gave up, only to find I couldn't get my head back out again either. So there I was, Dad due home from work any minute and me bent over on the front path with my head stuck in the fence. This was not going to end well. I began to shout and yell for help.

At that moment our next door neighbour, coincidentally also called Mr. Williams, walked up the path. He was a nice, jolly little chap and actually seemed to like children, a very rare trait in those days. He earned his living as a mobile green grocer, driving an old green single decker bus which had the seats removed and was fitted out with shelves containing all the fruit and vegetables. It smelled delicious in that bus and I was always fascinated by the big set of brass scales positioned near the door.

Mr. Williams tried to pull me out, he pulled hard and it hurt a lot but to no avail so he went around the back and got my Mum who was busy in the yard with the mangle. She tried putting lard on my head to encourage it to slip through, tugging so violently I thought my ears were going to get pulled right off, I certainly lost a lot of skin. No joy and then of course Dad arrived on the scene.

Pushing his bike up the path I heard him shout What the hell is going on here! as he shoved Mr. Williams, Mum and assorted neighbourhood kids out of the way. I could tell he was not pleased and he got quite rough as he also nearly ripped my head off trying to free me. I'd been stuck there for quite some time by now and was beginning to whimper as Dad, muttering under his breath went to the shed for his saw. The mood Dad was in I didn't know whether the fence was going to get mutilated or if I was to be decapitated. The pain was quite intense as that wood, vibrating and shaking with every cut of the saw, chafed against my young skin until finally the saw went through and Dad ripped the offending railing out of the way. I do believe that after that, the gate was left unlocked so that we were able to go in, as long as we behaved and didn't wreck the garden.

It wasn't just me who seemed to be so injury prone. Roy had suffered a broken leg as a toddler when he fell out of a chair. I clearly remember Graham trying to remove a tyre from a bicycle wheel with a long screw driver as we didn't have proper tyre levers. The paint encrusted old screw driver slipped and went straight through his hand, in through the palm between thumb and fore finger and out through the back of his hand. That involved a trip to the hospital and tetanus injections for poor old Graham.

Another time he was out on his own, bird nesting in the woods bordering a nearby dell. He climbed a tall tree to reach a nest he had spotted, hoping to liberate some eggs which he collected as a hobby. He fell out of the tree but instead of plunging to the ground, his foot got caught in the crook between two branches, breaking his fall but leaving him suspended by one leg, far from the ground. He hung there for quite some time, unable to free his leg and eventually passed out. Lucky for him, a young man named James Thomas returning through the dell from work, spotted Graham hanging there. He climbed the tree, freed the trapped leg and carried Graham down to safety, giving him a fireman's lift home. The story made the front page of the Welwyn Times and Hatfield Herald, fêting James as a young hero, well deserved recognition as he had very likely saved Graham's life. I believe they are still occasionally in touch.

Free at last from the front garden fencing, I was sent upstairs to the bedroom where I had to stay until it was time for my wash. Mum used to do us one at a time in the sink in the kitchen. When it was my turn I'd be lifted up to sit on the wooden draining board with my feet in a bowl of warm soapy water, the nearer the front of the queue you were, the warmer and cleaner the water. Whatever, the temperature always seemed to be close to freezing in that house so wash time was never something to look forward to.

Once clean it was up the stairs to bed. Two stairs up there was a small landing with a door which led into the toilet. The door could be locked by sliding a thumb plate across from the inside. I only ever locked it once and was unable to unlock it, the thumb plate being coated with layers of paint so that it didn't slide freely. My little five year old thumb didn't have the strength to push it. I was in there for what seemed like hours before finally getting released after Graham was ordered to shin up a drainpipe outside and squeeze through the toilet window. I'm still not too keen on locking toilet doors, Graham's not around that often nowadays.

Beside the toilet door on that little landing was another small window which faced down the street. Every night on my way to bed, I'd ask Dad to lift me up so that I could look between the flaking metal window frame, through the rippled glass which distorted everything, out to the bottom of the street where Peartree Stores could be seen, the large shop windows lit up at night. Being used to such a cold, drab, austere neighbourhood Peartree Stores seemed magical to me. Although fairly small by today's standards, they seemed to stock everything in there, an early version of a department store come supermarket. I always got a thrill going in there right up to when I worked in the butcher's department and bacon counter during the late 1960s, before I joined the army.

We didn't have a television in those days, just a radio that Dad had built. He worked at a little firm called Murphy Radio in the industrial area of town, where he wired up and soldered valve circuits and such like. I believe that he built the radio out of left over parts. It was pretty rudimentary. Housed in quite an elaborate cabinet, I know not where that came from, it had a long thin aerial that you connected to the metal window frame of the living room. You switched it on and the valves slowly began to glow and warm up. You then twiddled a knob until you picked up a signal and could listen to The Billy Cotton Band Show or The Navy Lark. That old radio was still working in the 1970's, installed in Roy's bedroom.

However back in the fifties the Welch family had a television. Uncle Harold hadn't gone off to war due to severe health problems, what's now known as Crohn's Disease, so while all the other men were away he had continued his employment at Murphy's where he progressed into a supervisory job and worked out of an office. The Welches also had a little car although I don't ever remember going in it, as well as a telephone and a fridge. All things that were lacking in the Williams household. We did occasionally get invited over to watch a bit of television which was exciting. Uncle Harold would sit you down in an armchair and bring you a glass of lemonade or orange squash with ice cubes in it, a real treat. Then, while you were engrossed in the television program he'd pop his false teeth into your glass or maybe a worm from the garden. What a card Uncle Harold was.

Throughout the 1950s and the 1960s Dad held down two jobs. By day he went by the grand title of 'Prototype Electronic Wireman' but by night, after a quick change of clothing he became 'Barman', at that point in time at a pub called The Beehive. This ensured enough money came in to cover the extra expense at Christmas and other unforeseen bills. It also meant a constant supply of free alcohol. Never having had a bank account in his entire life, the extra money Dad accumulated each week went into the bottom of a drawer in his bedroom and every summer the most exciting event imaginable occurred. We had an annual holiday.

As I said, mum was born and had been brought up in a little town on the Suffolk coast called Leiston with brothers Tommy and Harold, the countless half brothers, half sisters, step brothers and step sisters. A lot of the other part of the family still lived in Suffolk. Every year a vehicle and driver was hired, I assume it was a bloke Dad knew from the pub. The six of us, along with the Welch family, Grandad and their cat, piled in and set off for the holiday village of Thorpeness, a couple of miles from Leiston by the seaside.

Depending on how much was in the drawer, Dad would have hired either 'Valletta' which was a lovely old wooden house right on the beach at Thorpeness, or if funds were a bit tight we'd have a small, wooden bungalow, more like a shed situated up a little dirt track on the edge of the heath called 'The Uplands'. The Welches would have made their own arrangements and we each got Grandad for a week.

The journey in those days took several hours, no motorways or dual carriageways, just country roads. I loved the journeys, I never got the chance to ride in a car at all apart from those holidays so that in itself was exciting. It seemed exotic to spot different coloured buses or white ones en route, and of course there was the obligatory stop at a pub to break the journey and eat a picnic. Graham was always travel sick and usually Malcolm and Mum too, so it was a bit of a lottery when we piled in at the beginning of the journey as to which one was likely to hurl their breakfast all over you. The cat almost always got it but didn't seem to mind too much.

Within a few hours of arriving, with barely a chance to change out of our sick sodden clothes, cousins would begin to arrive on bicycles. There were a lot of cousins, I don't even remember all of their names but among others there were two Alans, differentiated by the taller being known as 'Long Alan'. There was a Glen, an Andrew, a Jeffrey and a Stuart. They would bring a few friends too so we were inundated with most of the boys from the area. Dad couldn't stand it so we'd all be turfed out to go swimming in the sea, or collecting golf balls from the local golf course, or go bird nesting. To make sure we kept out of Dad's way we didn't ever return until dusk, wonderful times.

Running wild, it was on one of these days that I spotted my first ever adder, slithering under a wild lupin bush as I trotted back alone from playing at Sizewell with my cousins. I always trotted, there were some very scary houses overlooking the cliffs and I was convinced they were occupied by evil.

Grabbing a stick I tried to prevent the adder from getting away so that I could study it a little longer but it soon escaped. Just as well really as I estimate I was only about six years old at the time, a bite could have been nasty. I can remember it as clear as day though and it was about thirty seven years until I saw another one, coincidentally at almost the exact same spot.

Other relatives would come over from the surrounding area too. Part of Mum's family were quite posh. Uncle Fred was the local headmaster and having lost his first wife Doris, had married an exotic Maltese woman called Zena. Our Great Aunt Mabel was supposedly quite rich. Dad didn't get on with any of them and they didn't think a lot of him either although there was one incident where he came into his own.

Most evenings the grown ups would make their way to the pub and we would hang around and play outside, with the occasional bag of crisps passed out to us. Trouble kicked off one night in 'The Vulcan' at Sizewell village when two of the local fisherman had a set too. Just coming back from the bar with a fresh round of drinks Dad couldn't believe this sort of behaviour was tolerated, the relatives just looking on uncomfortably as drinks, tables and chairs went over in the ensuing mayhem. This would never happen in his pub back home. Putting the tray of drinks down he stepped right in to the thick of it, grabbed each of the two main protagonists by their shirt fronts and separated them. I have a vision of my dad, a head shorter than each of those two tough fishermen, bellowing in their faces in his broad Lancashire dialect and telling them to behave or he'd bang their heads together. Everything settled down and Dad went back to his chair as if nothing had happened. There was silence until Fred piped up and said Sam, that was magnificent! and it truly was.

We didn't keep in touch much with that side of the family after the end of the 1960s. When Great Aunt Mabel died, Uncle Fred being the next of kin inherited all of her wealth. He was able to buy a posh apartment in Aldeburgh as a second home and took exotic holidays abroad from then on. He sent Mum £100 and also my Aunt Ena, Mum's step sister. It was a relatively disappointing sum because Ena had nursed old Mabel through the last few months of her life. A grand and selfless gesture but partly motivated I'm sure by the prospect of a decent inheritance at the end of it all. Ena told Fred he could stick his £100 'where the sun don't shine'.

A few years later Fred and Zena were in the departure lounge at the airport in Malta awaiting their flight home after another holiday. Zena went off to get some coffees and when she returned Fred was sitting where she had left him, but was stone cold dead. He'd had a massive stroke. I'm a great believer in karma, but it could have been worse if it had happened on the way out. At least he'd had another decent holiday before checking out for good.

Long Alan is still around but sadly most of the cousins also died over the years. There was at least one suicide and the other remaining boy I'm aware of has severe mental issues. He can be spotted around Leiston shouting at people or talking to himself, quite sad really although he does have a job helping out the fishermen on Sizewell beach. He has no idea who I am and I've no intention of telling him now that I also live in Leiston. I prefer my memories as they are.

I don't know if it was because Dad began to do a little better financially, or whether he was just plain sick of Suffolk but our holidays in Thorpeness came to an abrupt end when I was about eleven years old. Instead, that year when summer came we had a stay at a holiday camp on the Isle of Wight called Fort Warden. This was so different to anything we had experienced before. The countryside was breathtaking around there and so we walked a lot of it and in the evenings there was dancing and other entertainment.

Malcolm and I spent most of the holiday nurturing a nest of baby mice we found living near the dining rooms until we were spotted and someone came and exterminated them, very upsetting for me. My other strong memory of that holiday being The Rolling Stones record 'It's All Over Now' playing constantly, very appropriate for the mice anyway.

The following year we went to Southsea on the south coast of Hampshire. We stayed in a ghastly guest house where Dad had booked bed, breakfast and evening meal. It was awful. My only real memories are firstly a trip on the newly invented hovercraft across to Ryde on the Isle Of Wight, and secondly being given a piece of undercooked chicken for my dinner which was still bleeding inside. Mum didn't want to make a fuss so I ate what I could and left some. Another close shave I reckon.

Next there was a trip to Colwyn Bay in North Wales where Dad bought a family Rover railway ticket. We therefore spent most of the holiday chuffing about from village to town on a steam train. We must have gone to nearly every place on the map in North Wales, we certainly got our money's worth.

There was also a caravan holiday in Bridport and after that it was back to the Isle of Wight for the remainder of the family holidays that I remember, usually accompanied by Aunty Ena. She was married to a miserable old sod named Les who never spoke to anyone. He was a builder's labourer. I only ever remember him either eating enormous insurmountable meals in silence accompanied by bottles of stout, completely ignoring any visitors who happened to have called in or snoring loudly as he slept in an armchair. So I think these holidays were a bit of an escape for Ena. She was a right laugh but Dad wasn't impressed about her tagging along.

Chapter 2 Ludwick School. The Battle of the See-saw

Back to Welwyn Garden City in the 1950's. Mum always loved the movie stars of the day and was mad keen on musicals, theatre and dancing. I think she may have been a frustrated show girl, often bursting out into song. She had quite a powerful voice actually when she really let rip. A bit Maria Callas meets Julie Andrews, perhaps in another life she might have ended up on the stage.

In Welwyn Garden City in the early days there was a film studio on Broadwater Road, part of the Elstree Studios concern. By the nineteen fifties I believe the buildings were only being used as warehouses but many a film star had cut their teeth at Broadwater Road. Coming out of Welwyn Department Stores with mum after a bit of shopping one day, I was told to go over and help a lady who I remember was wearing an impressive fur coat and smelled lovely. She was struggling with lots of carrier bags, trying to load it all into the back of a taxi. I don't know how I was expected to help being just a nipper but did as I was told and went over.

After the lady smiled down at me and gave me a couple of things to put in, Mum was there in a flash to introduce herself, putting on her 'posh' voice she usually reserved for the doctor or headmaster. They had a brief chat before the lady in the fur coat got in the car and went off, leaving us with just the whiff of expensive perfume. Mum told me it wasn't a doctor or a head teacher but in fact Dinah Sheridan, who lived in Welwyn Garden City back then. I had been used! It made Mum's day though, I heard her refer to the glamorous Ms Sheridan several times while gossiping to the neighbours.

Back in Knella Road, at the back of our house I could dodge the chickens, hop across the rhubarb patch, scramble over our trodden down fence and enter the Back Fields where I would meet up with all the other kids from the neighbourhood.

On it's opposite side the field backed on to Peartree Lane and number eighty nine where my cousins John, Frances and Evelyn lived. If we yelled loud enough from our respective back bedroom windows we could converse with each other. Later, to help with privacy we developed a bit of a code which involved some skilful yodelling. I blame Frank Ifield for that. There was an old green see-saw out there too with holes in the woodwork which exposed the metal mechanism inside. I was told terrible stories of boys sticking their fingers in there and getting them chopped off, so I kept well clear of the see-saw usually. Usually, I say.

One day, one of the other kids from Peartree Lane came out to the Back Fields to play with me. He was Michael Jones whose family had recently moved to Hertfordshire from Wales, Pembroke Docks to be exact. His father was a docker and they were a rough family. Michael Jones was my age but twice my size, a tough kid who felt the need to assert himself in the new neighbourhood straight away. Being as skinny as a rake and with my arse hanging out of my shorts, I must have looked an easy target. We were standing near the see-saw and he wanted me to get on it with him. Having already related to him the horror stories about the dodgy digit accidents I refused to go near it.

Suddenly he grabbed my wrist and tried to shove my hand into the afore mentioned hole. In a panic I struggled and writhed about, trying to prevent the inevitable crippling. I was no match for Michael but did my best, throwing a punch at him and trying to get free so I could run for it.

My blows just bounced off him until, laughing loudly he gave me an almighty push which launched me backwards onto the ground. Fortunately for me but unlucky for Michael, in mid flight my foot accidentally shot out and kicked him hard in the eye. It was an absolute fluke, pure luck but I connected so hard he screamed out in pain and ran away crying. I decided to go home, it was nearly tea time and I didn't want to hang around in case Michael came back. I kept quiet about the fight and after tea I went upstairs to the bedroom where I liked to be alone to practice my drawing.

All of a sudden there was a thunderous racket at the front door. I looked down from the bedroom window and there was Michael Jones with his dad. Michael had a terrific shiner and a cut over his eye and his dad, a big man, was pounding his fist on the door violently. As soon as the door opened he let rip with a stream of broad Welsh venom, I didn't catch it all but there were a lot of words I hadn't heard before as well as a few I had. I did understand the Look at my son's face! Just look at it, boyo! and I feared the worst.

Well, I mentioned before about my dad being just five feet eight but that didn't stop him giving Mr. Jones a powerful shove in the chest and while he was off balance he got another and another. He got pushed all the way to the front gate and all the while my dad was talking quietly but sternly into his face. I'd never witnessed anything so scary. It was only when they reached the gate that Dad stopped pushing and raising his voice he shouted

"...and don't come back here to my front door threatening me or you'll get an eye to match that one your son has got!"

They left and I don't blame them. I knew what a good wallop from my dad felt like, I suspect Mr. Jones did too.

It looked like I'd got away with it. I didn't think I'd get bothered by the Jones boy again after that. Then I heard the footsteps on the stairs. Dad came in, sat on the bed and quietly asked me what had happened. I shakily explained how Michael had been trying to shove my hand in the see-saw to chop off my fingers, so I had been forced to fight him. Dad didn't say anything, he just got up and walked toward the door. He paused and picked up the piece of paper I had been drawing on, a horse's head I think. Quietly he said That's good that is before leaving the room, allowing me to return to my drawing.

Dad very rarely spoke much to us boys, let alone gave a compliment so I was a bit gob smacked and it's stuck in my memory. Thinking back I believe he was proud of me for standing up for myself but didn't know how to express it.

Around that time my older brother Graham was briefly hospitalised with a perforated eardrum. After treatment and a few days off he returned to school. One of the teachers at Peartree was a man called Mr. Gorman, a nasty piece of work who took the woodwork class. Graham, not being the best behaved pupil in the school that same day received a clout from Gorman, a clout which was a direct hit on his bad ear. The pain must have been excruciating. Graham screamed and ran out of the classroom, across Peartree Lane and all the way home. Mum was shocked and told Dad about it as soon as he got in from work. Dad, of course, was furious.

The following morning he went into school with us, searched out Gorman and pinned him up against the wall by the throat, putting the fear of God into him. That was my dad, no middle ground. Things were either right or wrong and if they were wrong you had better watch out.

That wasn't the end of the Gorman experience though. A while later when I was a pupil at Peartree, I was waiting in line in the corridor outside the woodwork class when Gorman came out, came straight over to me and said A quiet word with you son... then proceeded to slap the back of my bare legs so hard that the finger marks were still there after school. I was severely shocked and had no idea whatsoever what I'd done wrong. I think it was revenge and I also think Dad had gotten in trouble for physically threatening Gorman, although I don't know for sure but he didn't go back in and kill him like I had hoped he would.

Finances being so tight, pocket money had to be earned by hook or by crook. A trick we kids used to get up to was at Peartree Stores, about a hundred yards away at the bottom of our road. We would liberate an empty lemonade bottle or similar from the crates out the back and, after waiting for a busy period one of us would go in to the store and queue up at the checkout. The very busy checkout girl would give you threepence for returning the bottle, you'd politely say 'Thank you', pick up the bottle and walk out. The next one of us would do the same thing with the same bottle. They never seemed to catch on and we could keep it up until we had enough money to share out between us for sweets.

Often my cousin John or I would be asked by our Grandad to nip up the road to Tom Vinnicombe's house to put a bet on. Old Tom used to be a bookie's runner and lived a few doors up the road in Peartree Lane. One day John and I had made enough cash from the lemonade bottle scam and decided we would invest some of it by putting a bet on for ourselves, telling old Tom it was for Grandad of course. We pinched the daily paper and sat in the back fields choosing our horses, one each.

I can remember it as clear as day, my horse was called Crocus and blow me down it came in at twelve to one. At sixpence each way it paid me out nine shillings including my stake! More money than a six year old could ever dream of having. From the look on Tom's face when we collected my winnings we suspected that he had probably pocketed the stake for himself and not placed the bet, not expecting my horse to have a hope of coming in. The grumpy old bugger therefore had to cough up my cash from out of his own pocket. We didn't push our luck with old Tom a second time.

Of course we weren't all the same age, there were older kids in the neighbourhood. Some were from really rough families. There was one lad called Kenny who lived up the road with his mad old German grandmother and a black dog called Munnie. The dog didn't have much of a life and Kenny didn't fare much better, but he loved that dog and used to steal a tin of pet food whenever he could from Peartree stores and share it with Munnie.

My older brother Graham fell in with Kenny and some of the other bigger kids, a fearsome gang they made. Opposite Granddad's house in Peartree Lane was 'The Dell' which was an area of wasteland with a pond in it, renowned for being the place to drown unwanted kittens in a sack. To one side of the Dell was Peartree farm, a group of decaying buildings and lock-ups as well as the hospital maternity ward where I had been born.

One of the buildings housed Peartree Boys Club and this became the target of regular break-ins. I would be told to keep watch as Graham and the others shinned up a drain pipe and disappeared through a conveniently left open window. There wasn't much of value in there but the 'tuck shop' was easy pickings and the lads would reappear with pockets stuffed with things like Mars bars, packets of Spangles and boxes of Holland toffee. Real treasure! I'd be given a bar of fruit and nut to shut me up and the other lads would sit in the back fields and eat their ill gotten swag until they felt sick.

So it was likely that we four young boys from one of the poorest of families, growing up in this rough environment could easily have taken a wrong turning or two and turned out to become wrong 'uns. Indeed many of the other boys ended up as criminals, alcoholics or drug addicts later in life. Thankfully and surprisingly none of my family went too far off the rails.

There was one boy of my age who lived opposite who had severe mental health difficulties. His name was Lewis. I didn't understand at all what was wrong with him. All I knew was that he was very unpredictable and prone to extreme violence when you least expected it. Being the same age, I was encouraged to play with him as often as possible, nobody else in the street would go near him. This I didn't like but of course I did as I was told. I expect his and my mum were friends. I was always pleased though, to see him loaded into a 'special' pale blue mini-bus and go off to a 'special' school. The bus was full of similar looking mad individuals gaping out of the windows. I found it frightening and a little distressing.

I was rewarded occasionally by Lewis's mum as I was his only friend in the street. She once gave me a 'bought' cake which had white icing on the top and a layer of sweet coconut glued into it with sugar. This was a rare luxury and my mouth was drooling as I crossed the road from Lewis's house, intending to show my cake off to my brothers before I scoffed it in front of them.

Just then Lewis, who had somehow escaped his house, ran up behind me and hit me hard on the back of the head. So hard I fell down in the middle of the street. Looking up I saw Lewis pick up my cake and bolt it down so fast it was gone before I could get back up. I was distraught, inconsolable as I made my sad way across the road to number seventeen. That is my last memory of Lewis, I don't know what eventually happened to him but in the nineteen fifties the prognosis wouldn't have been good. I think I'd rather not know.

There were good times too. I remember one summer a man called Ivor coming to the house. He worked for the council and was to carry out essential maintenance on all the old houses in the street. They certainly needed it. I was fascinated with his big canvas bag of tools. Saws, planes, hammers, spanners, you name it he had it in there and everything had that smell of wood and oil. Noticing my interest, and not noticing I was trying to swipe his small block plane for myself, he got me to start helping him. I would hold pieces of wood steady while he sawed them, pass tools while he was up a ladder or hold a set square while he marked an angle. I started to really enjoy myself and couldn't wait for the next morning when he arrived and we could continue work. Once he finished in our house he went next door to start work there, accompanied by his faithful apprentice.

I'll never forget that summer. I worked with Ivan on all of the houses right up to the end of the road where it crossed Ludwick Way and was gutted when he said I couldn't come any further. But he then pulled out of his bag the biggest bar of chocolate I had ever seen and also a two shilling piece. Wages! I took the chocolate home and showed it to my very jealous brothers, then scoffed the lot. I hid the two bob bit, or else it might have ended up in the gas meter. I think this was the time that sparked my lifelong interest in woodwork, D.I.Y. and all things crafty, as well as a passion for chocolate.

By this time I had left the nursery school and was a pupil at Ludwick Primary. The nursery was adjacent to the school so each day I would toddle off down Ludwick Way holding my little brother Malcolm by the hand, drop him off at the nursery before going in to school. I would see him through the fence at play times and then collect him and we'd walk home together after school finished. It was about half a mile or so to walk, not far, but imagine children doing that nowadays.

Each year when Autumn came, more importantly so did conker season! Outside number seventeen Knella Road grew two massive horse chestnut trees, one each side of the road. Further up the road about a hundred yards away, grew two more. The kids from that end of the street would gather conkers from their trees, we would harvest our conkers from ours. We would get a heavy stick and hurl it as high as we could up into the tree, then watch as it rattled it's way back down through the branches bringing with it a shower of conkers. Their spiny shells would split as they hit the road beneath and we would gather the rich brown conkers from within. Piercing them through with a knitting needle and stringing them with an old shoe lace, we'd play conkers amongst ourselves with some of the smaller ones, but the larger and best looking ones would be saved for competition. Our end of the street would take on the top end of the street in contests which we all took deadly seriously. Roy was our captain, Roy's best mate Bobby Smith was theirs. There were various methods of hardening the conkers off such as putting them in a hot oven for a couple of minutes to bake them, or soaking them over night in vinegar. Of course this was regarded as cheating. I believe the conker trees are still there to this day, although the houses we lived in have long since been pulled down and twice as many modern ones built to replace them.

I mentioned about the house in Knella Road being cold