I haven’t changed a lot. I am still perky. In case you are confused, I am the one on the right, my brothers being the others boys sitting on the canon. They are the ones without an ice cream. I believe it was my birthday.
I was born just after World War II. If you peer hard enough, you can just make out the warships in the background of the photograph. My father was a shipwright in Devonport Dockyard.
My parents were bombed out five times during the war and eventually moved
across the water to Cornwall. I was born in Cornwall, the youngest of three boys.Our childhoods were full of love and caring and church and God.
As soon as they were able, my parents moved back to Devonport and hence, my early years were spent playing in bombed ruins, making fires, kicking a ball, and generally living a free and scavenging life.
On Sundays all changed. My brothers and I sang in the choir and we
went to Matins and Evensong. In the afternoon we all attended Sunday School. I was excused, when I had scarlet fever and put into an isolation hospital for six weeks. But my mother would brook no ordinary excuses.
Kerr Street Primary School was not a centre of learning and in no way prepared one for academia. I remember the Luscombe twins coming into school without shoes and Mr Parsons and I searching the PE cupboard for plimsolls. We never saw the plimsolls again.
I remember Miss Lyons going to the cupboard for a sip of something reviving. I remember Miss Clark stroking my bottom, as I stood beside her, when we were rehearsing a song for morning assembly. I was in love with Miss Clark. I instinctively knew not to say anything about these matters to my parents or the vicar or other authority figures.
It was a wonderful childhood.
It was a wonderful childhood.