South Riding 2 - My First Home

Colliers Wood was where I lived my first 8 years but I have hardly been back. The purpose of the journey is to give me time to wander the streets that bounded my world as a young boy: visiting the schools and parks and remembering random events.

But first the ugliest building in London (looking like it is soon to be demolished as this picture of part of it shows). It near to the bottom of my old street. When I was a child I remember the land being the home of giant rolls of paper from mills along the Wandle. I have a picture in my mind of high red flames and black smoke when they caught fire: one of my random memories. Any way the paper is a connection with where I live now (I have already mentioned John Dickinson a few times in this blog and will probably do so again).

This journey is all about pulling together threads that link places of my life, looking for continuities. Sometimes there are strange links that are almost invisible.

This is a picture of my first school. I look at it now and I think it is rather wonderful. It is the equivalent of late Victorian post-modernism in the way it has a little touch of Gothic mixed with a bit of Arts and Crafts. It was built in 1897 and designed by H P Burke Downing, who in 1905 built a school in Bexhill. Bexhill was the town my parents retired to - a tiny, invisible , inconsequential thread.

It is a GradeII listed building but no longer a general primary school. Instead it is a Muslim school teaching up to GCSEs and training missionaries. It was quite interesting that they were quite suspicious of me wandering around, looking closely at the building, taking pictures and challenged what I wanted. Once I explained, we had a really friendly chat and I actually like it that the building is still a school and has not been turned into apartments.

My house backed onto the school. You can see the wall at the end of the ten foot way, in this photo. The bricks at the top form an apex. One of our rites of passage was to walk along the top, keeping balance with both feet angled at 45º. At first I could only do it by crawling but as I grew a little bigger and bolder I managed to stand upright. I can still remember the sense of achievement, probably a greater sense of satisfaction than anything I achieved in the classroom.

The house I lived in doesn't look a lot different apart from the double glazing, door and driveway for the car. I looks like a 30s house but was built in 1950 (my grandfather gave the building plot to my father as a wedding present). The War probably meant that new housing followed the old templates.

Looking at it I start to remember more. The journey is working - this is what I wanted to happen.

Directly opposite is the old Scout Hall (now Royal Naval Association), called Atlasta Hall because the fund raising took a long time. My grandfather was on the committee that finally got it built. I used to walk along the pathway alongside the hall an into the garden of my grandfather's house. To me it was a place of wonder because it was full of so much stuff: bits of radios, masses of radio equipment, a roll top desk that I loved because it was full of secret drawers (well secret in my imagination), war time binoculars and a flying suit.

I used to spend a lot of time talking to my grandfather (who everybody called Pop). In my mind he looks like Mr Pickwick with a bald head, small round glasses and a comfortable paunch. The shock is that when I was born he was the same age I am now but I can only think of him as an old man pottering around in his garden or with his radios.

Perhaps that is what I have become an old man pottering around with his running and computer.