Reminiscing
I'm in a house alone in SE London at present having a very peaceful afternoon.
A friend I made via one of the forums has got Woody a ticket to see England play at Wembley tonight so she and her hubby and their sons plus another friend have all gone up there, leaving me alone in their wonderful house to get on with my memory books. Well you can see, I'm not doing that!!!
We had to collect her friend and on the way passed where I grew up till I was 7. I was amazed by what I could remember and what things have changed and what things haven't. I could still remember the way from my house to the school and station and different landmarks and shops!! I left there in 1969!!! Firstly, we found my infant school. I couldn't believe the mobile classroom I went to in 1969 is still there!!! It looks so ramshackled that I'm amazed it is still used as a classroom. I remember that was the last classroom I was in before we moved to Kent and we had a teacher who had had polio and she used to sell us biscuits at breaktime to raise funds for children with polio in Africa.
I could remember the fear of looking from the infants playground into the 'big' junior school and today that 'school fear' came flooding back!!! I could also see the part that used to be the preschool and remembered running round the corner of the playground from this mobile hut each playtime to see my sister in the preschool. We used to touch each other's fingers through the chickenwire fence!!! How sweet!!!
We then went round the corner to my old house. It looked the same but the front garden looked so much smaller than I remembered it and I couldn't help wondering if it was still the same brickwall there that my dad built as it looked quite old.
We then drove up from my old house passing the postbox but the telephone box has gone now and into the road where we got the bus and then drrove upto the station. The old blue policebox has gone now and the railway station doesn't look as if it has been painted since 1969 but round the corner the hardware shop was still there!!!
We then went up to Beckenham and even though the area has been changed into Homebase, I could instantly recognise from the shape of the lake that it was Peter Pan's Pool which used to have a helter skelter and other fun fair type things in plus dad used to take me out in a rowing boat on this lake!! I can remember it used to have some sort of charcoal/woody /dirty area at the back where Homebase is.
It was quite mindblowing seeing all these things again and was amazed at what memories it brought back!!
Now back to actually doing the memory books instead of harping on about it here.