Sleepless at Junction 9

Yawn! sure I`m up and its 03-41 in the morning, Iv`e been up an hour so far! I guess I`m becoming an insomniac or perhaps I just can`t sleep :o)) maybe I no longer need so much sleep who knows? When I think of the times, as a young man, I wished that
I didn`t :o(( (be careful for what you wish for in life, as it may come around and bite you in the ass)

My new office chair is a success (thanks family for the superp present) and soooo very comfortable, maybe too comfortable, perhaps that could be a reason for my sitting here and drivelling on at this time? Naaaah I doubt it. In my recent posts I have been struggling to find anything to write about ( I guess thats obvious to the one person who is listed as still reading my blog and to whom I am now sort of apologosing I guess|) having expended my full repertoir of anecdotes, So I will doas my only ever positive school report said "must try harder" and do so!

As a kid ( sixty years ago) I was out on the streets, until I decided to go home, it could have been hours, days, or even weeks, My mother had died when I was seven years old and it was downhill from then on. Without boundaries and little control! my father whom I loved dearly worked full time and my grandfather at age seventy three lived with us and couldn`t control me, in fact neither could anybody else even the local police (unless they let me work with their horses) couldn`t keep me in the station when I was awaiting release to either my dad or my Grand fathers custody. I was a "scroat" I guess! but at age seven/eight, who knows what they really are?

The sort of things that used to get me into trouble was, usually kid-like and not too distressfull for the main populace but sometimes fairly close, like having found a large spool of machine twine I proceeded meticulously to link all the knockers of the house doors in my street togeather, across the road at waist height! it was three in the morning, and I had managed to get 90% of the way down the road before a police car finally cruised down it, and soon had all the houses awake, I couldn`t go home that day as the police, in fact the whole street were still looking for me and after my blood, so I stayed in an old now disused underground air-raid shelter in a local park, that I had broken into (always re-concealing my means, of entry for further use) where I would sleep in any number of matress free bunks where the springs would creak all night and leave rust marks on my clothes. My Father would search for me but in the back of his mind I knew that he expected me to be OK as I was very self sufficient even at that young age, sure he worried but I would emerge eventually hungry and cold if unrepentant.

I used to steal some food from the deliveries to staff canteens left outside the gates of "Hovis" the bread makers or I would break into an old store that housed the tins of fruit they used in their manufacturing when they were closed, I could only do this when the tide was low and in the darkness I could walk along the beach (mud) to eventually reach the base of the thirty foot or so wall, where a cracked expansion joint (I now guess) would allow me to climb up and gain access! often I have fallen asleep in the warm confines of the fruit shed only to find that the whole factory was alive and working, when I attempted to leave covertly, in the morning.

I was always a good swimmer having had lessons at a very young age, when my mum had taken me to the local pool for private lesson with the attendant? we used to call the pool the penny bare-bums as costumes weren`t necessary? and there used to be an old man who sat in the showers and gave out threepenny bits to all the boys? Mmmmmm when I think of it now, I go cold. He never did anything else but sit naked in the shower and give out his bag of threepeny bits before leaving????

As a result of being a good swimmer, I used to swim in the river thames at battersea and Albert bridge! Bearing in mind that this is a fast flowing river, full of crap, moored barges (Lighters) and with a high level of river traffic (at that time, as the docks were still active, The "Phillip Mills" waste paper company, based at Battersea bridge, lighter men would row immense barges full of waste paper out to the middle of the river to await the tugs collections on the tide) I would walk over the bridge and wait for the rush hour traffic to stop in the congestion on the bridge, I chose the buses usually, end to end was best, so that I had a substantial audience and then I would hop onto the handrail and tightrope walk along it for about twenty seconds and when I thought I had got enough people watching me, I would pretend to fall off the bridge and into the river (what I actually did was land on a narrow walk way just out of sight and run back across the bidge and on to other "adventures", while the conjestion grew worse on the bridge as the buses emptied, while people clamered to the rail to see what had happened to me. I was eventually caught out and fell the thirty feet into the cold water having to swim ashore (unfortunately I was mid span of the bridge at this particular time, and managed to do so in time to run up the beach and away from the approaching police boat that had been called, Nobody jumped in to save me thank god! I guess they saw that I was doing OK or maybe they thought serves him right). Incidentally I remeber my grandfather telling me that if ever I found a body in the river I should take it to the Chelsea side as they paid more money for its recovery? (strange how one remembers such things?).

My grandfather was a great cricketer and a regular coach at the Gover cricket school, and als a team member of the surrey colts,in his day, but his main love was boxing, he had survived three major wars , both world wars and the crimea war, fairly unscathed and was a tough cookie as I found out when I was regularily invited to spar with him! he used to believe that,if I didnt know how to take a punch I didnt deserve to give one, and boy did I take a few while I learned to duck, dive, bob and weave, and feignt, I don`t remember landing may blows, as he always managed to block me, and even that hurt! I never regret any of his instruction as it has stood me in great stead in later life.

In his advancing years, my grandfather, having been a carpenter and joiner all his life (except when he was groom in the RFA Royal field artillery" and a driver of field guns (horse driven) he took a job as a "lamp man" on various road works where he would be the watch-man and tend the parafin lamps, that kept the holes in the various locations safe for passing pedestrians. For this duty he would always have a canvas hut and usually a couple of scaffold planks on piles of bricks or concrete blocks, forming seats for the attendant day staff (navvies usually) to sit on, whilst he made them tea. I loved to visit him and just sit quietly listening in the night air, in awe, to his stories about his experiences in the Wars, and life in general, he used to make me tea and sometimes on special occasions he would cook sweet Chestnuts in the brazier which I still love today. Even today I have logged away in my innermost senses the smells of the parrafin and the work clothes that I used to curl up in for the night, which when I smell them again, immediately brings back these memories!