At Forster Park Primary School, walking distance from the prefab I was born in at No.1 Baudwin Road, we had a massive playground great for football, cricket, netball, rounders and conkers in the Fifties.
As with the wonderful childhood park in slightly longer walking distance from the school, we always called it ‘Foster Park.’ We were working class. Fifteen years earlier our dear Dad – ‘Ernie’ – was in the Chindits in the Burmese jungle. Imagine that. Malaria; bad stomach for life.
I played football for Foster Park in embarrassingly purple shirts, and cricket too. Took 8 for 3 once. I passed the scary 11-plus exam but three old snobs in robes and bald heads at Brockley County Grammar School turned me down, sneeringly. Been a rebel ever since. The school is now defunct. Very sad.
At 11 I caught two buses – the 124 and the 36 or 36B – to South East London Technical School in, first, St Johns and then New Cross, welcomed on day one by a very loud headteacher – Mr Klee – with patches on his elbows.
Dear Mum and Dad assumed I needed a trade. Wrong. To this day I have to have two goes at turning on a light. The only thing I was proud of was making a cruet stand for salt and pepper pots, for Mum.
I was still pretty good at cricket and football. Bowled Jim Laker spinners for London schools at Eton, and Millwall snapped me up at 16. Offered me ‘terms’ but I was politically belligerent in those days and leaped – or crept – into journalism instead at the dear old Kentish Independent in Wellington Street, Woolwich.
You must be bored by now so let’s zoom forward 60 years – leaving out the cheeky piece on Sandie Shaw; Finland, for once; the Valley campaign; and even my literary inspiration George Orwell – and cover life since Covid.
Thanks to synchronicity and, more precisely ‘Dean of Dean Street’ – Dean Ford at The Modern Agency (https://themodern.agency) – I’ve managed to bash out five fun books of varying standards, and a catchy little song called Up Foster Park (on YouTube).
DoubleSpeak 