Summer Holidays.

Once upon a time there was a photo of me standing in a fountain wearing a knitted swimming costume.From what I can remember I must have just got into the fountain as the costume wasn't waterlogged yet,I must have been very young at the time cos I had blonde curls,ahhhh.Just off the south coast there be an island,Hayling Island and I'm certain this is where that photo was taken.For many years mum and I used to spend our holidays there.
There were only two ways onto the island,one by a narrow gauge railway over an iron bridge and the other by bus over an old wooden one.This bridge was so old and dilapidated that passengers had to get off the bus and allow it to cross before themselves crossing over and rejoining the it.Two things on that island have stayed with me,the first being a pond with a small mound and tree in the centre.It was called Monkey Island,don't ask me why,there were never any monkeys on it.The second was a convent school that I'm sure mum was at when she was young.She certainly knew some of the older nuns and the houskeeper and her seemed to be friends.Wether the school is still there I don't know,I don't suppose Monkey Island is.I went back there once with my ex-wife,the school was there then,I didn't go in though.
There were some holiday camps on the island,four I think,and we stayed at three of them  over the years.They had rows of wooden huts for the campers with,from what I can remember,two beds,a table and a wash basin. I would lay there listening to people passing by,on their way out for the evening I suppose.We ate in a large wooden building,there was a smaller one that was used for a clubhouse and bar.There was a swimming pool and bicycles for hire,but not much else,but then it was 1948 and only a year or so after the war ended.
I have a memory of us going to the theatre,it must have been a matinee performance,I would have been too young for an evening one.I don't know if it was an out of town warm up,it couldn't have been a touring production.It was "Call Me Madam".I remember mum and I singing "Your just in love"for days after.
I also remember visits to Portsmouth Navy Day and Arundel Castle.mmmm. 

Words,words,words.

My first school was a nursery school,the only thing I can remember about it was being hit on the head with a wooden spade by Chris Webb.A hard nut even at that age.I can't think of anything I learned there,other than to keep out of Chris' way.
My mother taught me to read at home,we sat on her bed or in the park reading a book or the daily paper.I don't remember the cat sitting on the mat,should I.I remember a childs bible,should I.
The primary school I went to had a small library but they were childish books,the kind I'd read and put aside.It was the same problem when I moved up to the junior school,the books I wanted to read were for the boys a year or so ahead of me.So mum and I went to the local library and got me a library card,oh yes!If I were careful I could sneak into the adult section,okay,some of the books were a bit beyond me.I didn't know what all of the words meant,but they had a dictionary.Later I learned that mum had been told off for teaching me to read too early,or the wrong way.How dare she!
Where we lived it could be difficult for a boy who carried books in his satchel and not a catapult or a knife,or if he preferred cricket to football,tennis to boxing.And when it came to music,well,a boy without a father,not quite the words used,shouldn't listen to Shostakovitch,Glenn Miller or Stan Kenton.Even if he did listen to Chuck Berry and Little Richard as well.
By the time I was in the senior school I new my place at home,at school and on the street.And all I remember is trying not to remember.

Talkin bout my g g g generation.

I was a war baby,born under Scorpio,the illegitimate son of a laundress.Illegitimate,fine word ilegitimate.(does that ring a bell)She,a fallen women and I her fatherless son,were the poor relations of a working class family,and were made to feel it.Even in the 20th century the working class had it's own class system.
My mother worked a 5 day week with a weeks holiday during the summer and we spent what time we had together in our worlds.Film,music,poetry,books,our worlds.My education,if you could call it that,was a state secondary education,meant to fit me for blue collar work.
Like many of us kids from that time and place I was a child of the cinema,our world was bounded by cinemas,there were 7 within walking distance.If you could afford a tupenny bus fare there were another 5 within reach,although 1 was a cartoon and news cinema and another was renown for being the only place you could see French films.I think it was there I saw Rififi for the first time.
Saturdays most of us would be at the"saturday morning pictures".A tanner would get you a couple of cartoons,a serial and a main feature.We went in noisy kids and came out heroes and villians.(now that must ring a bell )
You could fit 4 films into a Sunday and visit only 1 cinema,or 2 if you wanted.The Granada,
Sutton would show 2 films in the afternoon,old films,westerns, musicals,thrillers,war films,then 2 newer films later.You could stay there,cross the road to the Curzon or walk down the road to the County.The County was a picture palace,with a flight of ,what I remember to be marble steps,up to the entrance.I remember a school friend and I being escorted from behind the County by a policman,an ear in each hand.We were under age and had tried to bunk in to see Dracula.
I could leave this out,but once you start something like this,hey.I was fifteen,just left school,and it was a Sunday.I was woken early and told ,"your mums dead",then left on my own.I don't remember much about that day,but I do remember going to the cinema that afternoon.A child of the cinema.

In Our Time.

One of my favourite radio programmes is In Our Time,presented by Melvyn Bragg.
Author,biographer,radio/television presenter.Uncle of Billy and inventor of the card game.: )This programme delves into things as diverse as Art to Algerythems, and Zen to Zoroastrianism and anything between.
Todays was about imaginary numbers,a vital tool in understanding the world,from aerodynamics to radio waves,they said.I come from a working class family and had to leave school at fifteen so never learned any higher mathematics,only the three Rs.Now the idea that if you had a mathematicle problem with no solution but could introduce an imaginary number that would solve that problem seems odd to say the least.
If during a school exam I had slipped in an imaginary number to help answer a long division question I dread to think what the teacher would have said or done.I know what would have happened had I still been at the catholic school,a bunch of keys would have whizzed across the room,straight at my head.And you can't teach a nun much about aerodynamics.

HOW HOW HOW

Please help me I'm drowning,not waving.
How do I block family blogs,fluffy bunny blogs and god blogs from my screen.
I look about me for an interesting blog but in moments they decend on my screen.Happy,smiling mums and dads with their 3.5 happy,smiling children.Bunnies,pussies,puppies,now I love animals,but they have their place and it's not ,unbidden,on my screen.And as for those serene faces with their golden rays of love,whatever it is.There should be a rule,for every one of them there should be a devil worship or atheist or goth blog slipped in.

A lost weekend.

No  visit to Anglesey this weekend,everyone there has gone down with the Welsh Lurgy,very nasty.Mind you,I've picked up a cold and it's gone straight to my chest so I'm not 100%.

A little light reading.

I dipped into Alistair Cooke's The Americans this afternoon and came upon a paragraph in which he looks forward to a time when Britain is only one of the United States of Europe.When,as he says,the half hour television evening news round ups would then carry on the spot reports of not only a murder in Chelsea and a disappearance in Dorset but also a kidnapping in Berlin,a strike in Stockholm,a fire in a hotel in Lyons,a power failure in Oslo,a protest march in Brussels,a bank robbery in Genoa,a drug arrest in Amsterdam,a shoot out inMadrid.
After watching this evenings news I wonder,where ever he is,will he know how right he was.And how does he feel about Britains future,separated  still from the rest of Europe by those few miles of water.