First Memories.

My first memory is of rushing water, I am looking down a large brick built manhole with no cover and the water is rushing by about six feet down from where I am.  I am about 3 years old and dressed in a one-piece sky blue romper suit with a hood and I have come out to play on my tricycle around where we live. We are the Hart family, Bob, Barbara and me Stephen; we are living in a new council house on a disused Royal Naval Air station in West Lancashire. All around council houses are being built and it is a childs adventure playground. We have just moved from a disused nissen hut that had been converted by the local council to house families. It is midwinter, there has been quite heavy snow for the last few days, now it is starting to thaw and this is draining away in the newly laid storm drains. I do not see any danger; I am enthralled by the sight and the noise of the gurgling torrent of melt water that is flowing by. I get a stick and drop it , the water grabs it and throws it about like a trawler in a force 10 gale. It spins and turns, rolls over and bounces up in to the air before splashing back and disappearing down the outgoing drain. In the distance I can hear my Mum shouting“ Stephen, Steeeeephen” Then I hear a scream and before I can react I am being dragged by the arm away from the culvert, I have taken off into the air and I am getting screamed at “What do you think you are doing? What would you have done if you had fallen in? Get in now and just you wait until your Dad gets home.” Each sentence is accompanied by a smack to the back of my legs and I don’t know what I have done wrong. My mum has found me and is showing me that I should not wander off and play on the building site. That is me I had no fear and was always getting into trouble. She would make me sit down and listen to the radio when listen with mother was on the light programme. It would be nice to sit quietly and listen to the lady on the radio telling stories with a nice hot drink in my hand while the coal crackled in the grate. I still love a real open fire to this day and really miss them on a winters afternoon.

We  had got one of the new houses and we moved out of the hut and into 36 Higgins lane. It was the corner house on the corner of Furnival drive and had a larger garden than the other houses in the road. This suited my dad because he loved growing things. He soon had it laid out with borders. He used the concrete that had been left in the demolition of the camp to build a low retaining wall around a sunken lawn. He planted the front up with all sorts of bedding plants that he grew in his green house. We had a vegetable patch in the back garden with spuds, beans and cabbage growing in the summer. I had my own room at the back of the house and on a clear day you could see Blackpool Tower from my bedroom window. I also had a view across the back field and down Furnival Drive to the “magnificent seven”. This was a row of seven houses at the bottom of the road that were occupied by the naughty children. We never played with them, they had their own gang and they built their own bonfire. We had our bonfire on the concrete square that was right behind our house. Also in our territory was the concrete tank. This had the letters “E W S “ emblazoned on the side in six foot high yellow letters but it no longer had its contents. A great big V shaped cut had been broken in to the side and we went into there to play all sorts of games. There was a cast iron bath in there, an old brass bed and a rotting mattress. The water that was left was full of all sorts of wild life and I learnt all about how frogspawn became tadpoles and then frogs in my fourth year. Giant diving beetles, water-boat-men, dragonfly larvae and newts were all captured in jam jars, examined and taken home to show mum and dad. My latest captives were always taken back and released as soon as they had seen them. Summer days seemed never ending and it was nothing to spend all day away with a bottle of water and a couple of sugar butties.