A week before the deadline, the telephone rang with David Woodward at the other end. Would you like to do some articles for us, said he. Taken-aback and thinking on ones feet as all good politicians do, (except this one) why not, said I. Without delay, I rushed to my computer and thought of all the things I would like to say about Berkhamsted. I could say what I thought about the street signs, or the colour of the bricks on the new Waitrose building, or the next bout of road-works. These will have to wait until after the coming by-election I’m afraid, so , working on the principle that people love to talk about themselves and even more love to be nosy and read about other peoples lives, how about a little about me?

It has been said that no-one had ever heard of me before my election last year, so, just to set the record straight, I have run my own business in the area for over 20 years and even made the front page of the ‘Gazette’ in 1977 with a report about faulty electrical sockets that I was instrumental in bringing to the attention of the public.

However, I digress. I was interested in reading Mr Brinklows’ piece in the May issue about Sunnyside. Due to an serious accident I had in the early 1980s’, my memory is nowhere as good as it could be, but it is surprising the changes that have occurred even during my short time in the area. My family came to Berkhamsted in the mid 1930s’, presumably to find work and  settled in Ravens Lane. In fact one of my uncles still lives in the same house. I was born at West Herts Hospital and, as my mother reminds me, cost the princely sum of £7 10s (this was a discount on the normal price of £10 as my father was in the forces) and shortly afterwards ended up in one of the new pre-fabs built at the top of Three Close Lane. My mother tells me that our particular pre-fab was not quite as wonderful as most stories would have you believe. It was damp and cold although it had a fitted cooker, refrigerator and heating. The connection does elude me at the moment but, as even I was too young to remember, I have to rely on the memories of others. We then moved to one of the nice new council houses built at the end of Shrublands Road and known as the Durrants Estate. Again, my family still occupy the same house.

I remember my first day at Chapel Street school. I cried my heart out over having to leave my family and be left in a strange place with lots of other strange children. The funny thing is, the only other memory of the school is that we used slates. I used to tell my wife about how we used slates only to be told that she had pencil and paper at her school, so I must be mistaken. Tina (my wife) was brought up in somewhere called Adeyfield in a place called Hemel Hempstead and obviously went to a school where money was no object. Pencil and paper indeed! I visited the Ironbridge museum in Shropshire a couple of years ago. They have a ‘village’ set around the turn of the century with a school. The memories came back, slates as well. Tina now agrees that I was right after all.

My next school was Victoria School in Prince Edward Street and I remember silly things about this period, like the frozen milk bottles being laid out on the heating pipe in the main hall, like my first girl-friend (and second, and third), like telling stories to the class at the end of the day, like being put into Mr Jacksons’ class whilst my girlfriend was put into Mrs Wests’ and like being in Mr Phillips’ class which was across the footpath and in a temporary building. Park View School were our rivals for some reason and even to this day believe that we were better than they were. The other thing to strike me at this time was why did the Boys School had different holidays to us?

During this time, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II was on television. We had a television, so all the neighbours came round to watch. I’m sure the screen was so small that we had one of the popular water-filled magnifiers in front of it. Later, we were one of the few to have the new independent television service by having a converter perched on top of the set. It was one of the  most temperamental pieces of equipment you could imagine and how the valves lasted as long as they did, I’ll never know. With luck, this should trigger some memories and I’ll have another go in a future issue with such things as the fun-fair that used to set up in the field behind the Crooked Billet although sometimes it was in the field where the sports centre now stands,  the Guy Faulks bonfire that was built in the field between the two halves of Bridgewater Road, the time when we had the main office and shop of the West Herts Co-op and our very own Sainsburys!



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