Across the Boston Road lay exotic territory; Trumpers Way (cul de sac). Now lined with new housing and an industrial estate, in the 1960s it was a rough place unclaimed by development. Scrapyards behind corrugated iron, guarded by noisy alsatians, unkempt back gardens, the fields behind Elthorne Park. By the time I was ten, and in possession of my new bike (a Hercules Jeep).
Then there was the bridge over the Grand Union Canal. It is said that Barry Ricketts climbed on to the parapet and walked across like a tightrope walker, a 30 foot drop to the left of him (no one from my class was there to witness this, but such was the legend). On the canal there stood (and from Google Earth, still stands) a huge warehouse building, towering over the terraced houses of Humes Gardens and Studley Grange Road. The atmosphere was beautifully Edwardian, especially at twilight.
Across the canal, Trumpers Way ran onto the railway line, where the road came to an end. Here was (before Dr Beeching and his cuts) a station on the old Great Western Railway spur from Southall down to Brentford. Long gone as a passenger line, the spur served in the late 1960s as it does today a waste disposal site.
My sixties childhood
By 1970, everything had changed. Adolescence had replaced childhood, grammar school replaced primary, West Ealing replaced Hanwell. Pounds shillings and pence were soon to be decimalised, pop would go Glam, and 405-line black and white TV would give way to 625 lines in colour. My father changed from black and white negatives to colour prints. Toy cars with steel wheels and rubber tyres would be replaced by ones with metallic paint, plastic wheels and wire axles that ran faster.
Before the Sixties started to Swing, life was greyer, but safer - and happier?
Before the Sixties started to Swing, life was greyer, but safer - and happier?
(pic from carmodel.net)
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3 comments:
I think the Barry Ricketts mentioned in this blog was my dad!
Have you an aunt called Geraldine? If so - yes. (She was in my class at Oaklands!)
Hi, yes! His sister was Geraldine. Wow. Sounds just like the sort of thing he’d have done. Sadly gone now. Any more stories?
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