I am going to try something new; in addition to posting photos, re-blogs and poems I will include bits about my past. I’m inspired by The Temenos Journal to write about my childhood and my family. I am relying on my memory as I am not organised enough to have kept journals. Here is the first instalment:

My delusions of grandeur started early in life; we lived in what my mother described as a “masionette”. It was the left hand of two ground floor, three bedroom, council flats, in a 1950’s block of six. There was a central entrance leading to a common hallway and stairs to the upper floors. My bedroom looked out over our back garden, while my brother’s had a small loggia which faced a common lawned area with a horse chestnut tree. As I stood with my back to the trunk looking up through the branches the tree appeared to go up into the clouds.

Out the back of the block of flats there was a narrow corridor formed by sheds to the left and the right, this led to dustbin area, a chain-link fence and a hedgerow beyond. Former tenants had been thoughtful enough to loosen the fence from it’s posts so that we could crawl underneath. This was fine in the Winter months, however during Summer our escape to the “countryside” was blocked by the evilest stinging nettles known to man.

Our home in Birmingham, UK was located in a “grove”; as a child I associated this with the fancy sounding, cul-de-sac, end of the road and no through traffic. Our grove was by no means quiet, there was a constant stream of vehicles delivering everything from milk, bread, pop, fish and meat to dry cleaning and coal. Luckily we were still on the map as far as Mr Whippy and the rag and bone man were concerned.

The delft houses above were gifts from KLM Royal Dutch Airlines when we emigrated to Australia in 1998.