My Chiswick Childhood

I was born in the autumn of 1955,
close to the undistinguished source
of west London's famous Goldhawk Road,
and my first home
was a distinctly cramped menage,
occupied by my parents,
a violinist and singer respectively,
and some artistic friends,
in Bulmer Place, near Notting Hill Gate.
My brother was born
two and a half years later,
by which time
my parents were able to buy their own house
in Bedford Park in what was then
the London borough of Acton,
but actually in Chiswick, W4.
And genteel suburban west London
was marked by a homespun simplicity back then
that we can only dream about
in our own troubled day and age.
By '63, with my brother and I
safely enconced in the French Lycee,
radical social change was in the air,
though in truth it had been for some time,
especially in Britain and America,
since the rise of Rock'n'roll, and youth culture,
whose watershed years
were 1955 to 1956,
but especially 1955*.
But for all that, England in 63
was still apparently in black and white,
and the first shaggy-haired beat groups
fitted quite nicely into this innocent time
of Norman Wisdom pictures,
the well-spoken presenters,
of the BBC Home Service
and the Light Service, and the World Service,
of coppers, tanners and ten bob notes,
tuck shops and tuppeny chews,
it was a very long time ago.
I was an articulate child,
cheerful and sociable in this idyllic world,
although at some stage
I became a bit of a tearaway,
both at school and at home,
what one might call hyperactive today.
That said, I yet managed to pass
my common entrance exam,
and so become Cadet number 173,
at Pangbourne Nautical College
in the September of 1968,
officially a serving officer
in the Royal Navy, aged only 12 years old.
Some year and a half later,
we left Chiswick for good,
and took up residence even deeper in suburbia,
where I remain to this day...
My Chiswick childhood
was a very long time ago.

 

 

*Read "Seeds of Change Sown in 1955" by Charles Ealy