Painful Memories Of Paulton Square.

A Memory of London.

As a frightened 7 year old, in 1950,  I was plunged into an unfamiliar London life when my meddling and self righteous aunt unfortunately reminded my stepfather of fulfill his promise to my dying mother to 'take care of Jimmy'. He had since remarried and brought  my sister and I together again after we had spent three years apart,my sister with his parents in Chester and I, happily in Kirkbymoorside, my mother's home in the North Yorkshire Moors with my wonderful, loving, foster family, and my grandparents, three aunts, uncle and my many cousins.

We lived in Paulton's Square , just off the King's Road in an elegant , Georgian, three storey row house with wrought iron railings. In the centre of the square was a park area where I once disappeared to and was found playing quite happily, probably looking in the hedges for bird's nests, just like the Yorkshire boy that I was, much to my stepfather's disgust.

This was the beginning for a little Yorkshire 'tyke's lifetime of abuse, emotional neglect from which I never have really recovered. I was thrust into the Lycée Français, all french school where noone hardly spoke english. Talk about disorientation !!

I have mostly painful memories of Paulton Square, of forced backyard skipping exercises, bullying and repetitive readings and recitations to try to scour me clean of my 'uncultivated' Yorkshire accent, constantly ridiculed for my innocent joy of finding  'Noots and booney rabbits' on my walks with Gladys . How ironic that the  A.A. Milne Christpher Robin and Alice stories that my step parents read to my sister and I in the middle of this large, war scarred, dirty,strange city reflected what I had just lost in so many ways in my beautiful Yorkshire !

It was from Paulton Square that shortly more upheaval was in the cards and we were 'posted' to Germany. A short train ride later we were in the bowels of a large passenger vessel heading across the cold North Sea from the port of Harwich to the Hook of Holland and thence onwards to Germany, a mere 5 years after the terrible war's end.

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