A View Of The Forest

A Memory of Chingford.

Coming down from a castle in rural Scotland to live in Chingford....I never forgave my parents; soon however I discovered Joan - an early girlfriend and love of my life; but she left with her family for the tea plantations of Kenya in 1957 despite my poem to her beauty and the biggest easter egg I could buy.

Although by the late 60s I couldn't wait to leave, I have so many happy memories; pals at Whitehall juniors and fishing Connaught waters in the early morning, with my cousin and a heron for company and the mist still heavy on the water - later in the year learning to skate on the ice with maybe a hundred or so others.

The start of a lifelong love affair with the violin at school and also learning to sing "where'er you walk" by Handel in another, posher church school up the road. Spellbound in later youth by the local godesses as they passed my house, catching squirrels and bunny rabbits by the roadside, giving V salutes to all the car drivers on the approach to the Royal Forest Hotel...ahh what else would a 13 year old boy want in 1961?