I was born just after the second world war. I grew up as a member of a small family unit that was part of two larger families, those of my parents. My mother had met my father when her family had a holiday at Sheerness where he lived. Their feelings for each other became strong and they married during that war. Their first child was injured and never recovered. He died just a few weeks after my younger brother was born. My mother had lived her life in Bermondsey in London but moved to Sheerness after the marriage. My father was in Singapore when I was born. My mother was staying with her parents and so I was born in Guys Hospital within the sound of Bow Bells. I am told that makes me a Cockney but do not fear! I am not going to break into rhyming slang!

My mother had three sisters. Two married each had two children and then one moved into the suburbia of London and the other moved to Yorkshire where her husband had come from. The third sister was different. She stayed with my grandmother until she died and then moved to Ireland with a man she met in a pub the night after my Grandmother's funeral. They got married a week later and although childless are one of the happiest couples you could ever meet.

My father had seven sisters. The eldest was married before he was born. Most moved away from Sheppey with new husbands - there was little work on the island, apart from two. Both were called by nicknames, Aunt Dotty and Aunt Bubbles. Bubbles loved to dance. She also loved gymnastics and passed this onto her daughter who loved to show off doing flips, the splits and so on. When she was fourteen two boys fought over her, one getting badly injured. Two years later she vanished to reappear two years further on, married to a lad her age and the proud mother of a baby girl. They emigrated to Australia. Aunt Dotty got married and she and her husband had a hard time until he won the football pools. More of their story can be found here. Of my cousins, I mostly have memories of two girls, I am not going to say whom, one was older and very posh, the other was younger and hooked on motorcycles.

So that is the family past that I was reared in. The place was something else. We lived on the Island of Sheppy. It had two towns, Sheerness and Queenborough and a handful of small villages. We first of all liven in a bungalow a little outside of Minster, a small village on a hill. A railway line ran past the bottom of our back garden but apart from the houses along the road we were surrounded by fields and farms. There were woods, ditches, a couple of really good ponds and we got to know them all. There was not a lot of money around and so apart from his day job, working as a master carpenter at the Navel Dockyard in Bluetown, we all had to help do things to get more income. Feeding rabbits and chickens as well as fruit picking were the main tasks that fell to me while I was young. My parents grew flowers in the front garden, and fruit and vegetables wherever else they could. Most of our presents in those days were made by my father and so was a lot of our furniture. We all helped make rugs and mother did a lot of sewing on her Singer, treadle sewing machine. Every weekday lunch time we were home we would put on the radio and listen to a quarter of an hour program called Listen with Mother. Dad would read us stories at night but the rest of the time we generally played out or in the garden.

Later on we moved to Sheerness. The downside was it was a short walk into the countryside, I had to make new friends and go to a new school. The upside was it was right by the sea. My parents had managed to save enough to buy a small corner shop but even though the business was doing well dad warned that when supermarkets came onto the island then the business would drop. We still had to contribute. We did not need pocket money in the Summer as we worked. Hauling luggage for holiday makers was usually the first job. Catching and selling fish was another. As teenagers if you wanted good pay you tried to work on the boats at Queenborough where a number of film and television people had boats and if you wanted girls you tried to work at the fair.

I left school and went straight into work at a bus company office. Here ends part of my history. Those were not good old days. We often had it hard. They were though a lot more fun that what young people get these days and people could earn quite a bit by selling home produce. Working together as a family helped the family unit as a whole. These days much of that is lost. Teens are bored and little kids are kept indoors and do not get much chance to learn social interaction. That is my take anyway.