Paul Bura - Poet, Broadcaster, Writer

First published on the Internet 2006
© Paul Bura 2006 All rights reserved
Published by BOSGO Press
Typesetting and web Design © Mike Pendragon 2006

This book cannot be reproduced in any form – either in part or total – without the express permission from the author!

The Bura Business Empire

The Bura Business Empire stretched all the way to Broadstairs where my granddad ran a cockle and whelk emporium for one season. My parents then moved him to the West side of Herne Bay pier in-between Mr Ironside's arcade and the Fletcher brothers' arcade, which included the famous Dodge 'em Cars! Granddad sold cockles, whelks, mussels, crab, lobster and jellied eels.

My parents ran The Oyster Bar with its motto: “No Bones About Our Fish and Our Potatoes Can't See!" My father had knocked four little shops into one to create The Oyster Bar. My father was an expert carpenter and completely self-taught. If he needed to know something about plumbing, for example, he would go to the library and get out a book on plumbing.

In his youth he had apprenticed as a tailor! He now ran the biggest fish restaurant on the South East coast and introduced the first crinkly chip. That restaurant was The Oyster Bar. My parents also opened another restaurant called Pauline's Pantry further along the promenade opposite the Clock Tower that was run by my mother (soon to be called Joe's Plaice after a fire that nearly destroyed The Oyster Bar).

Sex

It was too rude. But I felt an excitement that I could not contain. I felt it in my loins, in my willy region. I had to do something really rude. I was only four but I felt this urge to do a `number two` where you shouldn’t do a `number two`, not in the toilet but beside it! This excited me so much that I got an erection. Placing newspaper beside the loo I gently, and with a certain amount of relish, crapped upon the open paper, then screwing the newspaper up in a neat parcel enfolding my `effort` I thrust it down the toilet. After many a pull on the chain I managed to get rid of it.

I even dug holes in wooded areas. I had this urge to crap out in the open. It was exciting. It was daring. It was rude. I liked `rude`. I liked getting erections. I didn’t have orgasms. It was not until I was eleven that I achieved that. And that was in the SEA! Again, I had this urge to be rude, to do what (I thought) nobody else would or could do. Therein lay the rub: nobody else would, or could, do it! That’s what made it so exciting. I would wait until low tide, and when nobody was about I would ease myself down the steps by the Clock Tower and into my beloved sea, take off my swimming trunks, placing them safely around my neck, and be rude all by myself.

I guess it was the `man-in-the-raincoat` syndrome, only I didn’t expose myself to women, only the sea: it was the excitement of being naked and no one knowing. I would get erection after erection after erection. And then. And THEN! What happened next was so extraordinary that I felt that I had done myself harm. My willy became so swollen that it burst! At least I thought that it had. I was convinced that I had done myself an injury...and yet...and yet it was exquisitely wonderful. Never had I experienced anything like it. That sensational sensation was a turning point for me.

Of course I still had romantic yearnings for girls, I always have. But this, this was a new dimension. I entered the sea now with a new purpose, a new prospective: I had to achieve this incredible sensation again. And I did, over and over. But the autumn was upon us. Never have I cursed the autumn more, never. But there it was. And the sea gave-in to its prompting and cooled. But I soon learned another way to satisfy this new need and I never took my swimming trunks off again. I initiated myself into the joys of… well, I could put it another way but the word masturbation will have to do.

In my pre-polio days (I guess I was about 6-years-old) I even enlisted the power of `fire` in my sexual preambles. I would share this experience with another boy of similar age. At low tide, we would both go below the bandstand, taking with us matches and newspaper. There was a ledge on which we would spread out the newspaper, he on one side of the ledge and I on the other.

We made sure that we were as far away from each other as possible, otherwise we could not indulge, not get excited, not get the erection for which we both (?) craved. After crapping, we set fire to the paper! Why we did this, I’m not sure. Perhaps it added to the fuel of excitement: two young boys setting fire to their own faeces. A strange echo back to the magic power of fire! Strangely, we never spoke about it. Never. There were some things that were best left unsaid.

The Fish and Chip Wagon and My Father

I was six. My father used to drive the mobile Fish and Chip wagon to Reculver about three times a week. Reculver and its Towers (Reculver Towers) were the ancient ruins of a church. Long before I was born the Towers sported splendid pointed spires. But they were long gone, only depicted in old photographs. They were considered dangerous and they had to be pulled down. A Roman `Dig` remains on the site. The Towers stood out like a huge `H` from the viewpoint of Herne Bay’s promenade, a huge letter `H`.

I used to go out with my father in the Fish and Chip Wagon during the day and ring the bell, so the people would know we were frying. Up and down the streets of Herne Bay we would go. But this was during the day. The Reculver run was in the evening. I so wanted to go with my dad during the evening.

The evenings were full of magic. The shadows would curl about me warm and safe. So I hid in the van, all comfy and cosy, whilst my father, unknowingly, drove us to Reculver. When we arrived and my father discovered me, he didn’t know whether to be angry or not. I took him completely by surprise. He accepted the fact that: ''Now yer here, son, you can ring the bell...and keep me company!'' I melted into the warm night like velvet. Ate fish and chips and played the arcade machines. Yes, I even got a couple of coppers (pennies) for my pains.

The sights and smells were so much more delightful after dark. And the fish and chips? I have never tasted cod like you could buy in those far off days: thick, chunky fillets that had a milky, sweet taste, fried in a batter so thin and crisp that you broke through it like a yielding, shattering, crust. The secret? Ah, the secret of this was to flour the fillet first, then immerse it in batter, not too thick and not too thin. Slap it, first one way and then the other, on the side of the bowl, so catching the excess batter. Then slide the fish into the slightly smoking peanut oil. We sold cockles, whelks, and mussels and jellied eels, too. We sold crab and lobster, all prepared by my father and mother, their meat tasting like the sea itself, though without the salt: the sea could not reproduce its salty self in these creatures, they gave forth only sweetness.

I drowned that night in warm, soft breezes. I moved through the dream-like, shadowy night like a soft, velvety pulse. I was safe and warm with my daddy, safe and warm in his strength. Never mind that he took us children, unbeknown to my mother (whose waitress-tips for the season she had saved in our separate postal accounts) to the post office: lifted us up onto the counter to sign our names. Then on to a bookie, where horses ran our cash into the ground! Oh yes, my father was a giant in those far off days. But he became a fallen Goliath, felled by one single stone. My mother. My father developed a stomach ulcer. His worrying of bills not paid saw to that, his worrying and addiction to all things good and fine. If he wanted a new suit then he would go out and be measured for one. If he wanted the finest fillet steak, not forgetting to put it (and the suit) on tick, then he would bring it home and cook it with onions. We didn't have steak. Only once in a blue moon

My dad was addicted to gambling in all its various forms: the dogs, the horses, card games that went on far into the night, the smell of cigars and the chink of money coming up from the front room, the occasional laughter. Farmers, dairymen, restaurant owners, all would indulge in the game of poker and all were subtly 'ripped off' by my father's cheating. Their cards were marked alright, probably from the beginning. He did it, not for the money, but to feed his ego. Joe Bura lose? That would never do.

Each winter was the same. My father lived far beyond his means. My mother was the complete opposite. My father craved the good life and spent money like a man possessed with wealth that he never owned. My mother would make us clothes out of remnants of cast-offs. We were not poor but our father made us so. Always the bank was on his back. He never learned to live within his means. He couldn't do it. His father was a professional gambler who died in poverty. All his brothers: Nanky (Arron), Louie (Laborvitch), Barney (Barnet, Buck), Maxie (Maximillian), Jackie (Jacob), all, ALL, were touched by the shadow of gambling, all perhaps with the exception of Barney who became the success story of them all: Bura and Hardwick Animations. For the BBC they made Trumpton, Camberwick Green and many others. I cannot say whether his sisters: Faye, Betty, Patsy, or Doris were affected by this disease. But I think not.

The ulcer gave him much pain. He would double up with the agony of it. Milk of Magnesia was the only thing to give relief from his torment; but not the torment of his debts that rose and rose. At last a hospital appointment was made and he went in for the operation, the operation that was supposed to eradicate him from hell.

As it turned out a new kind of hell descended upon him; he always claimed that the blood transfusion was so cold, just out the fridge and that is what caused him to suffer a clot of blood to the brain. In effect he could no longer feel his left arm or the left side of his face. He was smitten with epilepsy.

The sight of my father screaming as the ambulance men stretchered him away in front of an audience of customers eating their fish and chips, whilst he clung on pitifully to the banister in protest. They had to prise his fingers apart. And all the time he screamed this awful scream. When home again he drank his way to freedom. Alcohol and drugs to prevent his 'fits' left him happy in a sad sort of a way. He became no longer my father as I had known him when the drink was upon him, which was more often than not.

My mother worked hard. My father also worked hard. There is no doubt about that. But then he would disappear. He would either be in the bookies or the cinema. In those days in the early 50's we had two cinemas: the Odeon and the Casino. The Casino was right next door to our restaurant. Sandwiched between the two was Macari's Ice Cream Parlour. The manager of the Casino often complained about the smell of fish and chips that the customers used to sneak in. But when my father sneaked in by the Casino's back door, fresh from the fryers and reeking of fried fish, he had to turn a blind eye. Often my mother would send in a waitress and find him asleep in front of that silver screen.

After the operation things began to deteriorate. Money began to disappear from the till when dad began to drink. All the time she supported him and us by putting her energy into maintaining the family and keeping us all together. She had to find the money for my little sister Melvina to go to White Lodge: the training school of The Royal Ballet. Melly was potty about 'dance' and worked hard to get there, and there was my Dad living the life of a single man and all that that implied. She had to find the money for my even younger brother Kevin to stay at a local private school as she felt that this was the direction to go in his education. And all the time Dad had been carrying on with my mother's best friend. Not only that but he'd made her pregnant!

Enough was enough. My mother filed for divorce. He had humiliated her beyond belief. It was as though he had physically beaten her up. Her anxiety caused us all to suffer with her. She was afraid to go out, afraid even to lift a phone. He had ground her face into the mud. But she got up out of the mire he had pushed her in and fought for another day, not for her but for us kids!

The Royal Hotel and "The Drayman's Lorry"

Foden Steam Wagon

I swear I saw it
Parked outside The Royal Hotel:
Coke-stoked and shimmering
In the summered-heat

The barrel-men, the dray-men
Feeding this hissing monster
That glowed like a dragon

The very noise of it
Frightened the five-years
Out of me!

Then lumbered long and hard
Back to the yard
To grow cold again

Or did they leave it
Gently panting
Through the dark?

Uncle Jim

Uncle Jim would take me (Josie my elder sister had just started school) to Whitstable to collect the cockles and whelks: down the Drunken Sailor road with its weavings and wobblings that joined Herne Bay and Tankerton; then on to Whitstable and the harbour where the smell of newly cooked shellfish held me in the balance between nausea and pleasure. Oh, but to taste a whelk, still warm, teased out of its shell with good malt vinegar - though we used acetic acid in those days with a dash of colouring. It would come in huge glass jars with a cork stopper, to be watered down. Dried chillies were added to give it punch - as a pleasure not to be sniffed at. I liked the small, sweet ones the best. The bigger ones tended to be tough, as opposed to tender.

I would fall asleep on the way back, fall asleep standing up, leaning on my Uncle Jim’s shoulder, sucking my third and forth fingers, as he drove, carefully, not wishing to wake me, back to Herne Bay. Uncle Jim was one of those breed of men whom you just called `uncle`. You knew that he wasn’t a real uncle. But out of politeness for his station we children called him uncle. He was a good, kind man, was Uncle Jim.

The Clock Tower

A workman was having his lunch on the floor
of the Clock Tower when one of the weights that
worked the mechanism detached itself and killed
him outright!

Herne Bay's clock tower donated to the town in philanthropic gesture by Ann Thwait, a very rich old lady. (Rumour has it though that she never actually paid for it!) The Clock Tower has always had a peculiar fascination for me. Legend has it that a workman who was hired to maintain the clock's mechanism was seated on the floor of the clock tower's floor having his breakfast when a pendulum-weight detached itself from the mechanism and fell 40 feet, killing him outright.

This was before the clock went electric. There were two doors at the base of the clock tower, one either side, that led into a small room and here the unfortunate workman was clobbered. I had dreams as a child (and still do) of my living in this room. I was terrified of meeting the ghost of this man still eating his breakfast. (I have since found out that that he was in fact a scaffolder, who with his mate had come back on the Saturday morning to finish their work at the top of the Clock Tower. His mate lived in the town and went home for breakfast, but Edward Griggs lived in Glen Avenue and had brought his breakfast with him and went inside to eat it.

Apparently, the Clerk of the Council, during the inquest, implied that it was his own fault, as he had no right to be in there in the first place!)

The Fletcher Brothers

There were a couple of brothers called `the Fletcher Brothers` who owned an arcade towards the far end of the promenade. They would enter a posh restaurant in their work clothes and get turned away by the headwaiter. Then, in front of the other customers, would peel off their work clothes revealing stunning evening dress. The headwaiter had no option but to admit them.

The Brothers had a particular name for me. My father constructed a little four-wheeled cart for me to wheel about and on the side of this cart the Fletchers painted the name Bosco. From that day on they called me Bosco. The nickname stuck. For instance, always when I went into the tool shop 'Perfects' in William Street I would be greeted with: ‘What can we do for you this time, Bosco?’

I was 35 years old when Mr Clark, who ran the shop, retired. By then Peter McKay and I had opened our own Health Food Store. Mr Clark would come into the shop and still call me Bosco. Indeed, a lot of the `old boys` also did. Old habits die hard, but this was one habit I thought would live forever. A pity the `old boys` couldn’t do the same. I always spelt the name BosCO. I thought they said BosGO. I’ve spelt it that way ever since.

The St Georges bath in the 1920s, now filled in with rubble underneath what was the Fletcher Brothers arcade. I was taken down there when I was five. The sea still comes in and out and with the tide and eels swarm.

The Fletcher brothers took my dad and me down below their arcade into the cellar. There once existed an open air, Victorian, swimming bath, fed by the sea called the St. George's Bath. It was constructed over the wooden 'centres' originally used in making a tunnel on the Great Western Railway about 1840. It was still there! Filled in by rubble now, though the sea still came in and out bringing with it eels that squirmed and wriggled when exposed to light. It was a sad sight, a sad and lonely sight.

Uncles

Pop Presley

I had many `uncles`, apart from Uncle Jim. Uncle Johnny Heathcote, whose ‘converted’ German Lifeboat was to lift the soldiers off the beaches at Dunkirk; he would now take 'day trippers' and holidaymakers around the bay. Uncle Johnny’s face always resembled Mr Punch with his large nose and pointed chin, and when the sun had its way with him, would turn his face bright red.

There was Uncle Ken Standen, publican of THE NEW DOLPHIN (now called The Scruffy Duck) and his wife `Auntie` Gladys. He was so smitten with me that I overheard him say that he would buy for me a brand new fishing rod: I followed him to the tackle shop, always keeping a discreet distance. I saw him purchase the rod. I followed him home, hiding behind the pieces of canvas that separated each shop. I wonder whether he `knew` I was there? I guessed that he did, but he pretended otherwise.

There was Uncle Jess who fished for a living, then would scrub his boat clean of accumulated fish goo then he too would take out the day trippers: ''Anymore for the Skylark,'' he would cry, ‘can't wait to fill up!’ There was Uncle Ernie from the Bingo, opposite the Clock Tower, whose slow cry of: ''FFFIIFFTOO YULLOW'', as he handed out the balls for the punters to throw into the hopper of numbered squares, surrounded by flimsy junk and Kupie dolls that the customers would receive on calling out their winning line. This was the early to mid 50`s and although I didn’t remember the war and its restrictions the punters did! The crap that was handed out was all the arcade owners could get. Years later they demanded a higher quality, still crap, but a higher quality of crap.

But there was one uncle that stood apart from the rest: uncle Pop 'Ninety' Pressley. Although only a little over five foot tall, he was a giant in my eyes, with his Wellington boots reaching over his knees, his navy blue pullover and his flat cap, his rosy face and that lazy Kentish accent. This man could eat live lugworm! This man would keep a wriggling mouse in his pocket!

This man would take me out in his fishing boat (Seagull the 2nd) on clear, blue days, the seagulls wheeling over-head for their expectant feed of bits of bait and small fish that were thrown back. The sea, glass-like and clear, shot through with rainbows that came from Seagull the 2nd's engine: a pollutant that, in my boyhood mind was a piece of glory. Seagull the 2nd's smell of petrol and paraffin was, to me, an odour that would stay with me forever, conjuring up the past into the present.

Although he was a rogue, my parents trusted this man to bring me back safely. I was a slave to the sea in those far off days. Uncle Pop Pressley was its slave also; hauling in the sea's potted bounty, the long lines of rope, corked at intervals, that he would gaff (hook). Hand over hand, he hauled and pulled. And, like Andy Capp, I never saw him without his hat. Never! Not until the day the stroke laid him low and his butter-fat wife led me into the bedroom where he lay. He tried to speak but all that came out was a whispered mouthing, like the fish he caught for so many years. To me he was indestructible and in my adult life was to feature in so many poems and articles.

He lay there so old, so thin, and hatless. I didn’t know what to say. His wife interpreted for him: ‘'He wants to know how you’re doing at school?’' ‘'Okay’', I whispered, '‘okay, Pop’'. I rarely called him uncle. To everyone he was known as `Pop`. Only in front of my parents would I call him uncle. He died soon after. Who was going to look after his pots and his nets now? Who would look after the little hut that we, and only we, Pop and I, knew where the key was hidden? The key to the little hut, a hut filled with the treasures of the sea: old lobster-pots; fishing tackle; reels of cat-gut that I would have killed for; old oars; outboard motors; and the smell, oh, the smell: a mixture of tar and the sea, a smell as intoxicating as any drug.

The passing of Pop Pressley, his dying!? I guessed. No one needed to tell me. He just wasn't there any more. I couldn’t really remember how it affected me. But I just kind of accepted it. His boat was sold. That was a kind of death, too. The Viking Chiefs burned their boats. Well, they might just as well have burned Pop`s boat, too. It didn`t interest me any more. It was like Pop, an object that I would write about, perhaps romanticise about. Something I put to the back of my mind, the mind that told of the golden days when Pop and I would phut! phut! phut! out and away to live the life of a fisherman, if only for a while, if only for one fleeting day. Until I grew up and put my mind to other things. Only Pop lived the life of a fisherman because he was one. I was only pretending.

(Pop Pressley turned out to be a REAL hero. During the 2nd World War Pop used to go out during air raids and, single handed, pluck young airmen from the sea, English AND German alike. His knowledge of the currents off Herne Bay was second to none. Once a young German airman was shot down in the sea and threatened Pop with a pistol. Pop knocked him out cold. And still he hauled the airman into his boat and brought him ashore. The reason he was called by the nickname 'Ninety' was because his brother-in-law, Jess Mount, always said that he moaned like an old man of ninety. The name stuck, and he was called Ninety till the day he died in 1957.)

…….

Other snippets come to mind: a boy, outside my house crying. I asked ‘what was the matter?’ He said that he had tried to look up a girl's dress and the other girls beat him up. I said I would get him a glass of milk. When I came out again, the glass of milk firmly in my hand, he was gone. I never saw him again. Weird how things like that stick in your memory, isn’t it?

My Grandparents

Mother's First Home

My granddad showed me the darts he kept in a piece of cork. My granddad filled our dining room Sunday lunch with the smell of beer. Did I miss him only for that? Did my mouth only water when he completed the smell of roast beef with his beery breath? No, I missed him for more than that. When he was in his late 60`s he at last opened up to us with his song: ''Key `ole in the door, key `ole in the door, I found I was a shuvin` the key `ole in the door'' We were no longer kids but adults. The thing was that we were always kind of afraid of this little man who stood no more than 5 foot 2 inches tall.

Tales of his strictness filtered through from mother: "Children should be seen but not heard". When Mother was seen reading books (which was her only delight for a poor country girl), he tore them from her: "Help your mother!" When she couldn`t read her books she used to read the bits of newspaper that were put down to cover a freshly mopped floor. Noticing my mother, her head bent over sideways trying to read, he would order her to go to the fields and pick rabbits` food! He said it with such venom that she has not read a book from that day to this.

Mealtimes were held in absolute silence. To enter into her parent’s conversation was received by a rap over the knuckles. Even my Grandma, whom I remembered as a kindly woman, when playing with her only child a game of rough and tumble, my mother accidentally touched her breast and was rewarded with a hard slap across her face: "Don't ever touch me there!" was the only explanation.

My granddad planted a lawn in their front garden. My mother had the job of cutting it….with a pair of scissors!

My father took the deeds to their bungalow, with their reluctant approval, against a loan from the bank…then tried to burn it down to collect on the insurance. My grandparents were away working for us at the time. Only years later did we put two and two together. It didn’t burn, thank God. "It must have been a stray firework," said my father

. When Grandma died at the age of 55, Granddad stubbornly refused, as only the old know how, to come and live with us. He stayed in the bungalow that he had built with his own hands, until he too succumbed at the age of 72. The bulldozers had a god-awful time ripping that bungalow apart to make way for something modern. They hadn't bargained for old iron bedsteads, entombed like nuns, in the concrete walls. We, on the other hand, turned out and burned a whole room full of paperbacks - mostly westerns.

Granddad smoked Digger Plug, the strongest tobacco on the planet. He not only smoked it in a pipe but rolled it in cigarettes: thick, black stuff. Granddad let me have a puff or two on his pipe. I turned the colour of bile. When people say they turn green when they are seasick, believe them! Why can`t tobacco taste as gorgeous as it smells?

Granddad caught malaria when he was a sailor. It turned his hair snowy white. From that time on he was called Snowy

When granddad died of cancer of the throat (what else with tobacco like Digger Plug?), his next door neighbour swore she `saw` him trying to enter the bungalow at about the time of his death. Spooky, huh!

Not to worry, though, my Mother and I travelled to see both my grandparents in the dream state. They still lived in a bungalow in the country, only this time we had to cross over a rickety bridge in order to visit them (I guess the bridge represented the gap between life and so-called death). Granddad was seated at a table outside, piled with his beloved books, books that he had forbidden his only daughter to read. They greeted us casually as if they had expected us, as if they had expected us to pay them a visit. I remember that the table was a little wonky, so Granddad put a book under one of the legs to steady it. I sat with him whilst Mother and Grandma went inside, talking.

My Grandfather and the Bomb

Croyse had been trying unsuccessfully to retrieve it with a stick. I watched him try and try again. It was bright yellow and had fins. No, not a fish but it was to cause quite a stink, though. Croyse gave up on it. He walked dejectedly up the beach and out of sight. Now it was my turn, my chance to have a go at trying to possess this interesting looking object. At 6-years-old I was nobody's fool and wearing my wellies was able to get that much closer to it than Croyse. I attached a piece of wire that I had found round one of the fins.

At last I had it. I dragged it clear of the water and was just about to lift it up when my grandfather, taking a stroll along the beach after a session in the pub, wobbled down the beach to see what I had got. "I'll give you a hand, son, " he slurred. Now my grandfather had been in BOTH world wars, and you may have thought that it might just have occurred to him that, what resembled a bomb, would have sent various alarm bells ringing.

"Don't worry Granddad, I can manage."

With that I heaved the bomb up in both arms and carried it up the beach. Granddad, slightly unsteadily, followed after me.

Now I had to negotiate some very steep steps and CLANG! I rested the bomb on one step whilst I got up. Then CLANG! I rested the bomb on the other step. There were three steps in all. I made my way the short distance to my father's restaurant with my grandfather in tow. As I walked into the restaurant I couldn't understand why people were hurling themselves at the doors and disappearing rather rapidly. I walked into the kitchen.

The look of horror on my parents face when I presented my trophy: "Now..er, put it down gently, son," said my father, "NO! not near the gas stoves!" He gave out a sort of strangled cry and had trouble breathing. "Put it down GENTLY on the table AWAY from the ovens!" he urged gently but firmly. At this point I didn't know what all the fuss was about. I soon did, though.

"There, that's it. Gently does it."

I put my bomb carefully on the table indicated whilst all hell broke loose. The police were called and the bomb squad! A kindly policeman spoke to me about the dangers of 'finding things lying on the beach' and I, in future, was to 'leave them alone'. The bomb turned out to be a 2nd-world-war 'flare'. If it had gone off in that small space…well it doesn't bear thinking about.

My grandfather?

Grandmother saw to him!

Jason

Jason and Shadow

Jason holds up the swimming at the Regatta

Over the years we’ve had seven cats and two dogs. The two dogs, Shadow, a cross Border collie who arrived in a cheese crate by train which stunk the restaurant out. And Jason, a St Bernard, whose gentleness and patience rivalled the saint himself. One day he rifled a crate of fresh rock salmon; long, pink pieces of fish, like thick spaghetti, drooping from his mouth: the fish that all Londoners were addicted to. Other names for this sweet, salmon-tasting fish were Gurnet, Rock Eel and Huss. There were other names but I forget.

Jason weighed in at 11 stone. He once held up Herne Bay regatta's boats because they couldn`t get him out of the water. He fell down the cliffs at Reculver and needed the coast guard to haul him to freedom. He`d take little children for rides on his back, they basking in his gentleness. The Memorial Park pond was his favourite. No matter how we tried we could not get him out of it. (Another thing that took a lot of gentle persuasion was the back of my car whilst we lived in a rented house in Spencer Road after my mother's divorce. He adored the back of my little three-wheeled Reliant, which I purchased in my late teens.)

The average life of a St Bernard was 8 years. He lived for exactly that. When mother`s marriage ended in divorce we moved to a council house in Gilchrist Avenue, Greenhill. One day I opened the front door and, as usual, Jason was the obstacle behind the door. Unless he was asleep the sound of the key in the lock was enough for him to haul his huge bulk to his feet. This time the sleep was forever. He was so huge that our next door neighbour, Eric, who was an ex-grave digger, dug a grave for him.

My mother broke her heart. I was in my bedroom when she stared down at his wonderful body from our upstairs window (we had temporally hauled him on a blanket out to our back garden). She howled in grief for this gentle giant: "You were my only friend," she wept, "now I’ve lost even you!" I cried in my bed at the sound of her, wept too for the dog who was so afraid of thunder that he would hide his head under the bed, or stick his head in the pantry for comfort as I had when I built my house of bricks all those years ago.

Death is no finality only a separation. Jason and Shadow came back on many occasions, wagging their tails, as only dogs know how, like propellers!

Girls and "their Bits

Mary Thomas was wild and bold. Boys flew after her like bullets. And she, the flush-faced floozy, wriggled out of their clumsy embraces and headed for the woods, or scraps of teazled land that was Herne Bay in those far-off, fabulous days. Mary was only six as I remember, but a rebel. She was not only cruel with her favours to those hot-faced boys, but she would pull the legs and wings off flies and watch them struggle as death overcame them, unless her shoe was merciful. She treated boys like flies. Mercilessly she imprisoned their affections and then left them with their power gone and crying. Yet she did not realise her power. Did not know of what she did.

I watched her, fascinated by all that she did. I was one of those boys. But I kept my feelings silent. She singled me out. Why she did what she did I’ll never know. Perhaps she felt that I had earned the right to her secrets.

Far from the madding boys and with her retinue of girlfriends, who were also in awe of her, she dug a hole. It was a wide hole but shallow. Then, carefully taking down her knickers, she positioned herself over the hole…and pissed into it. She watched me all the time she was doing it. I was riveted. She then pulled her knickers back up and stirred the pee with a stick. We all stirred the pee with our sticks. Then she filled it in again and went away with her friends, laughing. Maybe it was the equivalent to my crapping. It was exciting but she didn't know why. She swore to marry me one day. She never did.

Years later, when I was 12, my friend Jimmy Pierce, said that I could `feel` his cousin's` tits for half a crown. I went into the alley with him. There she was waiting. She wasn’t Gina Lollobrigida. She didn’t look like Brigitte Bardot. She was just a plain girl in a grubby teashirt. I made my excuses and left, riding on my big tricycle. Jimmy was upset that I had found his cousin `unattractive`. He couldn't understand it: "A feel is a feel," he said. I couldn’t explain either.

***************************

Her name was Carol Rider. She was 14 and the official girlfriend of Johnny Hobbs, a boy so feared in Herne Bay Secondary Modern that even the teachers gave him a wide berth. It was during rehearsals for the school talent competition behind the stage. I was playing harmonica with another boy named Roger Hext. We were due to play `Green Door`, which was a popular song by Frankie Vaughan, and "to give it a Christmas atmosphere", I announced over the microphone on the night, "Silent Night", with Roger playing a descant (we won).

I’m not quite sure how it happened but all of a sudden she got rather close to me and smiled. My reaction was to kiss her. I don`t mean on the cheek but a bloody good snog. When we finally came up for air, as this was my first time and I wanted it to go on forever, I said in my best `movie actor` style:"You can do better than that!" and went in for another. We got together again after that, but not a third time. John Hobbs came back! I was terrified that he would find out. He gave me a few strange glares but that was all. How could a crippled kid get it on with his Carol? Naw !

Fireworks

My first memory of fireworks was seeing my grandfather blow himself up. Sparks had gotten into the firework box and they had all gone up at once. He was just standing in the back garden, whilst we watched from the safety of the kitchen window, demonstrating the art of safety with a Golden Rain in each hand, when there was a huge bang. I remember Granddad bending over a small white pudding basin filled with hot water. There was blood on his forehead and the smell of Dettol.

My memory then shifts to the night of the 5th of November when we had a bonfire at the end of the Lemonade Jetty (I cannot to this day find out why we called it The Lemonade Jetty). I remember a policeman turning up. My father had a quick word with him, telling him that he would personally see to it that the remains of the fire were pushed safely into the sea.

That night 'Bangers' that I had hoarded in an old biscuit tin were ignited in shop keyholes, the blast of which nearly tore the lock out of its socket. My wheelchair could just be seen in the distance making a rapid escape. We would hurl Bangers really HARD, when they first spurted into life, hurled them into the sea with such force that they would descend like a glowing torch then erupt in a muffled GEERLOMFF, bubbles bursting on the sea's surface like a gigantic fart in the bath. Bangers attached to rockets, the fuse of which was turned around to bask in the blast of the rocket's lift-off power. When in the air we would cover our ears against the mighty explosion. Sometimes it never came and we would hunt the next morning in the graveyard of dead fireworks for the live one. We never found it but instead smelt the sulphurous remains of dead fireworks, mourn their passing and dream of next year!

Johnny Oplett

Johnny Oplett was a huge colossus of a boy, standing well over 6 foot tall, and that was bare footed! His deep-set eyes and huge cheekbones gave him an almost skeletal look. Rumour has it that he hit a teacher so hard that it sent him crashing over six desks. To cross Johnny`s path was not a very good idea. Yet, he had a soft spot for me: "Anyone you want sortin` out, Paul, just give the word." I was even afraid to turn down this offer and mentally tallied up my enemies. I really hadn't got any, at least not anyone deserving enough to unleash Johnny's mighty, shovel-like, fists upon.

Johnny sat on a large, throne-like armchair, on top of the, as yet, unlit, bonfire. He bellowed out orders through a huge cardboard tube. "Right, you two get that old sofa over 'ere and don't take all day about it; stack them chairs up good and high. I said fuckin' stack 'em. You need plenty of air circulatin` under `em. We want to get a good blaze goin' tonight!"

Boys from all over Herne Bay were at his bidding. This was to be the biggest bonfire yet. The biggest, hugest, bonfire on that piece of waste land - today it’s a car-park opposite Safeways - that Herne Bay had ever known. Johnny was on the job and you didn't say `no` to Johnny. I was that "crippled kid" so I was let off. He didn't say, "That crippled kid" to my face in case I got upset. I didn't care what people said. I was a crippled kid and it didn't bother me. It bothered other people, though…but not me.

The last I heard of Johnny Oplett was that he had married. He married a lady who was almost as fierce as he was. When he and his wife went to see his old mum for a family reunion, his brothers who were also big but not as huge as Johnny, had an understanding: "You don't swear in front of Mum."

Johnny's wife was apparently famous for her expletives, especially the f.word, and she, Johnny's missus, didn't give a tuppenny toss what she said and let Johnny know in no uncertain terms that she would not be verbally bound over to keep the peace. When they pulled up in front of the house, she still refused to "f…ing" conform. Johnny laid her out with a single blow. He left her, still unconscious, in the car, whilst he enjoyed the family get-together.

Johnny's father used to run a second-had shop in the High Street, near the corner with Bank Street. He was a large gentleman who habitually wore an old, brown trilby hat. He would fill the whole doorway with his bulk. I bought my first clarinet from him. When Mr Stenning, my music teacher, saw it he raised his eyes to heaven. "What is this?" he demanded. "A clarinet", I said. "It's from out of the ark. I can't teach you on this?" Mr Oplett had sold me that clarinet in all good faith. He and I didn't know the first thing about clarinets. Mr Stenning did.

St Bart's Hospital Rochester

She represented all that was bad in the NHS. She ran her ward like a military machine. I can still hear the words ''That's sufficient.'' All I remember of her were those words and my absolute terror of her.

I had just left a four week stint - or was it 6 weeks, I don’t remember - in the Iron Lung. I was having trouble with my bowels, not my breathing now. I lived in fear of her sticking a greased tube up my bottom, which was then attached to a funnel. In this funnel she poured warm, soapy water. I could feel my tummy swelling with the pressure of it. She then sat me on a bed-pan. If I made a mess she screamed at me.

My whole world had suddenly been turned on its head: my arms were weak, my legs no longer worked properly. Yet I was helped out of bed and onto a walking frame. She screamed again when I dripped excrement as I walked, and humiliated me in front of the whole ward by cleaning my bare bum in full view.

Whilst in the iron lung I had broken a thermometer: bitten down on it, snapped it in half. They peered inside my mouth with torches. Where had it gone? I had no sensation of swallowing it. Again they peered inside the cave of my mouth. There was no nook or cranny in which it could hide. I slept amidst the noise of my loudly breathing coffin. I had forgotten all about it. Then, when they had lifted me out for the final time, I snuggled down in my real bed.

The horrors of constipation were upon me. Every time a tray with a white cloth over it was carried down the ward I broke out in fear. An enema, oh surely not again! I tried to control it, I really did. The night nurse, head bent under a single light, reading notes or novel, should only be called in an emergency. There was nothing erotic or juicily naughty about crapping in bed, no exciting erection now. I couldn't stop it. I had no control. I did it in the bed. The thought of the ward sister and her wicked ways of sadistic satisfaction filled me with such fear that I dropped the offending turds behind the radiator! Nobody would ever find them. Nobody would ever know. But what was this, a piece of wood? A spike protruded from one of my offending efforts? It was the lost thermometer. So I had swallowed it.

In the half daze of sleep and anxiety I hadn't bargained for the radiators being attached to the wall off the floor. When the nurses pulled my locker out to clean, there they were, like horse droppings in the middle of the road. This was not how I had planned it! Soon I would wake up from this nightmare. Soon I would be free of the shame and the fear. But no: word got out. Now the sister was seething with rage. Quickly and efficiently she made the beds, coming ever closer to my bed.

Finally she arrived. ''Well, Paul,'' she said, ''and what have we done now?'' I remained silent, frozen with fear. What would she do to me now? ''If I had a puppy who had messed I would rub his nose in it. But what am I going to do withyou? You are a dirty little boy. What are you?'' ''A dirty little boy,'' I mumbled. ''Louder,'' she said, ''I can't hear you.'' She cupped her hand to her ear. ''What are you?'' ''A dirty little boy'' I said out loud. ''That's sufficient,'' she said, ''that's sufficient.'' From that moment on I hated her. My fear of her turned into hate. I gathered strength from hating her. It was better than being afraid.

But my troubles were far from over. Now I had the ridicule and bullying of the boy in the next bed. ''Can I borrow yer toothpaste?'' ''Of course you can,'' I said. He took the top off the tube. ''Ehrrr,'' he said, ''it's got shit in it. I don't want toothpaste that's full of shit!'' He hurled it back at me. And just to round things off he got out of bed and gave me a flurry of punches in the chest. I cried out in pain. I had no strength to retaliate. I couldn't walk and my arms were too weak to counter his punches.

''What did you do that for?'' I cried, clutching my chest. ''For just being a smelly little shit-bag,'' he said. Again he got out of bed and again the blows to my chest. ''Ehrrr,'' he said again, ''I bet your flannel is full of shit, too. It's probably in yer locker.'' He pulled out the drawer. ''Yeh, thought so, full of shit.'' A nurse came up the ward. He made a hurried dive for his bed.

**************************

Years later, the boy in the next bed, who had taunted me and punched me, paid me a visit at my parent’s restaurant. He was all clad in leather and rode a motorbike. He didn’t actually apologise for his bullying ways but he gave me a ride on his motorbike that yelled to me ‘’Forgive me. I was young and cruel and out of control. Please forgive me?’’ Like him, I didn’t actually say so. But I rather liked his new image – with the leathers an’ all – and forgave him. I never saw him again.

Cheyney Hospital

My misery came to an end. I was sent to Cheyney Hospital in Sevenoaks. Kent. Peace at last. The ward sister was warm, jolly and had twinkling eyes. Here I was amongst my own kind, here I was eventually handed out callipers and a spinal brace, here I was pointed in the direction of a kindly doctor who held out his arms to me and gently urged me to walk. After months of bedrails I suddenly was pushed as if by an invisible being: I staggered toward the doctor and collapsed in his arms. I had done it. I had walked again against all the odds!

*********************

My parents showered my bed
With presents and gifts:
Steak and chips in a vacume,
Aeroplanes that flew,
Books that I never even read,

Most of the kids got nothing
Not even parents!

I was embarrassed;
I was only eight
But I was SO embarrassed.

“Please don’t bring me
Any more presents.”

They didn’t.
I felt better.

I fell in love
With Nurse Roberts
And Nurse Henderson,
I didn’t know about sex
But I was getting close! …….

Mickey Spearie

At Cheyney Hospital I met Mickey Spearie. Mickey ruled our hospital ward like a king. As a new recruit I had to be vetted by Mickey; given the okay. We were all under his wing, like a brood of limping, helpless chicks. Even the nurses respected him.

Mickey was twelve; the eldest. We were a strange, crippled crew of kids. Little Pam, strapped in her wheelchair, a rubber bottle swung beneath her like a deflated udder to catch the waste she couldn't feel. Rosemary, only six years old, she was woken every morning at seven without fail. They had to exercise her limbs or she couldn't move, Rheumatism at six years old, an old lady who would never know what it was to be young. And then there was me: wheelchair-bound but hopeful. Already a calliper and a plastic spinal jacket: already clinging upright to bedrails.

Mickey just sat in his bed and watched, encouraging us all. He called us cowards when three steps seemed like a mile.

''When are you going to walk, Mickey?''
''One day,'' he said, ''one day.''

Mickey's body was curled round like a spring. Sometimes he would demonstrate how tall he was by trying to stretch his body the full length of the bed. Everyone admired how tall he was. All Mickey knew of the world was his 'big cushion' that was placed in front of the window that overlooked a harbour on the rare occasions that he was allowed home. ''Perhaps I'll skipper a boat one day,'' he said.

It was visiting day; all the parents were there. My big day had arrived: I was going home. I did the rounds saying goodbye, clutching my new sticks. Mickey's mother just sat and looked at me, her eyes full. Mickey said that he would be going home for good one day.

He lived to be seventeen. Mickey never walked. I learned from him that you don't need to be able to walk in order to be a leader. All you need is the ability to draw strength from weakness. Mickey had that ability, and gave it till he died.

Chailey Heritage

The bullying went on ceaselessly. I was spat on, full in the face. I was held down with metal chairs whilst my legs were stung with stinging nettles. Sadists and bullies hounded me day and night.

A pile of fresh shit was found in the snooker room. The prefects rounded up the usual suspects and their bare bums were exposed to be inspected for traces of excrement. I was not a usual suspect but I was subjected, none-the-less, to this barbarity and humiliation. I, thank God, was pronounced innocent. But I had had enough. A boy named George threatened to smash my balsa wood plane that I was building. "Go an' see whether Mr Giles is about or I'll smash yer plane!"

I limped off along the corridor as fast as my legs would allow. Mr Giles was nowhere to be seen. I came back into the empty dormitory where George was sitting holding my plane. As I got to the dorm door I said: "I can't find him, George I…." And there was this CRACK. I knew that George had smashed my plane. A rage welled up in me that I had never known before. As I entered the dorm I hurled the ball I was carrying at George. He had never seen me angry before. It bounced off his head whilst I went for him screaming like a demon. He was a bully and allbullies are cowards. I've never seen him move so fast! He must have told the other bullies because I was never troubled again.

Chailey was a hell-hole. But the food was good. Never have I tasted cheese rissoles like the ones at Chailey Heritage. Brown bread and butter were the order of the day. When visitors came it turned to white...

I remember a huge kid with callipers on each leg. He was so huge that he couldn't sit down. Instead he used to stand at the end of our communal, wooden table and eat boiled eggs. He was on a diet.

A kid with a finger sticking out where his arm should have been the other arm hanging uselessly at his side. No-one could play Ping-Pong like he could, nor write as elegantly with his one solitary finger, his shoulder to the paper, his extra large digit coiled around a fountain pen. He was born that way. He didn't know any different. And it didn't matter! It didn't matter to him at any rate.

It was instilled in me not to 'sneak', not to tell of what I saw and experienced. Not even to my parents. "One more day of pain, one more day of sorrow, one more day in this ol' dump, we're goin' home tomorrow," we sang. We sang the song of freedom but not of choice. Maybe I could burst the bonds of sneaking. Maybe I could, and I did.

In those days parents had not the choice, choice as to where to send their disabled children. The bonds of legality bit hard. But the authorities hadn't bargained for the Buras. The Buras dug their heels in right up to the ankles. Gundolf House, the school that I had been attending before polio struck, were willing to take me back. This gentle school with gentle teachers: Miss Golding and Miss Daisy who took me to their gentle hearts. I could no longer March to that wind-up gramophone that always seemed to play March of the Tin Soldier. But I could hear it and watch the others without envy. I had, after all, other fish to fry that tasted just as good.

Characters

Charlie Mount

There was this old man that we used to call Brickdust. He was so flatfooted that he used to shuffle when he walked. He wore a flat cap and his trousers were up around his ankles. You had to be kids to be so cruel and thoughtless, devoid of conscience. As we came within earshot we'd call out "BRICKDUST"!. This made him so mad he almost jumped off the ground with rage. Then we would escape down the alley, calling out again "BRICKDUST!" as we went. We were merciless. But we soon tired of the game… maybe his anger got to us after all.

There was this lady SO thin that we heard a rumour that she lived on lemons and vinegar. We only stared at her thinness.

I was fascinated with the lady tramp we nicknamed Tea Cosy Head. She always wore a kind of tea cosy on her head and lots of things that she wrapped in newspaper. We never found out what they were, what was in those parcels. The fascination has stayed with me to this day. I always wrap my Christmas presents in newspaper! No, really. I do.

Then there was the road mender who worked for the Herne Bay Council. During the war a bullet pierced his nose and every time that he bent over to dig you could see daylight through the hole. We didn't take the mickey out of him, but we did an awful lot of sideways staring. How did he build up enough steam to blow his nose? No one knew. "And wouldn't snot have escaped through that hole?"

Morecambe and Wise got it exactly right. There was a newspaper seller along the seafront who worked for REYNOLDS the newsagents run by Aunty Mary and Uncle Fred Reynolds, and he did used to call out:"Aree Noos or Annid! Aree Noos or Annid!" It was years later that I realised that what he actually called out was "STAR NEWS OR STANDARD!"

Charley Mount, with his thick, navy blue jerkin, peaked hat, wellies and a gold earring, looked every inch the seaman. He used to sit on a box or barrel and mend or make fishing nets. I never knew which. The punters thought that he was the `real thing`: an old salt that could tell a tale or three about the sea. I don't know whether he actually did but he always came up with, in his salty Kentish accent: "D'you know what they do in Herne Bay when it rains?" "No Charley, what do they do?" "They let it rain!" He convulsed with laughter. "Do you know Ginger Burns?" "No Charley, never heard of him." "Well, it does!" A coughing fit followed the laughter. He always told the same feeble gags, and we loved him for it. But Charley Mount kept a secret from us kids. He was going blind!

Anger

Between these two buildings
Lay the alley where we had the
Showdown with Michael Lee.

My little sister Melly came home with her hands whipped and sore. She was crying. After my spell at Chailey Heritage at aged nine I had learned how to look after myself in the fight stakes. "Who did this to you?" I demanded. She was so upset and weeping that I could hardly hear her. "M.M.Michael Lee," she stammered, "they held me whilst Michael whipped my hands with a branch." "Who are they? I said. "H-H-He's got a gang of boys." "Where are they now?" I felt blind anger for the first time. I sought revenge and I wanted it now! "T.T.They're in the alley by The Divers Arms," she sobbed, "Right!" I said, grabbing my wheelchair. (My wheelchair was a means of support in those far off days and Melly, on the run up to Guy Fawkes Day, used to dress up as a Guy, remaining perfectly still until somebody saw through our ruse and tickled her.) I pushed the chair as fast as my legs would allow. And there they were in the alley as Melly had said. I pushed my chair up to Michael Lee and punched his lights out. One punch was all that it took. Then the others closed in. With my back to the wall and my wheelchair as a weapon fuelled by my anger, I was a force to be reckoned with. Melly had followed me, even my little brother Kevin. Together we saw them off.

On making our slow way down the alley, puffed up with pride that I had succeeded in my quest for revenge, Michael Lee reappeared. This time he had an iron bar in one hand and two stones in the other. "Right, Bura," he snarled, "nobody does that to me, Nobody!"

"I just did", I said, "and what are you going to do about it: an iron bar and stones against these bare hands?"

It was like something out of a film. I was taking on the role of John Wayne, or someone like him. It just came out of me. I then turned my back on him and we kept on walking, pushing my wheelchair. The two stones just missed us but we kept on walking. On that day we could have taken on the world!

Janet Bailey

I lay with the beautiful Janet all that summer afternoon

I was potty about her, every time I saw her, my heart seem to swell within me. I used to send notes to Number 12, The High Street, Herne Bay, where she lived. Notes and cards that I sent from The Royal Sea Bathing Hospital in Margate and was written in tiny writing, hoping that I could hide the love I held for her, yet on the other hand it was a declaration of my love. She was so, so pretty. I had her photograph on my wall next to my bed, a photograph that I had asked Mr Scrivens our local photographer for. He gave it to me free of charge (Mr Scrivens took photos of holiday-makers just right of the Clock Tower where he had a kiosk). I thought about her day and night.

*********************

My cousin Alan and I, down from London and living with us for a while, used to put on our suits from Burton's. I with my neon green socks and elastic sided shoes and Tony Curtis hair cut and cutely crafted DA (duck's arse) at the back, he with his red tie and similar hair and brightly polished shoes.

Cousin Alan's dad, my uncle Max, used to run a café in Berwick Street Market, London. When I and my sisters and brother visited, Alan used to show me the prostitutes plying their trade outside his father's café. ''See that bloke talking to that woman?'' I nodded. ''Well 'e's about to give 'er one.'' ''What in the street?'' I replied, innocently. ''Naw! Watch the bloke!'' I did as I was bid and watched the bloke. He was talking to the woman in hushed tones, his head bent over as he listened to what she said. He held a cigarette in his right hand and pulled on it nervously. The woman finished talking and the man hurried away, flicking his cigarette into the gutter. ''Now watch,'' said Alan, ''she'll follow him in a sec.'' Sure enough, the woman, looking from side to side, hurried away in the same direction. ''They're goin' to have sex. And afterwards he'll give her money.'' ''How do you know?'' I said. ''I dunno. I just know," he said. Alan came down from London. He was streetwise. He knew all the angles. He was from LONDON after all.

From left to right: My mother, Kevin, Melly, Josie, cousin Carol, Uncle Tom, Aunty Patsy (with cousins) Uncle Bob, Granddad, Aunty Fay and a little bit of Dad

*********************

We must have been about 12. Alan and I used to frequent Macari's ice cream parlour on a Sunday. We used to preen ourselves, smoke the odd woodbine and comb our hair a lot. We were desperate for the company of women. Janet Bailey was once seen on a Sunday afternoon with her mates, drinking coffee. I had to see her. I didn't tell Alan of my love. He would have taken the mickey mercilessly. All that winter we spent our Sunday afternoons in Macari's, making a cup of coffee last for the eternity of a Sunday afternoon. And all the time I was thinking of her.

Summer came. And still my waking thoughts were centred on her. Once, when cousin Alan was about to put a penny in an arcade machine, having waited patiently for an unsuspecting punter to put just the right amount of pennies in the machine to get a result (we used to wait like vultures, pretending to encourage the punters for their forthcoming kill) Janet, my love, appeared out of nowhere to claim her prize: namely to ram her penny in before Alan could get to it. The winning pennies clattered into the metal cup.

Alan made a dive for the winnings claiming that she had cheated him. He pinned her against the wall. With instant rage I sprang to her defence, my strong left arm pulling Alan off the girl I loved as if he were paper. ''Thanks,'' she said, her hot breath condensing like dew on my hand as it came close to those lips that I would have given up heaven to kiss. I was already in heaven and sent an army of angels to her rescue: namely me. ''Can I keep the money?'' she said, sweetly. Alan protested. I held him in my strong left arm. ''Course you can.'' I said, ''course you can.'' And she swept off with the money and a little piece more of my heart. ''Wot did you do that for?'' my cousin protested, ''Why did you let her get away with it?'' I looked him right in the eyes. ''You put a hand on her a second time and I'll kill you!'' I said. Cousin Alan got the message: ''You fancy her, don't yer?'' From that moment on the cat escaped the bag. The beans were spilt. The secret was out. Paul Bura loved Janet Bailey.

Yes, I fancied her. So much was she on my mind that I swear I heard her name being called inside my head. I swung round, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. There was no one there.

Me with Wiley Price with one leg in a bicycle clip - poised for a quick getaway !

Not only did she look like an angel she sang like one, too. She won the Bandstand talent competition with Wiley Price and his Orchestra. She sang Doris Day's: Que Sera Sera. She was so professional! I died there in her song a thousand times. Her voice lifted above the Bandstand on that golden day. I thought that she sang for me and me alone. But no, she sang for another. His name was Glenn Worthington, son of the trombonist, Stan, in Wiley's Price's orchestra, he who once saved my life, (as I shall soon describe).

Cousin Carol and Melly

I was an easy touch. Janet hid a side to her that I was blind to see. She was greedy. Many times I flattered her with words and she responded with her lust for money. I, full of her presence, her nearness, her voice, doled out cash to her, my ears full of promises. But all the time she dallied with another, then another. I fell for her charms and demands like the soft little sod that I was. Yet still she was precious to me.

Once and once only I lay with the beautiful Janet on the beach the whole of that summer's day. I had to be dreaming, drunk on her beauty and the sound of her voice. She didn't see my polio belly that flopped like I was middle aged. She didn't see my withered legs and Quasimodo back. Did she? I did my best to cover up with towels on that crowded beach. Yet she stayed and stayed. I pretended to wipe a fly from her shoulder just so that I could touch her. Her skin was soft, silky and yielding. The sun had done its job, covering her with the colour of honey. I was in paradise that day and the days that followed. Yet on leaving she borrowed two bob, all the money I had.

Glenn and I were still mates, even though he possessed the lovely Janet. Or so I thought. Janet soon dispensed with him and went on to the next boyfriend, but not me!

Glenn Worthington watched me as I eased my bum down the steps one after another, flicking my weak leg in a kind of rhythmic dance. He watched me ease myself into the warm, waiting water. Already I was being buffeted. I swam like an eel in those far-off days, breaking through the breakers, breaking through the nonsense that was polio. All the time Glenn watched me. The sea, completely untameable, grew ugly, foam started from its mouth. I knew it was time to get out. But the sea refused to let me go! Every time I approached the steps it would paw me back like a cat. Just as I judged the gap in the waves, got my bottom onto the first step, a fist of water punched me sideways! I could see Glenn, the terror rising on his face. I tried again. Just as Glenn cupped his hands under my armpits in an attempt to lift me free, I was torn from his grasp! Even then I didn't realise that I could drown. I even stayed down under the waves longer then was necessary for more dramatic effect! Then the fear gripped me. Glenn was crying. He knew what 'living in the moment' was all about. There was no dreaming in him then. This was real!

A last but mighty effort, timed between waves, to pull me free, a panicking sob, Glenn's tears mingling with the salt on my back.

At last he hauled me free from the wet hands that held me! I was crying too. The only way you could tell was the gentle heaving of my shoulders. ''You saved my life,'' I said, ''I shall not forget it!'' Glenn nodded, quickly wiping away the tears on his shirt so that I wouldn't see. We said no more about it.

As the weeks flew by the memory faded. What was it that kept the incident a secret? I don't remember telling anyone else about it. I had forgotten. Or maybe I just kept it at arms length…until now. Maybe Janet had something to do with it, although she had finished with his favours. Even though Glenn had saved my life, was I still jealous? Had I carried that jealousy a bit too far? I don't remember.

After that summer Wiley Price and his Orchestra packed up their instruments and faded into panto land, to return again the next year. Whilst Glenn, with his father, Stan, who packed his trombone and clown's mask, that he kept wrapped in grease paint, was never to be seen again. My interest in Janet Bailey waned. Oh, she still made my heart jump, still excited the romance in me. But her eternal greed for cash and her steady promises of ''I'll pay you back next time I see you,'' followed by her brilliant, seductive, smile and a toss of her head, were more than I could bear.

Years later, when the boy became a man, I was to see Janet again. ''I live in Liverpool now.'' ''Do you still sing?'' I enquired. ''Yes,'' she said, ''in a night club.'' My experience of her told me that she was also inclined to tell fibs. I liked to believe her. But did she really? It no longer mattered anymore. It really didn't matter.

The Skate

I must have been about five. The skate swam in and out of the old tyre. The skate was obviously fascinated by it and took great joy by just swimming in and out of this partially submerged rubber loop. It was having the time of its life. The water next to the Neptune Jetty was summer-warm, just right for the fish, just right to bask in. The skate never noticed the fisherman, didn't pay any mind to the shadow with its gaffing hook. Still the fish swam in and out, in and out. This time he had him! The gaff pierced a part of his wing and was hauled up and over the side of the jetty.

It lay on its belly. It lay on its belly and HONKED! It actually HONKED! Taking in air where there should have been water, drowning in air, wrenched from one reality into another. I was afraid of it, scared to touch it. It honked and honked and honked. Why wouldn't it stop honking? The fisherman said that he had never heard anything like it. But it was mine, as I had noticed it first, all mine!

After a while, I'm not sure how long, the honking faded and it died. I put it in a basket and covered it in live crabs. I'm not sure why I did this. The crabs escaped and made their way back to the sea. I wish my skate could have followed them. Dad cooked him. I didn't have any. I didn't eat any skate for the next 10 years. The memory of that skate came back again and again. Maybe now he'll leave me alone.

Mother's Idiosyncratic Habits and Dad's

My dad would say:''Yer mother always warms herself at the expense of others.'' We huddled around the paraffin stove at the back of the restaurant; in mothballs now for the winter. We had dismantled the tables and put them in the cellar. In their place was a large kitchen table and an armchair or two. Dad had fixed up a door to separate us from the front of the restaurant. We still used the restaurant kitchen for preparing meals.

[Photo: Harold Gough]

That winter was so cold even the sea froze. Gigantic icicles of sea water formed like Jurassic teeth along the railings of the seafront.

The Downs were a blitz of white leaving the brave amongst us to toboggan our way down. Sometimes we improvised using only a tin tray for a sledge which would career out of control, nine times out of ten, and crash. We felt no pain then, only pleasure.

Dad would 'let go' with a slow stunner of a fart: silent but deadly. He would hid behind his newspaper and gradually lean sideways. The newspaper was the give-away. His silent laughter rattled the pages. ''Phooforrrre! Daaad!'' "What?'' he would say in mock surprise. ''Phooforrre. YOU know.'' By now Dad was helpless with laughter and, if the truth were known, so were we.

As I was saying: mother ALWAYS did it. She would enter the room, icy wind in pursuit, and make straight for the fire. ''For Christ's sake, woman, put the wood in the hole'' said Dad, standing up and heaving the door closed, sending an even colder blast of air around the already freezing room. We all wore three jumpers and a pullover. It was that cold.

She ALWAYS did it and does to this day! She gets angry when you point it out so no one says anything anymore, even when one of us stands up and quietly closes the door hoping she won't notice. If she does spot you she gets angry again: idiosyncratic or what?

Our Gang

Our gang consisted of Croyse White, me, my younger sister Melly, Peter McKay, and our cousin Alan. Trailing along behind was our kid brother, Kevin. If we were lucky Chris Bailey (brother of the delicious Janet) would join us, but only on a temporary basis, temporary because he was either on your side or the side of the enemy. He wasn't fussy. Chris was violent. A bomb ready to explode and he didn't care who got the fallout or whose gang was what. Chris was as near a psychopath as we could make him. That is, if you didn't mind a bit of senseless violence.

*****************************************

There was only one other that clearly was a psychopath and that was Jimmy Foster. When he grew up Jimmy Foster had only to glimpse a policeman and he would have to be restrained. After a fight in a pub, it took around six policemen to arrest him. The police went in fear of him. Even as a child violence would shimmer around Jimmy like a heat-haze. He was to be avoided at all costs. Yet girls he drew like a magnet.

*****************************************

After the Flood

Our gang would meet in the cellar that ran underneath our restaurant. Although I went out in a fixed-wheeled wheelchair when on the hunt for a rival gang, I could still stand and stagger down the stone steps that led to the cellar. I rigged up a light so that every time one of the gang entered he or she would have to press a button and a little light would flash in the main body of the cellar.

I had converted this room into a gym: a punch ball was fixed into the beams of the low ceiling and into the floor. I had a boxing ring, 6 foot by 4 foot, where I trained my gang into fighting perfection. Croyse White, whose parents were Welsh (where else would you get a name like Croyse?), lived in the restaurant next door. He provided us with a flag. It had the Welsh Dragon on it. We didn't care. A flag was a flag. Besides you couldn't get more fearsome than a dragon. We never let Chris Bailey see our gym. He would have just laughed.

(Years later, when my parents had split up, my sister Josie and I were lumbered with the job of running THE TUDOR, where during the flood of the early 50's a fridge belonging to Mr White of the Cardinal Restaurant (Croyse's father) ended up [see photo]. THE TUDOR was a pub and dance hall which we ran whilst my dad went quietly bankrupt. We managed to keep the place going by holding live rock n' roll dances. That is until the ancient heating system gave out. The image of the previous owner, a gas poker strapped to his neck and a bag over his head, who took his own life in the old boiler house, ran images of horror every time we entered the place.

Even MORE years later, THE TUDOR had new owners, that very same dance hall where Josie and I had failed so miserably. Where rock n' roll was played 'live' to coach-loads of fans brought in from the Medway towns. But the failure of the heating system spelled out the death knoll.

Now THIS was the 70's and Peter McKay and I persuaded the new owners that what was needed was a disco. So we rented the TUDOR! And who, amongst others, was more qualified for the job of bouncer but… CHRIS BAILEY.

I was on the door when the incident occurred. At 11pm the pub was emptied and the punters, for an extra 25p entrance fee, could drink and dance the night into oblivion. One bloke came stumbling in from the pub with his girlfriend and wandered past me without paying. ''Er, excuse me, man, but you have to pay an extra 25p if……'' He reeled around, face contorted with rage and evil. ''Don't fuckin' call me 'man'. I don't fuckin' like it, okay? And you can stick yer 25p up yer fuckin' arse. You read me?''

He said these words with such venom that he almost spat them out. I could feel the vapour of his words clutch me, drench me. I had to admit that I was not prepared for this outburst. He staggered off into the gloom, girlfriend in tow like a lost sheep. I could tell by the way her eyes met mine that even she was shocked. I hadn't expected it and I was shaking. Chris Bailey appeared from nowhere. ''You got problems, man?'' he said. ''Yeh,'' I said, '' that bloke over there wouldn't pay and he gave me a mouthful. I'm still shaking.'' ''I'll go over and sort 'im out,' 'said Chris. ''NO! no,'' I said, ''no violence Chris, for God's sake!'' ''You just leave it to me,'' said Chris. Before I could stop him, Chris strode into the murk and was swallowed up. I could just make out the figure of Chris whispering something in the drunk's ear.

Instantly the drunk shot to his feet. An amazing detoxification took place. The drunk was no longer drunk. He was as sober as I was. He made his way quickly to my pay desk. ''Look mate, I'm sorry. It's the gin wot does me in, when I've 'ad a few something takes over. I get aggressive. Know what I mean? Now 'ow much do I owe yer?''

Later, I said to Chris, ''What on earth did you say to him?'' Chris looked at me, touched the side of his nose, and winked. To this day I never found out. But he must have threatened him in such a way that…well, it doesn't bear thinking about, unless of course he was married. And I don't mean to that particular lost sheep of a girl.)

Saturday Morning Pictures

It was always the same whether before polio or after. The only difference was that after polio they had to stash my wheelchair in the cupboard where they put the cleaning stuff; brooms, buckets, mops, that sort of thing. But it was ALWAYS the same. The manager used to appear on stage in front of the cinema screen. He was greeted with a shower of silver paper rolled into tight little balls; discarded ice-cream cones; empty popcorn packets and just about anything that could be used as a missile.

He was genuinely scared of this part of the procedure: he stood there in his evening suit, trying to fend off with his hands all that we could throw at him (brave man that he was!). He tried to speak. He was howled down. Only when the Saturday Morning Club song-sheet was projected onto the screen was there any semblance of silence. We roared out the words ''We come along on Saturday morrrning greeting everybody with a smile…'' The little bouncing ball keeping pace with the words on the screen; as far as we were concerned it was like the National Anthem. Glad when it was over. Only the song was sung BEFORE the films and not after. Though I couldn't get to the exit at the best of times, National Anthem or not.

Directly the song was at an end the manager disappeared, again fending off a fresh shower of missiles that were hurled at the stage. He looked as though he had spent three hours in Trafalgar Square with every pigeon scoring a direct hit! I feel sure that he had one evening suit for the adults and one for us kids, the latter being permanently at the dry cleaners.

Then we were plunged into a world of Tom and Jerry cartoons. Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and Buck Rogers (no relation) and Jungle Jim played by Johnny Weismuller. Monsters loomed large and luminous. Space ships wobbled and sparked and gave off pretentious gases that today would fool no one. Flash Gordon and Superman were my favourites.

The imagination filled in all the cracks, cementing reality so real that they would live on in our minds until something better came along. We were hungry for excitement, hungry for adventure. And when we finally left the cinema, our senses heightened and our imaginations huge with hope and bravado, we went out into the world and fought other battles, real or imagined, in the arena of life as we knew it…or could make it.

The manager may have thought ''little bastards''. But then he too was caught up in the arena of life as we knew it. We would always remember him with growing affection. Oh, did he dread Saturday Morning Pictures! But then he was a part of it, and played the part to perfection.

POSTSCRIPT to SATURDAY MORNING PICTURES

My brother Kevin, when it was an A. Picture (A. means you had to be accompanied by an adult!) used to ask ANY adult whether he could ‘go in to the cinema’ with them – as indeed we alldid in those days (“Can you take us in, mister?”). This day was a very special day because the two people who said ‘yes’ were Mike and Bernie Winters who were just killing time before they went on stage at The Pier. In those days Mike and Bernie were just climbing up the pole to fame and in a few years they were household names!

My Sister Josie

(My sister Josie was a bit-part actress. She appeared in a film with Diana Dors called PASSPORT TO SHAME. Years later she again brushed shoulders with this voluptuous blond actress. ''I don't know whether you remember me?'' said my sister. ''La Girls,'' said Diana who would play cards with the crew and swear like a gaffer, ''of course I remember.'' Josie played the part of one of a posse of prostitutes in the film. When it was shown locally at our cinema Reg the projectionist gave my mum and dad a private viewing. When Josie's part came up he 'froze' the frame. And there she was MY sister, all ten feet of her.

When the film had been showing for about a week my mother was stopped in the street by a well-meaning busy body: ''I don't know whether you know or not,'' she said, ''but your daughter is on the game.'' Mother didn't waste her time trying to explain.)

Shards of Memory From The Restaurant

My memory shoots back to the time when a customer accused my father of cooking in paraffin. Dad replied ''I think you're mistaken, sir.'' Then proceeded to ask each and every customer in the restaurant: was the food to his or her liking? The customers, sensing there was trouble afoot, replied in the affirmative. My father returned to the, now irate, customer. ''I think you're VERY mistaken, sir.'' He then turned his back and walked away.

This was like the proverbial 'red rag'. The young man, wearing a white, open necked shirt, stood up. His wife put out a steadying hand to him; she had obviously married a highly volatile husband, having seen this all before. The young man followed Dad, his face bright red. ''Stay away from me, son!'' my father warned. His days as a professional wrestler had put him in good stead for this moment. The young man aimed a punch. My father dodged the blow and grabbed his arm, twisting it. But he hadn't got a firm hold. The next punch connected.

My father's nose began to bleed. (My father was famous for his bleeding nose. In his younger days, in-between clinches, during his professional wrestling career, the two fighters would smear my father's blood over both of them, which added gore to the spectacle. You see: THEN they’d decide who would win!). My dad got this young man in a headlock cum stranglehold. Mrs Rich, (our washer-upper) and my mother screamed for someone to do something. I grabbed the man's arm and tried to prevent him from punching my dad who all the time was throttling the life out of him.

I remember going down on the floor. I remember to this day the blood on that white shirt. The young man managed to free himself and, with his young wife in tow, made for the door. He was parked right outside the restaurant and made a quick get-away. The police were called. But they never found him.

After the fight the excitement settled. Dad cleaned himself up. The customers thinned and it was OUR time for lunch. Some of the boiled potatoes tasted distinctly of paraffin. Someone had blundered. A leaking can was responsible and contaminated part of our spud stock. How could we have explained that away to that irate young man?!

Mr Russell

Next door to our restaurant was a vacant 'lock up' shop. It belonged to Mr White (father of Croyse). He let it out to a Mr Russell who proceeded to open it up as a cockle and whelk stall. Up until that moment my parents were the only people on Herne Bay seafront selling cockles, whelks, mussels, jellied eels, and other seafood. And there was very little they could do about it. It made up about 20% of our takings!

Mr Russell came in to introduce himself. I remember them giving Mr Russell a frosty reception. But they gritted their teeth and got on with the selling of excellent fish and chips and occasionally… CURRY!

In those days it would be served with boiled potatoes, peas AND boiled rice. We had been brought up to eat all manner of things, influenced mainly by my father whose Jewish father had taught them all (the Bura brothers and sisters) to eat things like, for example, chopped chicken livers fried together with onions and eggs. But curry? Oh, I could eat it for breakfast, dinner, and tea and any other time. You see, in those days (the 50's) Indian restaurants were only in places like London, and then they were few and far between. But then we would cook the curry with sultanas. Yet where authentic Madras Indian curry was concerned never would you cook fruit in a curry. In chutneys served with the curry, yes.

But I digress. Mr Russell was POTTY about my mother's curries. However I think perhaps at this point I should paint a picture of Mr Russell. He was of average height and always wore a suit that was hand made in London's West End. He would wear that suit at all times. When he was dressing crabs, he would wear it. When he was shelling whelks, he would wear it. When he and Jock, his driver, went up to London to Billingsgate Fish Market, he would wear it. When he picked his nose and wiped the contents down the front of his suit, he would continue to wear it. He wore it until the front of his suit was so encrusted that he would have a new one made and start the process all over again.

He wore glasses, and he had a very rubbery nose. I believe he was a boxer in his younger days. When his glasses reached a certain point on the bridge of his nose he would push them up and finish the gesture with a violent rubbing of his nose which sent his 'hooter' into a kind of spasm that seemed to go on for ever.

He would order the curry in advance, say for about 1 PM. He would come into the restaurant slavering. He would sit down and slaver. When the steaming pile of curried beef, peas, potatoes, and boiled rice would be served he would, thinking no one was watching, slip his false teeth out and put them in his trouser pocket. Not into a hanky but direct from mouth to pocket and proceed to engulf the curry with great delight and huge gusto!

Gypsy Lee

A gypsy family had parked their caravan near the back entrance to our restaurant in Beach Street. They were there for the summer season, peddling dreams and palmistry. Gypsy John Lee was a not very tall man with a full, grey beard and wild eyes. He wore bright, coloured shirts and a sleeveless over-jacket. A thick, leather belt with a huge brass buckle and baggy trousers completed the outfit. He used the pubs as his 'booth' and often as not was thrown out. But he made a living from anyone he could con into listening to his tales of tall, dark strangers and the like. Maybe he had a gift, and maybe not?

His wife and kids (there were 3 as I recall) were seldom seen. Like Badgers, only in the dusk of a summer's day would they come out to play. They didn't have toys but instead had catapults or spears, exquisitely made. These strange children whose mother was rarely seen fascinated my brother Kevin. They kept to themselves. If they did go out during the day then no one saw them. It was during their rare excursions into the light that Kev encountered them. They were throwing stones into an old tin bath about four yards away. Kevin, without a word to these strange children, picked up a stone and threw it, at the same time one of the children darted in front of the tin bath and in so doing was a direct target for Kevin's stone. The stone thumped the side of the kid's head and he let out a yell. Clutching his head he ran into the caravan.

Almost at once she appeared, a screaming harridan of horror and rage. Her face contorted with fury she leapt down the caravan's steps like a tigress and made a lunge for my brother. Kevin was terrified. He ran as fast as his little legs would carry him. All the time he could hear her screaming a language he had never in his life heard before. All the kids ran with her. It was like the hounds of hell on his trail. He burst into our restaurant, his only sanctuary, and she and her children followed. Kevin made for my mother's apron strings.

This spitting, strange hag of a woman confronted my mother. ''What's this all about?'' said my mother. ''HE threw a stone at one of my boys and NOBODY gets away with that, nobody!"

''I didn't mean to, “Kevin cried, “I was just playing and he got in the way and…''

At this point the gypsy hag made to hit Kevin. Up until then my mother was prepared to reason with the lady. But this was war. As the gypsy woman had protected her own then so would my mother protect hers. She grabbed hold of her hair and frog-marched her to the door and threw her out! The customers in the restaurant burst into spontaneous applause.

Spitting and scratching, her eyes blazing, she tried to re-enter our shop. But the forces of good on which my mother stood put up a huge sign that said STOP! Like an angry cat, a shoulder and taloned hand would try and make entry. Meanwhile the police were called. But that didn't prevent her from going away and coming back with a brick, threatening ''I'll put this fucking brick through yer fucking window!''

At this stage the police arrived and took her and her kids away. The police were going to charge her with threatening behaviour, breach of the peace etc. My mother said ''She was only protecting her own. I just lost my temper, that's all.'' Later, all she would say was ''That gypsy woman. Her hair was all matted.''

Business and Bob and John

Bob and John were coming for a whole week! Bob and John were my childhood heroes. They had style. They would say things like 'sure' and ‘yeh’ and 'okay', words that hadn't hit Herne Bay yet and wouldn't for a whole decade. They wore suits that were fitted. Bespoke, made by the best Jewish tailors (unlike Mr Russell. His suits were only carbon copies). And not only ONE suit but many! I admired John's terylene shirts with the cut-away collars that you didn't have to iron. But most of all I admired his Windsor knotted ties. He taught me how to tie a Windsor knot.

And Uncle Bob (my father's brother Barnet, Bob for short), he owned a long, leather coat that was so heavy that I could hardly lift it. My Uncle Bob: talented and very entertaining who would burst into song at the drop of a chip: a child entertainer who grew up in a world that I so envied: a world of puppetry, film acting and recording. The world of SHOW BUSINESS!

Peter Sellers and John Hardwick. John dressed either as a fisherman or an archer is closely scrutinizing Peter’s camera with an intense scrute!

Mother and Josie give uncle Bob and John a hand with the Singing Waiters.

Bob Bura and John Hardwick stood out in a crowd. Well, at least the crowd in Herne Bay: the holidaymakers, the punters. Not only did they stand out in sheerstyle, but also they brought with them the most amazing sound equipment and cameras, which they carried as if nurturing small, but delicate children. Bob and John worked for the BBC! The BBC was in the habit of asking them for special effects: like the trailing string of a balloon that spelt out the title of a film, or the Flying Dutchman, the said vessel making its way through the misty realms of dry ice was actually shot in the sea at Herne Bay (they used a scaled down model of the Flying Dutchman, of course).

CAMBERWICK GREEN and TRUMPTON were added to their list of achievements.

They stood out in our restaurant, too. We were so proud of them. Uncle Bob would roll his sleeves up and take his turn at the fish fryers. Whilst John would be recording the sound of the chips as they were blanched in the back yard, lowered by a pulley into the waiting, boiling oil, their roaring, spitting fury played back to us in an instant on their Simon SP4 reel-to-reel sound recorder. John too would also roll up his sleeves and do the washing up…if called for.

We would all look out for them. John, over six feet tall and red headed, and Bob just over five foot eight, dark haired and immaculately bearded. We would look out for them striding from the train station, knowing that a piece of magic was about to take place, just by having them with us. And it usually did.

One glorious, never-to-be-forgotten week, I spent with Uncle Bob and John in their flat in North London. It was NOT the way I had imagined. I had imagined that they lived in a flat that was as immaculate as they were. I imagined that the furniture was modern and expensive and with all mod cons, that they had a studio cum workshop where they did their fantastic work.

Yes, they had all of that, only the flat wasn't modern, the furniture wasn't exactly modern, the mod cons were not modern.

The whole of the flat was their WORKSHOP, their STUDIO! Oh except for the bedrooms, but even they spilled over into that giant workshop with a tide of string-puppets, rod-puppets, hand-puppets and all the paraphernalia that made up the world of puppetry and animation: cameras, lights, cables, film projectors, tape recorders. Oh and the SMELL? Thatsmell! The smell was a cacophony of paints, glue, latex rubber, olive oil and fried onions and London.

Yes, North London flats have a smell all their own: a smoky, lived-in sort of smell that permeates everything. And I loved it! I loved the food that Uncle Bob used to cook (he deep-fried chips in pure olive oil): halibut steaks fried in egg batter and left to go cold and served with a salad dressed in garlic, vinegar and olive oil. His spaghetti sauce with meatballs was a revelation, no, a revolution. His curries were superb and his simple stews were masterpieces. He'd whip up an omelette in seconds: light and fluffy and sprinkled with fresh Parmesan cheese. But he could not make Yorkshire pudding. He would count how many people were coming for dinner and he would add an equal amount of eggs! Result? Yorkshire pudding that did not rise but instead lay there and did nothing. A puddeny pudding. But I LOVED it. With his gravy everything tasted good.

I was in paradise. Every corner of the flat was crammed with equipment. Even a four foot string puppet of Gracie Fields and Johnny Ray (complete with hearing aid) hung lifeless by the golden strings that animated them, golden only when the skilled hands of Bob and John pulled on them and brought them to life. But it was some years ago since they had last used them. Now they lay gathering dust. Relics of the past that had seen their day as indeed have these memories: revived and then forgotten: threads of a time past that I wouldn't have missed for the world.

Ice Cream and Comics

Macari's ice cream was the best in the world. A sixpenny tub of ice cream - they did only vanilla and strawberry flavour - when I was rich and 6 years old, when I was rich having just won on the arcade machines. Now what should I do? Should I save three (old) pence and just have a threepenny tub of ice cream, investing the rest for a further try on the machines? Or hang around like predators whilst the grownups neared the mark of a win and then skilfully putting the pennies in the slot, almost guaranteeing a win? Well, more times than not, it was in such a way that I had won in the first place. But what to do? My greed overtook me. I had a whole sixpenny tub of Macari's ice cream.

I remember in the comic the Beano a character called Flip McCoy the Floating Wonder Boy: a boy who had strapped to his back a sort of pack out of which protruded a helicopter-type propeller with which he could fly. Another character was called (I think) Captain Jumbo: a boy who had, attached to his arm a type of gauntlet on which were all kinds of buttons and dials, plus an aerial which protruded up from the gauntlet and with which he conducted an army of tiny soldiers, planes that flew, tanks that actually fired real missiles, even parachutists that were dropped from the planes as they flew overhead. Fantastic stuff!

Not forgetting Biffo the Bear and Dennis the Menace, the Bash Street Kids, Lord Snooty and his Gang. There was even a boy whose father (I think) built him a metal fish with a domed, glass cockpit in which he had the most incredible adventures: this metal fish could actually leap out of the water, with this boy at the controls, and dive. Of course there was Desperate Dan and his Cow Pie with the horns sticking out of it, and the dustbin full of rubbish that Dan used to smoke like my granddad's pipe. But it was the Dandythat used to make my mouth water. There was always a plateful of steaming chips dotted with fried eggs and stuck with sausages. I had access to all the chips in the world, BUT NOT IN THE WINTERTIME! The restaurant was closed and I had only my sixpence a week pocket money. I was absolutely starving by the time I had read the Dandy or the Beano!! Even to this day I cannot resist a Fish and Chip Shop. I have to have some. ..but the cod today is codling - due to over-fishing - which has little flavour so I have to have haddock, a good substitute!

Then there was the Eagle featuring Dan Dare (The Pilot of the Future!) and the Mekon. Dan Dare was the very first Sci-fi series that I had read. Dan was a space pilot and The Mekon was his arch enemy. The Mekon used to float about in this kind of glass bubble: all head and a tiny body and looked alarmingly like The Greys of Area 52 (the supposed crash site of real aliens in America??), except the Mekon was green, as I remember.

And then there was The Topper? I was the first kid to receive The Topper (complete with free ThunderClap. A ThunderClap was a square piece of cardboard folded in two to form a triangle; attached to its edges was a piece of paper approximately one third down. When folded in and brought downward with considerably force, it made the most almighty BANG!). Having just contracted polio our newsagent, Auntie Mary and Uncle Fred Reynolds sent the very first Topper off the pile to me!

The Downs

The Downs tended to be boring, at least in the summer months they tended to be boring. Down the other end of the promenade, in the summer months, there were always the arcades. The excitement and smell of the various Bingos and of course the Dodgem's and the Rifle Range. There was none of that up The Downs, only grass, an area that held the Bandstand and of course The King's Hall.

In the winter The King's Hall was rented out to the local Amateur Dramatic Society (where I later became a member), or the local dancing schools, or The Scouts Jamboree. It was BORING, I tell you, just plain BORING. There was of course the Yachting Club, the boats all hauled up for the winter, covered over with canvas, their tall masts clicking and thunking as the wind whipped the ropes against the wood. Then there were the hundred steps. Actually there were 120 or more. How did I know? I counted them. They stretched all the way up the cliff face from the sea. We kids, my brother Kevin and sister Melly, used to kick our bored heels up there. Up there where you could just seeReculver Towers like the huge'H' that it was.

We'd not climb the hundred steps but CLIMB, clamber up the steep cliffs like Sherpas. Fearless, frightened of nothing. Then hot and thirsty we'd raid an orchard or two. Scrumping! We'd eat so many brambly apples that we'd make our bellies ache. Apples were apples in those far flung days. Then dirty-faced, our knees scraped and bleeding we went home.

But when it SNOWED! Ah, that was a different matter. The Downs were transformed into a slippery slope of delicious, dangerous daring. That great green BORING stretch of grass was now a white wonderland of sledges, tin trays, and skis. Never mind that to one side of that slope there was a dangerous edge to drop over. Nobody was really hurt. Not really, just bruised a bit, that's all.

After polio, they still dragged me up on my homemade sledge, strapped my legs to it so as they wouldn't move and gave me a shove. I was still fearless. After polio, in the summer holidays, I dragged myself, one by one, up those hundred steps, pausing every now and then just to catch my breath. It took me 20 minutes to climb. Before, I could do it in one minute. I didn't care. My fix-wheeled chair was hauled up by my sister and brother. And when we finally reached the top we'd STILL raid the orchards, I giving orders from my wheelchair. After all, I was still the eldest! And when the Scrumping deed was done, my chair, heavy with apples, was pushed at high speed to a place of safety where we consumed our spoils. Our bellies still ached. But that was the price you paid for glory.

Hampton Pier

Hampton pier stuck out as a ruined jumble of rock. It had fallen into decay long before I was born. It was joined to a wide, concrete, rectangle of masonry with railings all the way round. Joined to this was a series of steps. You got to the pier by way of a very steep hill, Hampton Hill, a continuation of Herne Bay's promenade. At the bottom of the hill was a pub called The Hampton. From the Sea Scouts hall, all the way to Herne Bay, was a series of Beach Huts. BORING! BORING! BORING!

Ah, but then there were the boating pools. The boating pools consisted of two pools of water, one for rowing boats and one for, wait for it, MOTOR BOATS. Now they weren't fast motor boats. Oh no. But they were faster than the rowing boats and had real petrol engines in them. But they cost two shillings (10p) a ride. That was four weeks pocket money! Now the thing to do was 'make friends' with the operator: go to the café and get him cups of tea. Clean his bike. Get him an ice cream. And then…and then, maybe, just maybe, he would let you have a free ride!

Thing was, EVERY kid was his friend. They wouldn't leave him alone! ''Clean yer bike, mister? Want anyfing from the café, mister? Want an ice cream, mister?'' And so on. By the time we'd finished with him he told everybody to ''Bugger off, yer little bleeders, and leave me alone!'' Sometimes, when he was really mad he told us to ''Fuck off, or I'll report you to the Council.'' That was guaranteed to work. Being reported to the Council was like being reported to the Police!

[Photo: Harold Gough]

Hampton Boating Lake. “Come in number 7, your time is up!”

Now inserting a lolly-stick in the crack where you knew the money lay, was to bleed the arcade machine dry. It was a couple of weeks before the owner, Mick Ellison, figured out how we did it. We'd slide a discarded lolly-stick in the crack and slide out the pennies. By now word had got round and everybody was at it. And when we had enough cash we paid the Hampton Boat Operator with 24 pennies. A look of suspicion crept over his face like a blush. ''But there areno arcade machines at Hampton,'' he must have thought, ''how do they do it, where do they get that sort of money from?'' The thought was in his eyes, in his teeth, in his hair, everywhere. But why should he care. He just watched us from the bank. ''Come in Number 7. Your time is up!'' We ignored him. Pretended we hadn't heard. ''COME IN, YOU LITTLE BLEEDERS'' he screamed, ''OR I'LL REPORT YOU TO THE COUNCIL!''

My Sister Josie

My sister Josephine was, it seemed, always in a mood. I say always but it only seemed like that. She was nearly 4 years older than me and she had, of course, older friends. She was nearly a teenager. But she was beautiful. She grew up to be a real stunner. She had black hair the colour of coal and skin so pale that she looked like snow white of seven-dwarf fame. Her eyes were ever so slightly Chinese looking. And she wanted nothing to do with us younger kids, cramped her style. When she had to go out with us for some function or other, like a family trip to the pictures, she made sure she kept her distance.

When she was 16 she attracted men like flies around a jam jar. There was a particular band of bikers. Of course they weren't called bikers in those days. In fact I don't think they were called anything but 'blokes that drove motorbikes'. There were the Webber brothers, Brian and Roy, who vied for her affection. Then there was John Hougham who had eyes more chinky than Josie's, though he wasn't Chinese. He went by the nickname of Chang. Now John was into weight lifting and had a body like Charles Atlas (a body builder who advertised his method of dynamic tension in the newspaper and was seen flexing his considerable muscles in a leopard skin). Every time John went past our restaurant he would swell up his chest to full proportion, anything to get Josie's attention.

The Webber brothers were always in the restaurant and became good friends of our family. Then there was a bloke whose name I forget. He had protruding teeth and smelt like an oilcan. He drove a motor bike that had a 750cc B.S.A. engine built into a Norton frame. He had the handlebars really low so that he had to lie across the petrol tank like he was hugging it. But even that didn't impress our Josie. Josie was free and vivacious and flirted with them all. And when she became Miss Herne Bay the Queen of the Carnival everybody but EVERYBODY wanted to know her. Later on she became an actress, taking the name of Sherrie Day and joining up with my uncles Bob Bura and John Hardwick. Later she was taken on as a formation swimmer for Sam Shnider's Water Follies and toured America.

Brian Webber with Melly and Kevin. They didn’t Call ‘em Hells Angels in those days

(One day, Josie was left in charge of the kitchen in our restaurant. She suddenly realised that the deep fryer was smoking. The oil was too hot. Obviously she had the gas up too high. But what did she do? She poured a cup of cold water into the fryer to try and cool it down. The fryer erupted with a huge roar, rose up and overflowed the side of its banks like a miniature volcano, magma flowing everywhere. Fortunately she had the presence of mind to switch the gas off. There was boiling oil everywhere! The restaurant had to be closed temporally while we mopped up. Boiling oil and water just don't mix!)

Shops and Banks

In the early 1950's there was only the Co-op - as near to the supermarkets of today as you could get. Not only did they do dividend stamps but they also delivered to your door. A service that the modern day supermarkets are just waking up to!

There was the Home and Colonial. All gold and green lettered and full of old-world charm where the smell of cheese and ham permeated the air tinged with herbs. They still patted your butter into square oblongs with wooden paddles.

Dickie Hoyle still delivered the milk to the restaurant in giant metal churns: a family-run dairy.

We had three banks, one on each corner, where the High Street crossed with William Street. There was the Westminster Bank(where my parents banked), Lloyds Bank, and The Midland. Still there, I'll warrant, though the groovy name for the Westminster Bank is of course the Nat West!

When my father ran our business into the ground with his gambling and drinking he was in no fit state, after his operation, to run the restaurant (in my opinion, knowing what I know now, he was in no fit state either way!). My mother took over. She did such a fine job turning the business round to profit and money in the bank, that our bank manager walked into the restaurantin person to congratulate her!

There was one business in Herne Bay that was at the very end of the High Street where it ran into Sea Street. It was called CORNFOOTS. Although it sounded much like a 'chemists', it sold high quality furniture, china and wot-not and was very nearly always empty – or so it seemed to us. Yet it survives to this day. I always thought that it was run by the Mafia, or the Krays. A relation of the Krays ran a pub in the Whitstable area. My imagination has a lot to answer for.

There was a bloke who ran an old radio shop also in Sea Street. I say radio shop. It wasn't one of those posh radio shops like Currys. Oh no. It was a place that was littered with old radio valves, coils, crystals for crystal sets, condensers, and tuners, aerials that went up in the loft. ETC. and the smell, the smell was of old dusty leather with just a touch of oil. It was run by this chap who seemed to be welded to a pile of valves, like a huge dragon that guards its treasure. There wasn't one radio that had not been raided for its parts.

He was like Dr Frankenstein only he, unlike Peter Cushing (the actor, who lived in Whitstable, just down the road from Herne Bay) was a huge man. He was unshaven and with that eternally brown, greasy trilby hat and equally greasy brown suit, so tight that it made the jowls of his considerably fat face, fall in layers. His teeth were brown with nicotine and he wheezed out his words. But his words fell in wisdom, wisdom on the subject that he loved: Radios. He was a walking, wheezing, encyclopaedia of radio trivia.

I had taken my crystal set apart and lost the crystal. I knew that if anywhere here was the place to replace it. Not only that but I could build my own crystal set better than my old one. 'The Fat Man' was able to find an old radio tuner and a new, more sensitive, crystal. And an ever better set of headphones! Oh, I was in heaven. I set to work with my dad's soldering iron, and the first voice I heard over the headphones was Alistair Cooke's LETTER FROM AMERICA. I have been listening to Alistair Cook ever since.

The Fat Man, when he could prise him self away from the seeming junk that made up his world, would sit astride a 50cc motor cycle, his huge bulk dwarfing its tiny frame like a small but willing horse with an overweight master. Where he lived no one knew. But I envisioned him in a small terraced house with a small back garden but with a HUGE shed. In that shed would be more valves, more chassis, more of everything, but the cream of everything.

I had a dream for the Fat Man, a dream that he was a Ham Radio expert with a finger in every country in the world, and from his wondrous shed sprouted an Ariel that would put even Broadcasting House to shame. For I had a dream for him, the Fat Man, a dream that extended far beyond his overweight self and all over the planet and beyond, where he would talk to presidents and kings and film stars and beings from outer space and the other side of galaxies, where the Fat Man shone!

But the Fat Man's shop was emptied and a small frozen foods firm took over. The Fat Man was still seen riding his small but unyielding bike around the streets of Herne Bay…but not for long. He, like the contents of his shop, disappeared and was never seen again.

The Streets of Herne Bay

The streets of childhood, of Herne Bay, had their seasons just like any other town, seaside or otherwise. And just like any other kid you keep inside of you those seasons. For seasons have their changes, their atmospheres, their smells.

And so it was with the streets of Herne Bay: the loneliness of the grey sky, grey streets, grey sea, and grey winter. And then there was spring, where the boatmen were out painting their boats ready for the Day-Trippers. The restaurants were being scrubbed and cleaned "Maybe it'll be a good season this year?'' The first arcade opened which set the heart racing.

My Granddad with Kevin and Melly. Taken by the famous Skylark which was dry-docked for repainting.

And then came the euphoria of summer with sunlit beaches, blue sky, hot pavements beneath bare feet, so hot that you could fry an egg, which we did…if you waited long enough; and warm, warm sea. The smell of rain on hot pavements after a scalding spell where the lightning split the sky and thunder rumbled and crashed its way (God moving his furniture) and I counted the miles between flashes and glory; the lightness and freshness of autumn when you could just about bear to swim in the sea, the freshness of which took your breath away; the rich copper coloured sun where the streets were bathed in crimson leaves, well at least the avenues just off of Station Road. And the clouds piled up like mashed potatoes.

Trains and Planes

I remember a runaway train, sparks flying out of its funnel, fire gushing from the tender. It pulled no coaches. Where it was going I never knew. But I remember it, that runaway train!

I was just off of Mickleburgh Hill and I'll never forget that either. A model plane that cracked and throbbed into life that took off and disappeared over the back gardens, way out of control, behind the gasworks - where my sister Josie and I would set off from Albany Drive with a little cart to collect coke - never to be seen again. Memories that lead nowhere only back to childhood where they belonged.

Fishermen and The Tope

Every now and then there used to be a fishing competition. Men would come from all over England to take part. A small armada of every type of boat, from a dingy to those organised fishing troops that the local fishermen would take out for the day, took part.

The weigh in was held about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, according to the tides. The scales were held in place by a huge tripod and every man's catch was carefully weighed. This always took place at Neptune Jetty. The fish caught were plaice, dabs, sea bass, eels, conger eels, skate, cod, ling and TOPE. Now tope were small sharks and we boys were always warned to stay away from them. They were fearsome looking creatures; sleek they may have been, but not to the touch. Their skin was so rough that you could strike a match on it. And the hooks protruding from their mouths were enormous and shiny. Connected to the hook were pieces of wire. Did they catch these monsters with pieces of wire? Surely not, but the wire was there, make no mistake.

Now if we started to mess around with the hook inside the Tope's mouth, or if we even touched the wire, we were warned off. ''Their teeth are like razors,'' warned Jess Mount. ''And they'll bite yer hand off,'' joined in Pop Pressley (who had an encounter with a tope that severely bit his arm, partially disabling him). ''But they're dead, aren’t they, Pop?'' ''They're only pretendin' to be dead,'' warned Pop, ''you leave 'em alone, Bosgo!''

Now to me they were dead. Nobody could fool me. And when their backs were turned, old Pop and Jess, I tried to detach a hook from the tope's gaping maw.

As I did Pop Pressley turned round. I withdrew my hand fast from the tope's mouth. I barely stroked the tope's teeth with my hand and blood came instantly from a deep gash. The other kids scarpered. Pop and Jess were horrified. They took me over the road, my hand dripping blood, to my parents' restaurant. My mother took me to the Doctor's where I was given an injection of something-or-other and my wound was cleaned and bound and I had a go at blowing on Dr Quentin Evan's watch. I had to blow really hard in order for the pocket watch lid to fly open. Magic!

In future I kept my distance from the tope. I knew that even if they were dead they could still give you a serious bite!

Herne Bay Memorial Park

The park was somewhere that you went when there was nothing else to do, where Mum and Dad could contain us and know where to look for us. But actually it was the last place that we would choose to go. Yes, there were the swings. Come to think of it the park was always referred to us as the swings. There was a girl called Peggy who reckoned that the reason why she had a really flat nose was because she had been swung so high that she went right over in a loop and fell out smashing her nose…or so she said?

Beach Street led right up to our back yard which we shared with the Greek restaurant next door. We had right-of-way. Beach Street crossed over Mortimer Street and then the High Street and led directly to the park. Our end of Beach Street ran parallel with the alley where I had the fight with Michael Lee. Down this alley lived two fearsome brothers called Dave and Freddie Silvers. Now Dave was always beating up Freddie, the smaller of the two, and generally giving him a hard time. I even remember Dave nearly drowning Freddie in the sea on purpose! Freddie had continual lines of green snot coming from his nose that he wiped on his sleeve, which dried to a pale green crust. Now our mother always gave us hankies, and anyway we weren't suppose to play with these boys as they were considered too rough. So of course we did.

It was during the early polio years that Dave nearly pushed me into the park pond, wheel chair and all. Of course he hadn't meant to… so he said. From that time on I had a go at Dave every time he hit Freddie. ''Why do you do it, Dave? ''Cos it's fun,'' he'd say, ''and anyway, what's it to you?'' Now my arms were very strong, especially my left arm through constantly pulling myself up stairs, getting out the wheel chair etc. In fact my left arm was Herculean, way and above a normal kid of my age (I was 11 at the time).

Dave got in the habit of punching me then running away, always confident that I couldn't come after him. On that particular day I was out of my wheelchair and sitting on a seafront bench when he started to pound me in the chest with his fists and again running away. He did this about three times. The fourth time I was ready for him. As he came towards me my left arm snaked out and grabbed him. And I pulled him toward me kicking and punching. But there was no way I would let him go before I had pounded him into submission. I pounded him not just for me but for his brother. In my child mind I thought that I was seeking revenge for us both. And when I finally let him go, him promising not to hit me again, he immediately took it out on his brother.

We, Freddie and I, especially Freddie, couldn't win. But he never hit me again, because, slow as I was, I would hound him down, and set some sort of trap for him, and he knewthat. Soon after, Dave and Freddie moved and I never saw them again.

The park pond was where I first tried out my Jetex speedboat. Jetex was powered by a smoke capsule, which was sealed inside a miniature canister, which was in turn fixed to the back of the plastic speed boat. A fuse was lit and as it burnt down inside the canister it ignited the smoke capsule, which then forced the smoke out through a tiny hole. And Hey Presto the little boat travelled through the water like a bat out of hell. The bad news was that you couldn't control it. There was a rudder, yes, which you could set. But, often as not it crashed into the concrete island in the middle of the pond. The crashes were as spectacular as the speed was exhilarating. The boat would go so fast that when it crashed it lifted itself right up and onto the bank, smoke pouring from its not-yet-exhausted smoke capsule. Fantastic! My sister Melly would have to wade across to the island to rescue it, her dress tucked up inside her knickers: ''Urrrrr, the bottoms all slimy,'' she protested. But she always went in, never failed to retrieve it. Good ol' Melly.

Speed

My first taste of speed I cannot remember. But I had to go fast. I would run everywhere before I caught polio, my feet thumping my backside with the boundless exhilaration of it. But I never lost my taste for it, whether in a wheelchair, on a sledge, box-cart, tricycle or, later on, a car. But cars, for now, were just for dreaming.

Croyse White was pushing me down Hampton Hill. Now Hampton Hill is very steep and led to the beach where lay a three-foot drop onto the pebbled beach. Croyse, pushing my fix-wheeled wheel chair, started to run. But the wheel chair went faster than Croyse, so he let go! Now, coming up the hill were two old ladies. I was hurtling toward them like a demented, screaming madman (in my case mad boy) shouting to them to ''Get out the way!''. At the moment of supposed impact I closed my eyes.

Nothing happened. I was still hurtling down the hill completely out of control. I glanced back at the two terrified ladies who at the last moment had moved aside. They had never moved so fast in their old age and there was a look of abject horror on their faces as they followed my course down the hill. I was preparing to die. Not that my whole life flashed before me, I hadn't had a life, but what was I going to tell my mum? From the moment my wheelchair leapt into the air from the three-foot drop, I closed my eyes. The chair crashed down with such force that I was wedged in the stone shingle, and all the tyres came off…but I was still alive! In fact I had hardly moved. The impact was tremendous but I was still seated. Croyse got there as fast as he could, his face ashen. He couldn't believe it. I was safe and so was he, safe from feeling his father's belt on his backside.

My addiction to speed, like my now abandoned addiction to fire, would follow me the rest of my life.

****************************

By the time I was twelve I had, as I have already mentioned earlier, a large tricycle. My sister Melly and my younger brother Kevin would push me up Beltinge Hill to school. When school was over the two of them would cram onto the back axle and we would hurtle down the hill at a fair rate of knots. When we got to the traffic lights, if they were red Melly would jump up and down on the rubber strip to make them change. Or, if they were green, then Whooppee!

On that particular day, a beautiful summer's day, when all was right with the world, we decided that we would ride down Beacon Hillthat ran parallel with Beltinge Hill. I stopped at the top whilst Melly and Kev climbed onto the back axle. Then I let go the brakes and we screamed down the hill. In the distance was a car and we were rapidly gaining on it! I had to make a quick decision, brake or overtake! I decided on the latter.

We pulled out to overtake!

The expression on this gentleman's face was unforgettable. He was wide eyed with shock, surprise and wonder, his mouth wide open as this rather large boy riding a rather large tricycle with two screaming kids astride the back axle, swung out to overtake him!

I'm sure that in reality he braked and indeed was going rather slowly to begin with.

But in our minds we actually overtook a car!

Me on my big tricycle and Howard Cadey.

That feat of daring and speed will remain lodged supreme in my mind forever. Melly and Kev remember it well, too, that adrenalin-rush on that beautiful summer's day. And this memory will no doubt remain lodged in the mind of that car driver, whoever he was, until the day he died!

Alone

(From left to right) Me, Sid [who lived in the woods behind us], Kevin, Josie, Carol Alexandra and Melly sitting whilst on holiday in the village of Wigmore, Near Gillingham, Kent. We thought the countryside was SO boring!

The Bell public house at Bredhurst, nr Wigmore where my granddad (known as Snowy) spent many a happy hour. The lane down the side of which I had my first Mystical experience only weeks before I caught polio.

*********************

Although I was surrounded by family and friends most of my wonder of life was experienced alone. I was alone yet not lonely. Beauty, wonder, and the craving for adventure plus an unquenchable curiosity served as my greatest friends. Perhaps that's why I became a poet and writer: a lonely, solitary craft. Atmospheres and feelings of terror were experienced alone. Dreams I experienced alone. I knew that I could fly in dreaming, but I always flew alone. I was a dreaming boy that had adventures in my head. No mates would accompany me, no brother and sisters, no mother or father would stand up to protect me. I was alone. I liked being alone.

I would go fishing, again a lonely, solitary thing to do. But ask any fisherman if they are lonely and I'll bet a penny to a pound that they will say ‘no’, peaceful, and sometimes frustrating, yes, but lonely, never. I would go swimming, alone. Ride my bike out to Blean Woods, alone. Walk in the rain, alone, yet always expecting the unexpected.

And then it happened, the unexpected happened. I rode my bike down by The Bell public house at Bredhurst in Kent, whilst on holiday for the summer with our grandparents. I was outraged that my parents subjected us to the boring old countryside, depriving us of our seaside with the smell of hot tar, fish and chips, fried onions, and the poignant smell of whelks being boiled, the dusty smell of oil and metal in the arcades. But I understand now why they did it: the constant nagging of us kids always wanting something.

I rode my bike down the little lane that ran beside the pub, where my grandfather spent many an evening, then weaving his wobbly way back to Wigmore, our village.

I thrust my bike on the bank and fell back in the grass. It was to be my first mystical experience, mystical because I couldn't explain it. I even kept quiet about it to Melly.

The birds seemed to speak to me in a thrilling way. They all seem to speak at once in an avenue of sound yet each one spoke to me individually and I could understand them all. Even the trees seemed to join in the conversation.

I don't know whether I slept or not but the smell of the grass was the best anaesthetic that I knew. Still dazed with the wonder of it I rode my bike back in the now setting sun. I'm not sure how long it lasted and I didn't care. It was timeless and I couldn't tell anybody. If I had not been alone it would not have happened. Three weeks afterwards I caught polio!

Uncle Colin

Uncle Colin lived in a small, upright, striped tent with Mr Punch and Judy, just west of the pier. Also he shared the tent with a crocodile and a policeman. At least that's what I used to think. He used to drink lots of tea over the road at the Bingo that was owned by a certain Herne Bay councillor, Councillor Hardgrave’s. Uncle Colin was a term used by all of us kids. He was knownas Uncle Colin, a kind of stage name. That's why I didn't put him in the Uncles' chapter. He was a Punch and Judy Man. Whenever he performed he drew hordes of screaming children. Loud Speakers were set up and with the announcement by Uncle Colin of ''HELLO CHILDREN'', a roar would go up.

Soon the cry of ''That's the way to do it! That's the way to do it!'' thundered across the beach and you knew that Mr Punch was in full swing, kicking the crap out of Judy.

Uncle Colin also did conjuring tricks. But just as in the TV series Hi De Hi with the bloke who ran the donkeys, Uncle Colin didn't appear to like children very much. It was just a job to him. Maybe he liked children at first, but not for long. Off stage he appeared very grumpy. But he must have stuck at it for quite a few seasons for he was also known to utter ''bugger off'' a lot.

He soon joined hands with Councillor Hardgraves, Jack Phippard and others to open an amusement arcade and bingo complex at Reculver. Years later, Jack Phippard became my boss as the manager of a small arcade at Arthur Fitt's Caravan Site at Hillborough, just before you got to Reculver. Jack was the best boss I ever had, an exceptionally kind and generous man.

And Uncle Colin?

He became a whiz at electronics and an excellent amateur photographer. Besides being a partner in that particular fraternity at Reculver, he used to mend my electronic fruit machines whenever they went wrong. A quietly humorous man who would stare off in the distance until the solution to the problem came to him and then, soldering iron in hand, he set to work. I still called him UNCLE COLIN and he never said ''bugger off'' once.

The Flood of 1953

My grandfather slept right through the storm having had a right skin-full the night before. Grandma slept fitfully, her ears tuned to the storm raging outside and the strange noises that she heard downstairs, never dreaming that the sea had entered the Oyster Bar restaurant, and that tables and chairs were swimming about, crashing into one another and causing the horrendous bumps she heard in the night.

Grandma and Granddad occupied the flat over the restaurant whilst the rest of the family were at our other fish restaurant Joe's Plaice further down, opposite the Clock Tower. What was left of our family, that is; I was in hospital in Rochester with polio. Melvina (Melly) had caught pneumonia as a result of the flood. Kevin, tough little nut that he was, escaped it! Melly, only five, remembers being wrapped in a blanket and carried down the stairs by the ambulance men and seeing the absolute devastation: paving stones were everywhere, tossed like shingle. The ambulance was parked near the Casino (the old Picture Palace) almost next door to The Oyster Bar, and they had to get to her between tides as they feared more of the same, and they were right! The ambulance men carried Melly through the water, my mother and father following behind.

On the night of the flood the wind whistled hard through the keyhole, very hard. It moaned like a ghost and that should have been the warning that all was not well. Water started to seep under the door. So mother started to sweep it back with a broom! But the more she swept the more the sea came in!

Mother and Father carried the tables and chairs to the back of the restaurant where we had a makeshift living room and brought the tinned and packet stuff upstairs. In fact all they could rescue.

At one point Jackie (one of our three cats) was floating about on a table and had to be rescued by my father.

The next day Josie also caught pneumonia and was also carted off to hospital. Mother and father now had three of their children in hospital. One could say "best place for them."

As dawn broke people were being rescued from their homes by boat, especially the elderly. The local fisherman, if their boats hadn't been swept away, joined in the rescue. The local hospital was full and the more serious cases had to be taken to Canterbury Hospital. Local halls were taken into service and hot meals were served to the homeless. The devastation was total. A fridge that was owned by Mr White at the Cardinal Restaurant (next door to us. See photo) was taken up and swept into the back of the Café Tudor at least 500 yards away. Boats were smashed to matchwood and the whole of the seafront was awash with shingle and broken glass. Those boats that survived were Seagull 2nd, owned by my hero Pop Pressley, The Skylark owned by Jess Mount, The King Fisher owned by Johnny Heathcote and the Swordfish owned by Bill Buck who looked like Clarke Gable on a bad day. All the boats were damaged in some way but on the whole they came through the storm relatively unscathed.

Fireman worked day and night to pump out the flooded cellars, including ours. Years later the salt still came through the brickwork in our cellar where we stored the potatoes for the chips that we sold by the ton.

Kevin and The Giant Jellyfish and Assorted Incidents

"Don't look in his eyes," I counselled, "You can fight just as well as he can. Don't let him get to you." I knew that my younger brother Kevin had quite a temper on him and could handle himself well in a fight. His opponent was Chris Bailey (he of Bouncerfame a few chapters back). When Chris lost his temper his eyes bulged and he flushed red. When Kevin lost his temper he would literally jump at quarry with no warning, having first built up a head of steam, then give a flurry of blows. But Chris Bailey was his nemesis.

Chris was a fearsome sight, eyes bulging and shaking with uncontrollable rage. The very sight of him in this condition made Kevin back away. "Listen to me, Kev. Stay calm, don't look in his eyes and you can beat him," I said from the safe confines of my wheelchair, "he's a bully, that's all, just a bully." Kev, it seemed, had done something to upset Chris, made him lose face in front of his mates or something and Chris was gunning for him. They planned to meet by the grass slope at the last Big Bingo, as we called it, by Lane End.

At last the time came for the fight. Chris swaggered over to confront Kevin. Kev, without losing any time, charged at Chris, head down. He butted him in the chest. Chris went over. This was Kev's chance to finish it. But he respectfully held back. This was his mistake; this made Chris psychotic with rage. The eyes bulged and that familiar red came to his face. Chris was now dangerous, very dangerous.

He came at Kevin roaring like a bull, fists flaying the air. Kev dodged him and got him in a head-lock. Chris was now screaming his face contorted with anger. If Kev had let him go he would have received the beating of his life. Why? Although Kev had now got hold of Chris in a strong headlock the fear was beginning to show on his face. "You've got him, you've got him now!" I urged. "Don't let him go whatever you do." "But if I do let him go he'll beat me up!" "Not if you ignore the sound he's making. Give him a punch in the face with your free hand," I said. "That'll quieten him down."

Chris Bailey, Berry (also known as Barry) and Kevin. After THAT fight! All pals again.

Kev duly punched him in the face. "That's not fair," protested a half strangled Chris. "That's what you'd do to me," replied Kev and gave him another punch in the face. This time he quietened down. Kev let him go. They scuffled a bit more but Chris had had enough. As he left he aimed a punch at me. I swerved out of the way, grabbed his arm and got him in a half nelson. It was like a scene out of a movie. "That's not fair," he said again. "You shoutin' instructions to 'im, it's not bleedin' fair." I let him go with a push.

Believe it or not, Kev and Chris soon made up. Even though Kev had beaten Chris fair and square (with some encouragement from me), Chris was somebody that you didn't need as an enemy.

Us kids, all except me of course – though I used to in my pre-polio days - used to run and leap off the Jetty, their arms tight around their knees, curled up like a ball, and into the water with a huge BOOSH! Crowds would gather to watch. I was usually down in the water to begin with. They would leap in tight formation, one after the other: Kev, Chris, Berry and Raymond Russell, son of the infamous Mr Russell. Boosh! Boosh! Boosh! Boosh!

That day there was an awful lot of jellyfish about. You'd begin to swim and then touch one of the wretched things and rapidly swim out of its path.

It was too late for Kevin though; he had already launched himself into the air when I spotted it and shouted a warning. An absolutely HUMUNGEOUS jellyfish was just beneath him, all tentacles and oozing a horrible yellow pus-like liquid. Kevin landed right on top of it. For a few seconds all was well. Then Kevin let out a scream. The jellyfish had stung him from head to foot and he was going absolutely mad with pain. He leapt from the water and sprinted over the road to our restaurant and to Mum and Dad. They covered him all over with calamine lotion and took him to the doctors where he was an injection for the pain.

ALMOST A YEAR TO THE DAY I was sitting on the steps that went down to the water when I spotted an even bigger Jellyfish. Again I was too late. My cries of "Jellyfish!" were given when Kev had already launched himself. He again landed squarely on top of the beast. There was a few seconds pause before he screamed with pain and again rushed over the road.

During my wheelchair days at Wigmore we acquired an air pistol, which was swapped for a model boat. Grandma, during her shopping trips to Chatham, bought a packet of lead pellets thinking that an innocent target, like an old tin can, was what we had in mind. The pistol was all chromium and shiny, and you had to push the barrel in to pump up the air pressure, insert a pellet, aim and pull the trigger. We got tired of tin cans and I resorted to shooting out the only light bulb just outside our bungalow that illuminated Grain Road where we lived for the summer holidays with our grandparents. Grandma and granddad never found out that it was I that plunged that part of the road into darkness!

Grain Road was a bumpy track. No vehicle could get up any speed along Grain Road. So, thinking that Kevin was aiming the air pistol at a tree opposite our bungalow, and seeing a van bumping very slowly along in the distance, we didn't think it strange that Kevin was taking such a long time with his aim. But as the van slowly approached our bungalow we began to worry a little. For Kevin waited until the van was level with his line of fire and fired through the open window…at the driver!

Fortunately he missed. The driver immediately stopped the van uttering oaths: “Fucking ‘ell, you nearly bleedin’ hit me, you little bastard!” oaths that should never have assaulted our delicate ears. He got out of his van and charged up the path to where my grandmother was preparing lunch. Raised voices were heard to come from the kitchen. Suddenly a red-faced man was seen to leave the presence of my grandma, who followed him outside. The man glared at us children, got in his van, and continued his slow, rickety way up Grain Road.

My grandmother also glared at us. Only Grandma's glare was fiercer and more penetrating than ever was that poor, hapless van driver. She threatened us with "Wait till your grandfather gets home". She tore the gun out of my little brother's hand and it was never seen again. The threat of my granddad's wrath sent shivers down our spines. For this reason and this reason alone we were REALLY afraid. Granddad's wrath was legendary!

Sunday Dinner on The Beach

I remember when I was 12ish and we had Sunday Dinner on the beach. Well it was more on the promenade than the beach. As I have already described, opposite the Clock Tower was a set of steps and as high tide lapped the top of the steps we and the other kids would spend our whole day in the sun swimming and jumping off the railings into the water. Lou Tritten (wife of Sid Tritten who was to go blind), one of our waitresses, was sent over the road carrying a tray laden with our Sunday dinner with ice cream and my mother's apple pie for dessert. We couldn't believe our eyes, or our luck!

Beneath the burning Herne Bay sun we tucked in to roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast and boiled potatoes, carrots, and cabbage, with thick brown gravy. It was an act of sheer indulgence. We were the envy of all the gang of children that jumped and sprang and swam and sang on that summer's day in August in the mid 50's. Oh how they wished their parents owned a restaurant on Herne Bay's seafront.

Years later I learned the real reason why we had that treat, not that my parents regretted it or denied our pleasure. It was a Bank Holiday Sunday in August and wet feet and swimming costumes going up and down the restaurant stairs when we were chocker-block with customers would never do.

So a decision was made that burned itself into our memories, burned itself so deep that each and every one of us, Melly, Kevin, and I (Josie was working in the restaurant) remember it to this day some 45 years later.

The Carnival

My equally beautiful sister Melly who was
to become Herne Bay Carnival’s Lady in Waiting!

Every month before the Herne Bay Carnival there was an air of excitement amongst us kids. For a start there was the Carnival- program telling all and sundry where the Carnival would start and where it would finish; how many floats there were expected to be that year and who would be contributing; advertising of local businesses etc. etc. But we weren't interested in all that stuff. What we were interested in was the program's NUMBER!

Every program had a number and if you won that number you could have, say, a table for two at a local restaurant; a year's free ticket-for-two to what was on at the King's Hall; or, OR a huge box of FIREWORKS!

THIS number…plus another number: now it was this number that we were interested in, this number that required that you look in every shop window for a gift with a number sat next to it. It could be anything: a soft toy; a tin of baked beans; a box of chocolates (now that was more like it); or a penknife (that was also more like it). The thrill was to win ANYTHING, even a tin of baked beans; at least you got to eat all of 'em.

The day got nearer and nearer. The nearer it got the more excited we became. The excitement was tangible, you could almost smell it, taste it. A sense of wonderment pervaded everything all was transformed merely by our imagination which had no boundaries. No fence or wall could contain it. Magic was in the very air that we breathed.

Carnival day arrived. We were up with the dawn and out, just managing to scoff down our breakfast. Excitement overcame our hunger too, a very rare event. Then we were off to see the floats, the gaudy, magical floats brought alive by the very people that held them with their outrageous, colourful costumes. The Marching Bands with the Sea Scouts, Boy Scouts, the Band of the Salvation Army, The Territorial Army Band. All were beginning to congregate outside Herne Bay's station: the beautiful open ‘giant shell’ with its seat, the pearl of which had centre stage, the pearl that was this year's Miss Herne Bay. (I've already said my sister Josie won it in 1956. Melly was to be a lady-in-waiting a few years later) All were gathered together and then sorted out.

Bands, Clowns, Jugglers, the local Herne Bay Operatic Society; the local Drama Group; the Hasland Dancing School; (where Melly first trod the boards in her ballet career that eventually took her to White Lodge, home of the Royal Ballet) The British Legion. And then there were the Rowing Club boys, the boats hoisted high up on the lorry, long and slim, highly varnished rowing boats. They used to squirt the crowd with water until some old clapped-out, spoil-sport put a stop to it. Then there came the Fire Brigade with its highly polished, red engine. It was all exciting stuff!

At about 2 0'clock when all had been sorted out, there was a loud: BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! Tra laa la, tra laa la. The band of the Sea Scouts started up, and they were off! We used to follow the procession. At the same time stuffing ourselves with candy-floss and toffee apples…and chips, we never tired of chips and vinegar. We would sprinkle so much vinegar on the chips that we could suck the now hot vinegar out the corner of the bag. Grrreat!

We followed the procession to its conclusion. Marched with the bands, laughed at the clowns, got squirted at by the rowing club boys, smiled and waved at by the current reigning Miss Herne Bay. And when it was all over and the crowds had dispersed, we marched happy and hot to our beds talking far into the night. Then, exhausted, we fell asleep.

Freedom

We were hot, wild and free. But above all we were happy, very, very happy; deliriously, deliciously, happy as only a child can be happy. Not caring about tomorrow, only tomorrow could take care of itself. If only I could grasp that childhood wisdom today and run with it. Though I can no longer run, it would still be a part of me, part of my being, running in my head if you like. Perhaps in recognising that freedom in my childhood self I could make the adult into a child again, if only for a while, seeing for myself that part of me that should be free, could be free.

Although I have done with the past it's the 'here and now' that's important. Give me a child that has had a happy childhood, a childhood where love reigns, and I will show you the adult in balance. Being loved, at an early stage, sets you up for all the crap life can fling (and does) at you. And believe me life has a habit of flinging crap. That's why we're here: to absorb and maybe dodge all the crap, if we've learnt a modicum of wisdom that is, to learn not to care about it. That's what makes us free. You can't clean out a drain properly without getting your hands dirty, can you? Oops, I'm getting philosophical here. Better stop while I'm ahead.

Conclusion - Childhood Ends

All the best stuff happens when you're alone with yourself. Not apart, but alone. Yet you are never alone… always a part of something and that something is the all of it, the essence of it. All the sadness, joy and pain rolled up into one; but then you know that…don't you?

CHILDHOODS' END

When a golden day
Goes on for infinity
And you don't
Count the seconds
Nor care for tomorrow.

When skipping
Becomes obsolete
And hop-scotch
A thing of the past,

A child then
Stands still
In its innocence
And the dark clouds
Of responsibility begins
(And all that that entails)

THEN CHILDHOOD ENDS

P A U L B U R A