A childhood memoir of life before polio, and immediately after, and my magical childhood adventures in and out of a wheelchair
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.
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