Heading

I have many memories from that time and not in any particular order here are some of them:

• Tricycling down the pavement outside our house and the front parting company with the rear of the tricycle and being dumped unceremoniously on the tarmac.
• Tripping over and head butting the corner of a Bath stone gate post to which I still have a dent in my left forehead. My mother apparently went to a neighbour to phone my father at work to ask him to come home. He apparently answered something along the lines of ‘do I have too’ and my mother said something along the lines of ‘get here now!!!’.  He did apparently. 😂😂
• Down at the bottom of the road and in the Upper Bristol Road was a corner shop and I clearly remember the Huntley & Palmers biscuit tins with the glass tops which were on the floor near the door and loose tea being ladled with a very particular scoop into paper bags, the ladler doing a nifty tapping motion on the counter with the bag to settle the tea down then doing a well practised fold of the bag top, one side, the opposite side which then left two triangle sides which were folded over to finish in a neat fashion. Sadly I can’t remember if all this expert folding was sealed with tape.
• Sooo, pushing a stick of some sort through the fireguard was perhaps not my finest hour especially as I then heard someone coming and put it in the utility furniture sideboard (cheap furniture made during World War II).  My father was less than impressed to find that part of his valued collection of shellac 78 records had been melted and the rear of the cabinet now had a large burnt hole in it. We had that cabinet for many years and the guilty hole remained. 🙄
• A highlight which turns out to be in 1957 was to go into the Royal Victoria Park, very near to Tennyson Road and see one of the two bright comets that could be seen with the naked eye that year. Not sure if it was Comet Arend-Roland or Comet Mrkos but it was easy to see.
• Then there was the Six Five Special TV music show.  The lead in to the show had a train sequence and at some point the train would be coming at me and my sisters at an angle. As we were sitting on the floor we would duck so that we didn’t get run over by it.  Makes me wonder how many other kids would do the same thing across the country.  What I’m talking about can be seen from 2 minutes 39 seconds on the YouTube clip.   Six-Five Special
• I’m not sure whether we were still living in Bath but none the less I was very young at the time and has been a very important happening which has impacted the rest my life and in a good way. Mum and I were on the river side of the Grand Parade near the corner of Pultney Bridge. On the opposite side and near the Market entrance was a little old white haired man who became quite animated and rushed over the road to apprehend us and as it turned out me in particular. Why? Well What I haven’t mentioned is that I was a ginger nut in those days (grey and thinning now) and something which is less common now is that us 2%ers (yes we are a minority in the UK) tended to get picked on. What this little old man gave me that day was a metaphorical carapace. He came to tell me that ginger heads were special. He probably didn’t know but I hope he did that no one could ever get to me from that day on. It made me very strong so growing up as a short ginger head was not a problem. It didn’t mean that I didn’t get bullied for my specialness but it didn’t matter. Bless him. 😊 Go the 2%ers.
• Also from around this time was going to see aunt Bessie who lived in an upper floor flat possibly in Monmouth Place if I’m correct and from one of her windows you could see part of the railway which was running to and from Green Park Station, the second railway we had in Bath but now this one long gone due to the Beeching closures. It was the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway or the S&DJR or even The Smokey & Dirty Joint Railway. Take your pick. One issue for long trains or heavy loads is that leaving Bath was a steep gradient which meant some trains had to have two engines termed ‘double heading’. I distinctly remember seeing this from that window. Quite a sight with all that steam being issued from the two hard working engines. Aunt Bessie would kindly give us farthings (youngsters will need to google this 😉) when we visited her.
• During this time our father was having a house built in Limpley Stoke which started out as 15C Crow Hill and later became 2 Cliffe Drive. My memory of this was giant trenches being carved out of the south side of the Limpley Stoke valley. Quite a feat looking back at it as they would have been dug, the concrete footings laid and everything to build the house would have been manhandled up a steep slope. I can’t remember but I expect the long winding path was probably put in first. Remember the long winding path as it will feature again probably a few times. 😉

Now it was apparently a toss up at the time whether to build 15C or buy an Old house, Cliffe House, yes the Cliffe of 2 Cliffe Drive Which later became the Cliffe Hotel. This is back to a private house now apparently. The decision was to build 15C as it was thought that it would be cheaper in the long run but in the end due to circumstances it may have been better financially to buy Cliffe House. However… this was to become very important for my life as I’ll tell later.