h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This year, although I could continue on matters German and local to me, I thought I would jot down a few reminiscences from my childhood.

The internet is, admittedly, inundated with Things-Aint-What-They-Used-to-Be forums, and we baby boomers seem fairly hypocritical really, exploiting the modern medium and then dissing the modern world - picking the raisins out of the bun, so to speak.

As people seem to go off the Journal if a new journal is started every day (I thought that was the original idea <scratcheshead&gt, I shall concede to the masses and incorporate everything in an entry.

The A-number will follow in the next post.

But now for a short description of an idyllic 1950s-1960s childhood.



Although this won't be entirely chronological, I will start with a description of where we lived when I was really small. They say that no one can remember before their 2nd birthday, but I have some very very clear memories of where we lived in North London until I was just short of my 4th birthday.

We had a black labrador called Sally. We had quite a large garden at the back of the house (a semi) with a huuuuge Victoria plum tree growing at the side. My father made a swing for me to swing from the branches of that tree which seemed to me to be high up in the sky.

I think the swing may have been a simple board on two ropes (although my father never did that sort of thing by halves - it would have been planed, sanded and varnished) but, as I was only 3, it more likely would have been more like a cage or a box with holes for legs for a child of that age.

The plums from the tree were huge and abundant, but I can't remember eating them.

I have looked up the place on Google Earth - it has changed, of course, since then.....

We moved away in 1959.

The Entry with the collected works from this journal is at

A87898595

I've just had a closer look on Google Street view. Actually, it hasn't changed much at all - it still looks as I remember it, nearly 60 years ago, except that there are more cars.

And fewer trees?

It certainly looks like the plum tree has gone.

Lovely start, amazing the lack of change too.

Excellent theme!

My family had a metal and plastic swing in our garden, but when I was very small there was a clever wooden seat on it, with back support and a front bar that lifted up so I could be put in the seat to swing safely I was very proud when I grew tall enough and strong enough to be able to swing myself safely without the wooden seat, though

One year I was given a toy trumpet for my birthday. I loved it and "played" it a lot. To my mother's annoyance.

It was blue with a grey mouthpiece. But it was only made of plastic and over the weeks, bit by bit, pieces of it broke off. But to the end, the mouthpiece was still intact and I managed to get a noise out of it.

I distinctly remember standing on the gate-post, which was about 18" square, blowing my trumpet. The neighbours must have loved that!

Another lovely memory

Sizes in these memories are to be taken with a pinch of salt. Remember

(a) I was 3 at the time
(b) I am 63 now! Well, I will be soon.

I was at secondary school in the 50s. Mostly grey and boring. i was recently asked by a YouGov survey what my favourite decade was. Definitely not the fifties

A few houses up the road there was a family with about 10 children. The eldest, Lesley her name was, she was probably about 14 or 15, used to take me to the playground. The slide was enormous (but see note above on my perception of size at that time.)

Once I remember going down the slide on Lesley's lap - or I might have been on my cousin's lap when he took me there ... anyway, the sides of the slide were made of wood painted green, but the paint was peeling off.

My arm rubbed along the rough paint and splintery wood and I got a huge "burn" mark. My mother must have been furious, but these things happen. I don't have any scars from it, and my own children also had horrendous incidents involving playground slides.

This is one outstanding memory of those happy days, alhtough I did just read a report on the safety of children on slides.

Here it is:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/children-slides-parents-laps-increase-ride-risk-injury-study-playgrounds-areas-a7947941.html

Food for thought?

Today's entry won't be on the Entry page A87898595 for a while because here at work that would mean editing in Pliny. I have no idea how to do that, as I usually write in Ripley GuidML (I didn't even know they were different until I tried to edit the entry just now).

So no lunch editing today at work, and tonight we are driving up to Bonn to see our lovely granddaughter. Back on Sunday.

Yeah, slides are surprisingly dangerous... We had a slide in our garden for a while as well as the swing, but my friend fell off it and hit his face My mum administered first aid and took him home to his mum, so he was OK - I'd never seen so much blood before, though, so I remember the incident, and I expect he does too...

My parents decided that it would be better not to have a slide after that, and we should all play nice safe softball games instead.

Slides have more than their share of perils. Water slides can be fun, though, in the hot weather.

Your swing might have had a cage or a box with holes for legs for a child? In the fifties? I doubt that severely.

We just had regular swing, hanging from a crossbar nailed to a couple of trees -- wild black cherry or locust, I can't remember which. The wood for those trees is exceptionally hard and durable. The swings are long gone, but the trees are still doing quite well.

I honestly can't remember, but we did have a very protective Dad.

Next door there was a boy called Graham. He had a sister, but I don't remember her - she must have been a baby, or a toddler.

One day we were having a cup of tea with them. I was sitting on the mother's lap (her name was Alice). So my sister must have been on my mother's lap, but I don't know where Alice's children were. I think I had just learned to do and undo buttons because whilst sitting on her lap, I undid all the buttons of her blouse - a scandalous thing at that time, even though

- there were only women and babies present
- Alice had at least a vest, and possibly also a slip on underneath her blouse, so absolutely nothing was revealed!

It was a white sleeveless blouse with some broderie anglaise or lace involved, I seem to remember.

I wonder if I already knew the names of the colours at that age, or if I simply have a colour photo indelibly printed in my memory.

My granddaughter, who is 2 3/4 certainly knows all the colours, so maybe I did, too, at that age.