Before dazzling the locals with my sports photography skills the other Sunday I slunk around the streets of my old home town.
Looking upriver to Rowhedge. I used to cycle over there to see a girlfriend, 8 miles each way by road but a generous cast away by rod.
An actual old school, where I learnt adults could be very cruel. I learnt that getting a cherry stone stuck in each nostril made them even crueler. I was banned from moving up to a pen from a pencil but that was because I sharpened the end of every pen in the cupboard just before they were to be ceremoniously handed out. I must have been a right dick. Speaking of which, of course the boys would have pissing the highest contests in the outside bogs which were also home to several cinnabar moths which we thought were the most poisonous things in the world. A walnut tree over hung from the garden of the Greyhound and we use to get terribly stained hands and clothes from the black juice from the unripe skins.
I can't remember this ever being open as a pub.
This glorified boating lake was once a thriving dock and boat yard, Vosper Thorneycraft, making Motor Torpedo Boats. We used to clamber over the high stacks of imported wood and gather the grain dropped by the huge scoops that used to load or empty the bowels of the coasters. Later Thatcher's goons protected the convoys of 38 tonners used to scurry the strike breaking coal back over the bridge rated for far less tonnes past the hungry miners from all over Britain. Scargill nearly did it. He would have done if they'd gone out when stocks were far lower.
Books, books, books. Something I must have retreated into a lot as an troubling child, sent here there and everywhere to be fixed.
Books made me far more of a man than surviving the canings I got ever did. I never got caught though. Which is just as well as I've seen Scum. Which is probably why I made sure I didn't get caught and came out the other side. That and a healthy respect for the more pernicious narcotics.
Looking upriver to Rowhedge. I used to cycle over there to see a girlfriend, 8 miles each way by road but a generous cast away by rod.
An actual old school, where I learnt adults could be very cruel. I learnt that getting a cherry stone stuck in each nostril made them even crueler. I was banned from moving up to a pen from a pencil but that was because I sharpened the end of every pen in the cupboard just before they were to be ceremoniously handed out. I must have been a right dick. Speaking of which, of course the boys would have pissing the highest contests in the outside bogs which were also home to several cinnabar moths which we thought were the most poisonous things in the world. A walnut tree over hung from the garden of the Greyhound and we use to get terribly stained hands and clothes from the black juice from the unripe skins.
I can't remember this ever being open as a pub.
This glorified boating lake was once a thriving dock and boat yard, Vosper Thorneycraft, making Motor Torpedo Boats. We used to clamber over the high stacks of imported wood and gather the grain dropped by the huge scoops that used to load or empty the bowels of the coasters. Later Thatcher's goons protected the convoys of 38 tonners used to scurry the strike breaking coal back over the bridge rated for far less tonnes past the hungry miners from all over Britain. Scargill nearly did it. He would have done if they'd gone out when stocks were far lower.
Books, books, books. Something I must have retreated into a lot as an troubling child, sent here there and everywhere to be fixed.
Books made me far more of a man than surviving the canings I got ever did. I never got caught though. Which is just as well as I've seen Scum. Which is probably why I made sure I didn't get caught and came out the other side. That and a healthy respect for the more pernicious narcotics.
