My father volunteered for the army and was trained as an officer in ordnance (storage and distribution of ammunition). My parents rented out their house in Newport and my mother followed him to various postings. I was born in a nursing home in Wiltshire: where I lived for three weeks.
The ammunition dump near Abinger in Surrey had an unwanted explosion and my father was transferred to manage it. My parents rented a cottage (The Granary) associated with Leylands Farm in Abinger Bottom. The owner of the farm at that time was Carl Bechhover Roberts, a barrister and author of central European origin (born in the UK).
As in the introduction to the classic Adventure Computer Game "I lived in a small cottage in a clearing at the edge of a large forest". The forest (near Leith Hill in Surrey) held a large ammunition dump and my father was in charge for a while. The area was controlled and passes were required to get in. I believe that my first word was "lorry" since lorry loads of ammunition came and went. I also got plenty of practice in walking: the bus route stop was 2 miles away.
My father was soon posted overseas and my mother and I lived in the Granary with a bulldog Zuleika (known to me as Susie). This name is typical of my father's sense of humour: Zuleika was a famous (fictional) beauty and our bulldog was a rather wrinkled looking girl.
We were free to walk in the forest and the favourite destination was Leith Hill Tower (a folly built to reach 1000 ft in height). I soon learned the different paths and gave a guided tour of the woods to a visiting aunt and uncle when I was aged three. They became a bit alarmed to be guided by someone so young - but all was well.
See, discussion of rabbit farming and water play.
After my father was demobbed in March 1946, my parents returned to their house in Newport.
More about Abinger during the War.
Macrina
Macrina was a 1930s "bypass" three bedroom semi on the outskirts of Newport. It had been bought new by my parents and the name was of an obscure early female saint, I have never known why it was chosen.
It was let out during the war, and my parents and I moved back in June 1946.
At that time, farmland was nearby and a stream issued from a culvert across the road. There were allotments at the end of the garden, one rented by my parents. The location allowed my father to walk to his job as an English teacher at Bassaleg Grammar School. I went to school nearby.
My (paternal) grandparents had moved to a house nearby before the war, but after a bomb fell across the road from them and rendered their house uninhabitable, they moved back into Newport. I passed the bomb-site on my way to and from school: it is now the location of a cutting carrying the M4 around Newport.
Whitchurch
When I was seven, my father was appointed to be headmaster of Cathays Grammar School in Cardiff. He did not want to have the prospect of his own son in the school, so they sought to live outside the city boundary: in Whitchurch. This allowed him to get to Cathays by bus easily.
They bought a four bedroom Edwardian semi. This gave me a hobby room as well as a bedroom. The house had an air raid shelter under a rockery in the back lawn. This was a play area for me, but was eventually removed.
Heating was by open coal fires in each room. An upgrade was to fit a "boiler" in the kitchen: a free-standing solid-fuel device which also heated the hot water. I remember going to bed in winter: taking a hot water bottle and pedalling furiously in bed to generate a bit of warmth. Sometimes the inside of the window had ice on it by the morning.
Whitchurch at that time was just emerging from being a village to becoming a dormitory suburb. I remember that an itinerant fun fair came to a site next to Whitchurch Common regularly; the Whitsun treat involved being taken by horse-drawn cart to the nearby "polo fields" for games... The polo fields became the site of a large council housing estate and Whitchurch was growing fast.
Our road had many elderly inhabitants but there were several
children of my age. We played together outdoors, street games, making
dens, climbing trees,.. For many years (until his family emigrated to
Australia) my closest friend was Michael Weber. He was in the same
school class as me and lived close by. His family appeared a bit exotic
to me (Jewish of Czech origin) but we got on really well.
For a while, one of our favourite activities was to take the bus to
Tongwynlais and walk up to Castell Coch. This was a fairytale castle
set on a hill overlooking the Taff valley. For a minimal cost, one could
gain entry and play at castles,... I don't think I realised at that
time that Castell Coch was completely phoney: reconstructed by William
Burgess for the Marquis of Bute as a tribute to mediaeval times.
One curious development was a garage: the space between the side of
our house and the dividing wall was a path - not wide enough for a car.
My father persuaded our neighbours the other side of that wall to have
the wall knocked down allowing enough space for a car by combining
their path and ours. The garage was duly built: driving in and out was
tricky since the path snaked about...
My parents idea of baby-sitting was to send me by bus to stay
overnight with my grandparents who lived near Roath Park. Later when my
parents had a car, they would bring my grandmother around. When I
complained that "do I have to look after grandma every time you go
out?", they realised that I could be left alone.
When I was a married graduate student, we rented a cottage in
Woodstock. This was about £4 a week as I recall. It had three
levels with a rather derelict room on the top level. It fronted directly
onto the road with a steeply sloping garden behind: in which I grew
vegetables. It overlooked the flood plain of the river Glyme and was
Cotswold-stone built. Our neighbour's house had a lttle rockery in front -
full of fossils from the sand pit (Mr Badby drove a sand lorry delivering
sand).
As Woodstock residents, we had free access to Blenheim Palace Park.
I remember sitting just inside the park entrance with Nick in his
push-chair on a Sunday after buying a paper: coachloads of visiting
tourists (American mostly) stopped to see the view, but seemed to take
more interest in Nick than the distant palace.
Didcot On securing a post-doctoral position at the
Rutherford Laboratory, we decided to buy a house in Didcot, nearby.
Since I was a "doctor", a mortgage was easy to obtain (they did not
seem to appreciate that a post-doc has no job security). At that time
(1966), Didcot had many recently-built houses which were of a very
similar plan. We looked at several and made an offer on one that was
empty (awaiting probate). We moved in 28 days after first seeing it,
although technically we rented until all the paperwork went through. A
newish house (within commuting range of London by train) for about three
times salary - those were the days.
When we went to CERN, we rented the house out -- mainly to physicists
visiting the Rutherford Lab. Apart from a chip-pan fire, the house
survived OK. When I learned that I would be staying at CERN beyond the
two year fellowship period, we sold it and moved furniture to the Geneva
area.
The house was semi-detatched with 3 bedrooms upstairs and
bathroom, kitchen and lounge downstairs. Heating was an open coal fire
in the lounge with hot water from an electric immersion heater. We
bought second-hand electric night-storage heaters and I installed
off-peak electricity. We later added a concrete rectangle and put up a
prefabricated garage.