When you are 15, some days can lie heavy.
It was usually on summer days when the weather turned from being blistering hot and sunny to a muggy wet one, and the combination of the humidity and the ever-present threat of a heavy shower made going out less than attractive.
How much easier it had all been five years earlier, when even if you were “Billy no mates” there were adventures to be had.
Of course, these usually revolved around Pepys park which was actually two.
The first was your classic Victorian public space, with the remnants of a bandstand, a fenced off lake, and a simple play area.
Looking back the play area may once have been another ornamental pond, long drained and filled with the simplest of apparatus, including the hollowed-out trunk of an old tree, which could be anything from a tank to the conning tower of a submarine.
I was not alone in playing in it and letting my imagination wander, as was witnessed by the thick sides and top of the trunk which were highly polished from countless kids climbing and sliding over it.
The eastern side which ran along Pepys Road was a mass of trees and dense undergrowth making it a perfect hidden place to act out all sorts of searches, while observing the other park goers and keeping an eye out for the Parkies.
By contrast the top park, had little to commend it, other than a drinking fountain and some fine views to the city in the distance. It was also just outside the area you felt safe in, as its bordered unknowns, and at ten you were always aware that some places were someone else’s territory.
Not so the adventures across London courtesy of a cheap return ticket from Southern Region or a Red Rover.
Such trips didn’t require wonderful weather because there was always a doorway, shop, or museum to take shelter in, and friends could be a distraction from going where the fancy took you.
But for every real adventure there were those that turned sour, like the time the promise of the magic of Bermondsey took us to a canal under a railway arch on a wet dismal Saturday.
These were on balance few, compared to the winners, which included a Wednesday in high summer on a railway station in suburbia. There was little to see outside the station but the magic came from sitting on the grassed area of the platform at midday with just a bottle of warm lemonade and the stillness of an empty commuter stop, punctuated only by the lazy sound of bees going about their business and the smell of tar on the wooden railway sleepers.
But by 15, there was far more to cope with, starting with that sense that everyone else was more confident, was having more fun and had a girlfriend.
It would be another year before all that happened to me, and I had to wait to leave the school in New Cross and arrive at Crown Woods.
In the meantime, there were aimless trips up Eltham High Street, hours spent in the library and visits to Woolwich, which reminded me of Peckham and was more edgy, and different from Well Hall, and of course offered up the River.
Even now, almost sixty years on, I can get excited at the memory of the Thames. But not the fashionable clean, twee tourist Thames, but the working river, with its boat building yards, factories, and wharves.
And here I am the first to point out that there was nothing romantic about living by and working on the River. The work could be hard, dangerous and the pay pitiful, while much of the accommodation close to the water has seen better days.
That said taking the ferry at Woolwich, or wandering the market was away of killing time till something better turned up, which at 15 was still a year away, and the summers of 1966, 67 and 68 when the sun shone and all seemed perfect.
Location; Peckham, New Cross, Woolwich, Well Hall
Pictures; Andrew in 1964, and views of the River, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson Telegraph Hill Park, 2007 from the collection of Colin Fitzpatrick St Mary’s Church, 1906,from Parish Churches and Telegraph Hill Park, circa 1904, M G Bacchus, Telegraph Hill Society, http://thehill.org.uk/society/Telegraph.htm
 |
| In Well Hall waiting for something to happen, 1964 |
 |
| The top park, 2007 |
How much easier it had all been five years earlier, when even if you were “Billy no mates” there were adventures to be had.
Of course, these usually revolved around Pepys park which was actually two.
The first was your classic Victorian public space, with the remnants of a bandstand, a fenced off lake, and a simple play area.
 |
| Pepys park circa 1900 |
I was not alone in playing in it and letting my imagination wander, as was witnessed by the thick sides and top of the trunk which were highly polished from countless kids climbing and sliding over it.
 |
| Seldon visited, 2007 |
By contrast the top park, had little to commend it, other than a drinking fountain and some fine views to the city in the distance. It was also just outside the area you felt safe in, as its bordered unknowns, and at ten you were always aware that some places were someone else’s territory.
Not so the adventures across London courtesy of a cheap return ticket from Southern Region or a Red Rover.
Such trips didn’t require wonderful weather because there was always a doorway, shop, or museum to take shelter in, and friends could be a distraction from going where the fancy took you.
But for every real adventure there were those that turned sour, like the time the promise of the magic of Bermondsey took us to a canal under a railway arch on a wet dismal Saturday.
These were on balance few, compared to the winners, which included a Wednesday in high summer on a railway station in suburbia. There was little to see outside the station but the magic came from sitting on the grassed area of the platform at midday with just a bottle of warm lemonade and the stillness of an empty commuter stop, punctuated only by the lazy sound of bees going about their business and the smell of tar on the wooden railway sleepers.
But by 15, there was far more to cope with, starting with that sense that everyone else was more confident, was having more fun and had a girlfriend.
 |
| Woolwich, 1979 |
In the meantime, there were aimless trips up Eltham High Street, hours spent in the library and visits to Woolwich, which reminded me of Peckham and was more edgy, and different from Well Hall, and of course offered up the River.
Even now, almost sixty years on, I can get excited at the memory of the Thames. But not the fashionable clean, twee tourist Thames, but the working river, with its boat building yards, factories, and wharves.
 |
| The River, 1979 |
That said taking the ferry at Woolwich, or wandering the market was away of killing time till something better turned up, which at 15 was still a year away, and the summers of 1966, 67 and 68 when the sun shone and all seemed perfect.
 |
| The Thames, 1979 |
Pictures; Andrew in 1964, and views of the River, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson Telegraph Hill Park, 2007 from the collection of Colin Fitzpatrick St Mary’s Church, 1906,from Parish Churches and Telegraph Hill Park, circa 1904, M G Bacchus, Telegraph Hill Society, http://thehill.org.uk/society/Telegraph.htm
My Freedom pass is my travel warrant. Love the bus ride from Woolwich to Eltham visiting my sister after travelling on DLR from Stratford.
ReplyDeleteYes, ours includes tram, bus and rail travel to the edges of Gtreater Manchester.
Delete