Adventures in Peckham …… no 2 … the accident

Gellatly Road, and its neighbours don’t look very formidable today.

Kitto Road, 2021

But I am now 72 and such things are relative.  

Roll back the years to the summer of 1957, and that gentle incline in the eyes of an eight year old with a Triang scooter was a challenge.

Now it could have been Bousfield Road which looks steeper but I would have been on Kitto Road, coming back from  Pepys park which after the long climb up from Arbuthnot offered plenty of challenging rides for one eight year and a foot scooter.

So as Gellatly Road was the last on Kitto Road as I was heading home, Gellatly was the scene of my humiliation.

All went fine for a while but soon the momentum took over and the confidence slipped away, and it all ended in disaster somewhere in the middle of the road.

It was nothing over serious, a few scratches and a nasty bleeding knee, a mark on the red and blue Triang and a large wallop of embarrassed shame.

Undaunted I returned more than once but despite the speed of the descent I never repeated the fall.

The passage of sixty-six years has of course softened the events. The tall old trees have been replaced by newer smaller ones and the road seems far less steep.

But that humiliation does come back, and so it was when David White posted some pictures of the roads I explored as a kid.

Gellatly wasn’t one of them, but Kitto was and in the fullness of time so might Lausanne Road where we lived till 1964.

Kitto Road, 2021

At which point I have to say this isn’t one of those private and indulgent bouts of nostalgia, but a reflection on just how much freedom we were given as children.

Of course, the roads were less full of traffic, and even an eight year old knew the limits of his adventures.

Added to which mum had her hands full with three younger children all under five, and so letting me roam free benefited both of us.

I suspect there was also that simple observation that the “grown-ups” had a more balanced view of risks given that they had lived through the last World War.

All of which benefited me and my friends, who in those early years wandered increasingly further from home, and after discovering the Red Rover unlimited bus travel, and cheap railway tickets offered up opportunities to wander across the city and beyond.

Location, my bit of Peckham

Pictures, Kitto Road, 2021, courtesy of David White