Asbestos Suits and Sten Guns

Robert Biggs came round one day and this is the sight that was waiting when I answered the door. He also sometimes wore a brigadier outfit. God knows were he got them from. Robert was a few years older than us and even trusted to escort us younger ones to the Girls and Boys exhibition at Olympia.

We went out to play in those far off days. And our road was a dead end one- as we called it (or no through road). In the sixties there was only a scattering of cars; so we had plenty of space . “CAN I GO OUT TO PLAY?” was the call echoing about London, usually followed by a “YES BUT.........” The ”yes but” applied to being back for lunch or dinner - in other words “don't disappear for ever”

When I went round to Robert's Mr Biggs would slowly raise his paper, give me a ghastly smile and disappear behind his paper again – I don't remember him speaking. He had a glass cabinet with a pipe collection. The slightly batty Mrs Biggs serving Robert a whole heart for his lunch.

On Saturdays I could barely contain my excitement; I would wait outside Colin's house for hours; apparently he would still be in bed - eventually he would emerge. Looking back it was all quite eccentric, if not surreal. A snap shot would show you Robert chasing us about the road in his asbestos fire fighting suit or a very young Catherine cycling round stark naked on her tricycle. My dad told me that he had looked everywhere for me one day and had asked Colin who was sitting on a box on the pavement; whether he had seen me. Without a word Colin got off the box and I emerged from inside – who knows why?

Our road was peopled with ordinary folk - if there is such a thing. A nurse, an ice cream van man, a builder. The family names are coming back to me: the Barratts, the Bartletts, the Blackenstones, the D'Angelos and us – the Smiths. The rag & bone man came down the road with his horse and cart, and mournful cry. Just think - the dustmen and the coal man walked all the way down every back alleys with their burdens. Another character in the road was Robert's cat called for some reason Willum, he had been found as a kitten on some waste ground. He was the friendliest cat in the world, he was even good mates with Pedro -Miss Bergone's dog next door. Poor Willum was badly crushed – probably from being under a car. He was saved but one eye was now greyed out and he was never quite the same again.

Meanwhile we all felt rather indestructible – no pull cord light in the bathroom, no child safety gate at the top of the stairs -falling down stairs was a right of passage – going over the handlebars on the bike (my football boots dangling from the handle bars went straight into the front wheel. Running head first into things was my speciality. – not a helmet in sight. The only safety advice was not to accept sweets from strange men. My very little younger brother Howard was allowed however to join the men working up the road with his jam sandwiches for lunch – sitting with them in a very large hole.

Our wanderings were not limited to the road however; through back gardens, over fences, wherever we could by unusual and creative climbing – and then there was the “The Orchard” Imagine if you will a few aches of a Victorian walled garden, untended for decades, taken over by brambles. That was what lay over the towering and bulging wall that ran across the end of our road. And past the Orchard was an even bigger open grassy area that we called the dump with a few derelict green houses and squat stone water tanks. We built camps of various constructions. We dug the underground camp – a four foot deep trench covered in wooden boards and topped with earth with a manhole cover. Even candle lit It was however rather a dismal place to spend much time in. We showed it to a local council surveyor that we bumped into one day– we were proud to say he put it on his map.

There was a whole range of fruit to be had – though the best was amazing delicious blackberries and from the dump raspberries. I was always nervous picking alone -felt like I was being watched. I would happily return relieved to have finished the task -scratched by brambles and stung by nettles with a tupperware boxes full. My Mother would make amazing raspberry flans and blackberry pies.

Old Mrs Goodbody lived next door – My mum got her a bit of shopping usually a piece of steak. and I would call round with it. “Don't eat anything she gives you” my Mother would say. When she opened the door I would take a deep breath and rush through with the shopping. She was a very jolly lady but she had let herself go rather. When she died they burnt her big armchair in the garden.

Mrs Burgoyne, lived next door on the other side. She was a Spinster – “MISS Burgoyne!”... my mum was always correcting me. She was eccentric and quite mysterious, very bright but slightly off kilter so to speak.. Her back garden had a trellis all the way round the fence with roses growing through. But it was fortifyed with barbed wire . She liked the birds in her garden but not the bird killer cats. The cats would slink in thrugh the barbed wire anyway. What was she afraid of apart from the cats? She always kept a police whistle handy apparently. I remember my dad saying she had had a visit from a mysterious army staff car. He said they don't just send that for anybody. Apparently she was in Intelligence during the war.

She was active in the Francis Bacon society (the ones who claim that he actually wrote all the Shakespeare plays) and she belonged to something called the White Eagle Lodge. Looking it up now I find that White Eagle was an Indian spirit guide that helped a medium called Grace Cooke to set up the church in 1936.

Unusually in this case the mystery was recently solved, at least partially. In 2015 the whole road was evacuated. -this was after the Smiths had all moved on from Grimwood Road. This is what had happened - on Miss Burgoyne's death, builders working in the now empty house made an interesting discovery. I had been living next to an arms stash for all the years I had live there. It included a sten sub machine gun.

My dads idea was that certain arms stashes were kept with trusted persons about the country just post war – in the case of internal strife breaking out. If Miss Burgoyne had the sub machine gun – then maybe the barbed wire wasn't just to keep the cats out.

If there was one thing about childhood that I recall it was that despite the fears and minor dramas first and formost it was an adventure and that this precious sensibility really must be nurtured into adulthood - it keeps the darkness at bay.

For more on the Arms Cash story please follow this link:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11663439/Spy-from-suburbia-Pensioners-secret-life-revealed-after-bomb-scare.html