A few years ago I had the chance to prove her wrong. Somebody heard me singing to myself at work and invited me to join his glee club. I have never been good at taking compliments and shook my head, shyly confessing that I could’t sing. He replied that it didn’t matter at all, “none of us can sing” I told him more firmly that I was tone deaf. He said it didn’t matter as they all were!

The 1950’s loomed all too quickly but it was an incredibly optimistic time for us. We were the next generation and we were going to inherit the planet and beyond. That sounds

crazy but our young heads were full of space exploration. We didn’t have the television and we listened to “Journey into Space” each week on the radio. It was exciting stuff! Then we had the “Festival of Britain” It was all about new technology and our lives were going to change in so many fantastic ways.

I was still climbing trees though and scrumping apples. One day, along with several pals, we were climbing a big old oak tree when one of the lads, higher up than me, suddenly fell, straight down and landed flat on his back with a heavy thump. We quickly scrambled down and gathered around him. Ten and twelve year old lads in those days did not know much and we were undecided what to do with the victim. We took our lead from what we had seen cowboys do in films. One of the lads gave him a gentle nudge with his foot, but when he didn’t blink or move, he gave him a bigger nudge. Still he didn’t move and the older boy declared quite solemnly that our pal was dead and we should leave him there. So we did just that and went home to tea. This particular boy’s dad was a St. John’s Ambulance man and he came round that evening knocking on our doors to see where his son was. We told him he was dead, but he insisted we should take him back to view the body, or words to that effect.

We soon found him where we had left him and his dad got him to hospital where he soon recovered, none the worse, from concussion. I don’t remember him climbing trees much after that though! End