It was Christmas Eve, 1953. I was four years old and waiting for Father Christmas to arrive. But, WHO or WHAT was hiding behind the curtain?

Winters in our little prefab were cold, and going to bed was a nightmare knowing that the only way to keep warm was not to put my feet on the cold lino. This humourous childhood story explains how that was achieved.

The school-dinners, that I always remember as containing either smelly fish or thick brown gravy, left a lot to be desired. And as if that was not enough to contend with, I had to endure twenty minutes of enforced incarceration each day. This amusing childhood story tells how I survived the borefom of it.

The highlight of a school day when I was around the age of ten, growing up in Dover in the late 1950’s, was the arrival at our prefab estate of the morning bread lady, or ‘Our Bread Roll’ lady as she was known. The cutting peal of the wooden handled school bell, which she rang out of the van window while cruising along the nearby streets, could be heard long before she ever reached us. Hearing the first brassy tones of that battered old bell would send me instantly into my ‘pleading for money’ routine.