It’s strange that as you get older, your interest in re-living and visiting your past seems to get stronger and in my case, this is certainly true.
Luckily Leo is glad to go along with this; our recent visits to WW1 sites where my Grandfathers fought, he also likes to know about life in the 1960’s, especially musically, who I saw and who I liked etc. The only downer with that is that he now knows more about it than me and ‘I was there’ !!

Yesterday, on our way to visit my Mother in Sevenoaks, I took the slightest of detours to have a stroll around Bradbourne Lakes and St. Mary’s Church in Riverhead.

Bradbourne Lakes

I spent quite a lot of spare time after school and at the weekends there, sometimes with friends and sometimes alone. When alone, it was usually the imaginary scene of the railway line meandering around the Lake District, it was an escape route through enemy lines or simply somewhere to climb trees and attempt to jump the gap between one lake and the other.

With friends it was good hiding territory and the small area of Park was the Cricket Pitch. This was where you’d have to get the left handed batsman out quickly. If you allowed him to bat himself in, the ball would invariably be hit high and square to leg and going in the neighbouring persons house who always refused to throw it back to you. However, if hit really well, it would land in the next house down and there lived our Scout Leader whose patience was tested over the years by fairly clever boys acting like Prats !!

All in all, it looks pretty much the same as it did then. The small waterfall from one lake to the other is still there and memories of going home to a good ticking off because you’d slid down it came to mind. But the best memory of all was just cycling around avoiding the poor Grandmas having a gentle stroll on the blind corners.

St. Marys Church Riverhead

This has mountains of memories, through both the 1950’s and 1960’s, the place was central to much of my life.

In my angelic years I sang in the Church Choir. When I say Angelic, I mean that had I been wearing the robes standing in the Church all on my own, that is indeed how it would have looked, but these were the years of changing from boy to teenager and ways to match!
The teenage side of it was good. It was before they built the Sevenoaks By-Pass and all traffic coming back from a Hastings day out would pass by below the bank at the front. To the melodic sounds of Tommy Steele an early Cliff, after Even Song we would sit there waving to the girls in the absolute belief they would simply love to get out the car and join us

The Church Hall was the venue of the Scouts (before they built a new one), the Youth Club and later on a place for the Band I played in to rehearse. I took Leo to show him the Hall, but it’s a Car Park now and surrounded by new builds which knocks all imagination away somewhat – that’s life I guess.

There’s a small footpath going through the Graveyard and this was used quite often by those living in Betenson Avenue (or ‘the side of the Sandpits’) to get to the Shops. ‘Bo’ (Colin Bower who then looked like a slightly madder Ginger Baker), our Drummer, found great amusement on dark Winter evenings to hide behind a stone, wait for some poor unsuspecting person to walk past and whisper loudly “Hello”. The rest of us hiding in normal cowardly manner behind the bushes were greatly amused by the sound of footsteps changing from normal to frantic!

Right opposite the Church is (and was) Day-Lewis the Chemist where I did the Chemist Round from the age of about 11 to 13. It’s remarkable to think now that the Pharmacist left the Pharmacy keys outside the back door for me to go in and fetch the Prescriptions, then cycle some 10 miles a day to various peoples houses with them.

But where’s this all getting to, it has no relevance to you after all. I think it is that need for stories to be passed on. I’ve found myself very upset because I never really asked my Grandparents anything about their lifes, it’s all hearsay and piecing it all together.

Those were the days when TV had an intermission, one or two channels, they were days of no Computers, no internet and safer streets to walk upon. Because of that, there was a greater sense of imagination. You knew you may never get to the Himalayan Mountains, so they came to you in the form of your staircase, the Bay Window at the front of the House was your ships bridge and best of all, they were days when you courted a girl by walking her out on a Weekend evening and had to tensely wait until the next time hoping someone else wouldn’t have come along. Why? because there no emails, or mobile phones with texts and photo’s going backwards and forwards, it was down to you – there was not such an escape as there is now.

The hardest part of all when going to see your past life is that it seems like only last week. When I walked around the Lakes and the Church this week, I was still expecting Bo to pop out from behind a gravestone, still expecting the Rev. Potter to come out the Vestry Door and give me a ticking off for purposely singing the most important note of the Nunc Dimittis about three semi quavers out causing the other younger members of the choir to almost have accidents.

As the song goes ‘Oh happy days’, they were and I’m glad to say, still are.