04-13-2015, 09:54 PM
I still retain many other fond and nostalgic memories of my early childhood living in Battersea. Even some that are just as vivid as the day my favourite red bucket became my hat. Friends I used to have, pets we sometimes kept, even the odd adventure or two in Banana Park. But one particular memory stands out from the kaleidoscope of images swimming around the far flung recesses of my time addled mind. I must have been about four years of age, and, once again, I had been put out to pasture in the backyard. My best friend, Jack had 'wandered' in for a game of 'who's got the spiffiest trolley.' I rarely think back on Jack, his features are a little blurred in my mind's eye, blonde hair I think, and I don't recall if he ever spoke. The only two things that I do remember about my first ever best pal, is that his dad seemed to get smaller and smaller as the years rolled by, and the time when their prefabricated home was inadvertently burnt to the ground. That was the first time that I had seen with my own eyes the devastating toll a simple flame could reap on the life of a human being, and for years I was certain it was the cause for Jack's father's regression in stature. But I'm veering off topic (I tend to do that sometimes, so please do bare with me), and I know now that his diminishing height was only my juvenile mind's perspective of my own developmental growth. So anyway, there we were, my pal Jack and I, sitting in the yard discussing the semantics of what constitutes the perfect toy trolley, when one of the neighbourhood's older boys, 'little' James, scoots passed running at full clip, followed closely by the gnashing jaws of his own ravenous dog.
James lived in a prefab at the far end of the street, near the wild patch of grass where a friendly clan of Romany Gypsy travellers had set up their erstwhile camp. I remember they used to have a haggard old donkey (the travellers, not the Jameses). Who could often be seen wandering from garden to garden partaking in the flowery feast set out before it in the overzealous windowboxes of my unknowing neighbours' homes, while the errant beast's masters moved from door to door trading their pilfered wares. Even though he was by far the tallest kid on the block, James had osmosically earned the moniker 'Little James' because he shared the name with his father, 'Big James.' Now he was a strapping skyscraper of a fellow, and quite the opposite of Jack's crickety old dad, in which he just seemed to get bigger and bigger the more you looked up at him. They were the proud owners of two of the most humongous and ferocious German Shepard dogs I have ever seen (to date), their paws were as big as my prepubescent head and there was always a swinging slobber of doggy drool draped from the corners of their slavenous jaws. They were too wild to be allowed to live inside so the Jameses kept the long toothed maneaters locked up securely (we hoped) in a huge steel meshed pen built into the side of their prefabricated home. And, as you can imagine, the pathways were always upon always promptly cleared of any unwary pedestrians that just happened to be wandering the local streets when it was time for their daily walk.
Last edited by Menelaus; 04-14-2015 at 12:18 PM..
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