Growing Up In Colindale

A Memory of Colindale.

My birth certificate says I was born at Bushey Hospital in the April of 1943. I’m told that it was during an unusually hot spell. I lived at 84, Lynton Avenue in Colindale up to 1965 when I got married and moved away. There was a time between 1960 and 1962 when my job with the Met. Office took me to Dunstable and then Bracknell, but I returned home between each block of duties.
As a child I played on the pavements of Lynton Avenue with firstly a tricycle and then a proper two-wheeler. I roller skated on the tarmacked area between the shops at the Edgware Road and discovered that by pulling the wooden posts from the nearby fences and bending the bottom of them under the bench, that we could play roller hockey with a stone for a puck. Health & Safety where were you in those days?
The bomb site at the top of Woodfield Avenue provided a play area and the wild horseradish which grew there produced a home for the brightly coloured snails.
We went to Saturday morning pictures at the Odeon Cinema and galloped home in the guise of which ever hero we had just seen. Mostly we played in the street. If you were part of the gang that I ran with and I don’t mention your name, I’m sorry, but my memory isn’t what it was. I recall Eric Bateman, Billy (?) and David Lewellyn who the rest of our gang put up to fight me at the back of the Odeon. I was reluctant to fight him and if I ever knew what I had done wrong, I have long forgotten it. Ultimately he hit me and the scrap continued until a man broke it up and we all went home.
We roamed Rushgrove Park, played on the swings etc and I can remember being part of the team to break the world record for the most number of kids on the see-saw. We crossed the Silkstream over the pipe and fished for sticklebacks. The only scary moment occurred when we ventured into the woods at the back of Colin Crescent and were captured by two oriental boys. They held us “captive” and we escaped only when they grew bored with the game.
I attended Colindale Primary School and have nothing but happy memories. My mother, Ella Woolford was a cleaner at the school and “insider” knowledge enabled me to avoid punishment on a crack-down on water pistols. In later years she became a minder who looked after the children at dinner time.
Some of my fellow pupils were “Professor” David Bradbury, David Reid and two who progressed with me to Hendon County Grammar School – Frank Prideaux and Caroline Morgan.
One lasting memory was the visits of the Italian ice-cream vendor on his tricycle with the chill box at the front. His range of double stick ice-lollies was wide and varied. They were the best I’ve ever tasted.

Pete Woolford