The Town I Grew Up In

A Memory of Edgware.

This was the town I grew up in until I was 8.  There is one day that stands out in my mind.  My mother had been informed that the local fruiterer had oranges. His location was about half a mile from our house.  England was still in the grip of heavy rationing. As I loved oranges, our Mother decided that I should go with her instead of one of my three siblings.  We left the house and had walked about 100 yards then we came across a queue, my Mother enquired whether they were queueing for meat, bread or fish the answer was no, it was oranges, so we dutifully waited and slowly it gradually got to our turn. When my mother was offered ONE lowly orange she enquired with a certain amount of annoyance why the purveyer of the fruit had not informed the queuees that he was running low on oranges and why the previous customer had not taken the last orange, she was told that it would have been put him over his ration and as for the queue he was too busy to take notice.  Anyhow my Mother took that last orange.  She could not make the marmalade she expected to make, she did a very caring and unselfish thing, she took a knife to that orange cut it in four and gave a piece each to my brothers and I.  Maybe that is the reason she was blessed with a little baby girl that she had wanted a year later.  Mind you to this date I still hate queues but I stll love Edgware.  My elder brother lives there so I stll go when I am visiting England from Australia. Unfortunately it has fallen to the march of time, it is no longer the busy town of the fifties. The cinema has gone and some ugly blocks of flats are in its place.  Gone are some of the quaint shops, even a tea shop that had been there since I was a child has gone.  And they call modernisation progress!!