Oh Happy Days

A Memory of Kilburn.

I was born in Kilburn in Plympton Road on 2nd May 1928 and went to school at Christ Church School and then Salisbury Road School. What a lovely place Kilburn was in those days with the iron railings and gates on every house and our mums scrubbing the steps and whiting them every week. Our front door keys were left in the locks of the front door with no problems of anybody taking advantage. All the boys and girls in Plympton Road were friends, Tommy Edwards, Richard Roberts, Desmond Mosedale, Marie Douglas from no. 7 and Doris Donaldson from no. 15 I think, the Jefferys from Plympton Avenue, Pat Penny (my first girlfriend), to name just a few. Loads of us until the war came along and we were all evacuated to different parts. Came back home and joined the Civil Defence as a messenger but did a lot of rescue work as I was small, and it is funny how all that remained in one's memory throughout all of your life. One had to get on with it in those days, no counselling, not like today, if you get a sore thumb through typing you get awarded thousands of pounds. I remember in the 1930s when I think Willesden became a borough and as school children we all got awarded a medal commemorating it and also a book, I still had the medal but gave it to my grandson with some old coin collection I had accumulated. I got married and moved to the Edgware Road to a block of flats (Gilbert Sheldon House) and subsequently moved to Bedford. I came through Kilburn with my brother and sister in later years and was shocked by the difference of what it used to be. Oh dear me, what a disaster. Absolutely nothing to what it used to be. I believe the three of us cried buckets that night. To think what we had done in the past to make it a desirable neighbourhood. I now live in Spain.

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