Born But Not Bred

A Memory of Kilburn.

Born to Kathleen Leniston, and Ned Leniston July 1951 in Torbay Road, to the glorious rolling green fields (joke) of Kilburn. There were still bloody big holes where buildings used to be, thanks to Mr Hitler's town planning arrangments for London. The family loved Kilburn so much, we promptly moved to Colindale, then to Dartmouth Road, West Hendon; see the connection, from Torbay, to Dartmouth. If you think that's a coincidence, I now live in the West Country.  However, we were not completely finished with Kilburn quite yet. My mother, with me in tow, seemed to haunt the Kilburn high road in those far off days of the late 50s and early 60s, almost every Saturday. And on some Sundays,  I  was forced to visit mother's friends and relatives all scrubbed up, in a white starched shirt and tie with elastic round the collar (no knots to worry about), polished shoes, and grey flannel shorts.  All mum's friends seemed to be Irish, but then so was my now deceased father who died when I was 18 months old. Mother (never one to hang about ) married again, the local postman, Len Coster, from Kilburn sorting office.  I left London 40 years ago.