Life in Seaforth Avenue

As a youngster I, along with two other brothers, attended the RED school in West Barnes Lane (infants and juniors) and when old enough, I moved over the sports field to the White School (seniors). My brothers moved on to the Beverley School in Blakes Lane, Motspur Park. During the mid 1940s, it was the job of us boys, on a Saturday morning, to take Mum's pram around to Champion's the timber merchants' rear entrance (that was quite near the back of the 'What Oh' transport cafe), get permission from the saw mill foreman to salvage all the off cuts of planks etc and we would then load Mum's pram to overflowing, even jamming pieces of wood down the sides to enable the pram to carry twice it's capacity. When we eventually got home, after pushing the pram and contents along Burlington Road, past Bradbury Wilkinson's printing factory, we would turn right, over the level crossing and then right again into Seaforth Avenue. When we got home, all the bits of wood were stacked away in Dad's lean-to shed, ready for chopping up for the indoors fire. When the pram was emptied, off we would go again, this time to Francis the coal merchant at the bottom of the New Malden High Street (just by the railway bridge).
At times, on the way home, with two one-hundred-weight bags of coal in the pram and being a mighty bit hungry, as we passed the hardware store just up the High Street from Francis's (the name eludes me), we would grab a dog biscuit from the top of the open sacks that were on display at the front of the shop, break it up into edible sizes then eat it on the way home!! Sometimes we were unlucky enough to grab one that was made out of a charcoal substance and it tasted awful, but we still ate it!!  .Perhaps that was our penance for stealing. My family moved away from Seaforth Avenue in 1953 after having been there since 1939. I am now married and live in Chelmsford, Essex and have done so since leaving the Merchant Navy in 1962. I often relate stories to my grandchildren of when I was a 'war baby' and what I got up to when I was younger, but at times I think they find it hard to believe what my brothers and I had to do to assist in the daily life of a family during the dark days of World War Two. Worrying days for Mum and Dad, but wonderful, happy days for us kids!!