A Pool Of Evocative Tears

A Memory of Barnehurst.

I was 8 years old when this picture was taken. It is hard to express how evocative this innocuous little picture is to me. Is that a box of tissues on the right?. Well this picture really set me off blubbing. At this end of the pool was a toddlers pool, part of but fenced off from the deeper part. I was there with my little brother Paul and we called him Doughnut. He must have been just three. Well I lost him, there was quite a crowd and I looked all over Martens Grove for him asking everyone if they had seen him. I was absolutely alone and terrified, as it all emptied out I think I must have got a bit hysterical. You didn't wander round with a mobile phone like today. There wasn't a phone box very near. We didn't have a phone at home anyway, but I was too scared to go phone the police in case he came back to the pool. It was beginning to get dark when my brother Dave came to find me. Paul had found his own way home across Mayplace Road, down to under the railway bridge, along Eversley to our road, Castleton Avenue. Thats a long way. I was so relieved...I was singing all the way home. My mum didn't tell me off. She was the only mum in the road to go to work and this must have happened in the school holidays. I wrote a story about it at school in Mr Durrant's class and Mr Davies read it out in assembly. I just wanted to crawl into a hole. I was so embarassed. Sadly my brother Doughnut died of cancer when he was only 40 years old which makes this memory even more poignant for me. The week before he died, we drove all round the area laughing at all the stuff that happened to us as kids...this incident included.