Over the past 12 to 18 months, Dad knew his health was failing and he asked us for some notepads - he wrote a number of poems for Mum, and stories and poems for their great-grandchildren, but we also joked that he was writing  his memoirs - and this is what we found:

As I grow older, my thoughts seem to return more often to my earliest years.  My very first memory is climbing on to the tram that passed our home, clutching 6d (sixpence) in my hand, to ask the conductor for pennies for the gas meter (no electric in most homes at that time).  if the conductor was on the top deck, I would wait for him to come down - it meant I would have much further to run to get home.  I can't remember anything else about my family, or life in those times.

My next memory is of being left on my own in a large room - a solicitor's office somewhere in London.  My mother was taken into another room to sign the agreement for me to go to the Farningham Home for Little Boys in the village of South Darenth in Kent.  I remember so well that I needed to go to the toilet and, when I couldn't hold on any longer, I used the waste paper basket! - perhaps the carpet soaked it up?

I don't recall the journey from Newcastle to London, or from London to the Home for Boys.  When we got to the Home, we went to House Number 2 (which was the Infants' House) and I was shown into the Playroom to join the other lads.  One of them was John Touchard and he was holding a very  nice toy car - which I took from him!  He behaved very well and didn't argue, as I remember.

That was the start of my life at "The Homes".  My mother (on advice) simply vanished, and I settled in with all the other boys.  I went to Infants School, where my teacher was Miss Tooth; then, when I was 7 years old, I moved to Number 8 with the bigger boys.

I remember two of the teachers - Mr Matthews, who became Headmaster and took English, History and Music (such as it was), and Mr Reynolds, who took Arithmetic, Geography and always read a chapter of Huckleberry Finn as the last lesson on Friday - and how I looked forward to that each week.  Our schooling was very basic but I enjoyed it and, most of the time, I was among the top three at the end of the term.

I do remember that we had one lad whose parents had arranged for him to go to the nearest Grammar School, and he caught a train every day - we thought he was very lucky, except he had homework and we didn't. 

They were long, hot summer days when we would play cricket or football or just run for the joy of it.  We could look to the sky when we heard the sound of auto-gyros (before helicopters) or bi-planes going slowly overhead and wonder where they were off to.

In 1939, war was declared and we all thought it would be over by Christmas - how wrong we were.  First the Big Retreat from Dunkirk and then the Blitz of London started.  Trenches were swiftly dug close to each House at the Homes (there were 10 Houses, each with about 30 boys, except the Infants which had about 15 little lads, and House Number 7, which was the Hospital).

It was about this time that all the gas lights were taken down and electric was installed.  No lights were supposed to be shown after dark and it was far simpler and quicker to throw one switch off in each House, rather than go into every room to turn off the gas lights.

If the weather was bad enough to stop the bombers from flying to London, we slept in our own beds, but it seemed that most of the time we slept in the air raid shelters.  Some of the bombers didn't reach London and would drop their bombs early and go back home.  Even on the darkest nights, we would  hear the planes overhead: the ack-ack guns and the barrage balloons weren't much of a deterrent.  It seemed the first few planes would drop incendiary bombs which burst into flame when they reached ground and were very difficult to extinguish, so lighting the way for the main group of bombers.  Each morning after an air raid, we'd go looking for shrapnel as souvenirs and quite often we found some - then the bigger, older boys would pinch it off us.

I remember that some bombs fell into one of the fields belonging the School and another close to one of the Houses, which damaged the roof and the windows.  Also, one wing of the School building itself was burnt out by incendiary bombs and was never used again.

One night, we were in our air raid shelter when an RAF pilot was brought in - he was bleeding quite a lot and the School Nurse tended to him.  In the morning, when we got back to our House, we could see a Spitfire plane had crash-landed in the field where the cows grazed every day.  It was guarded by two or three soldiers until it was moved away for repair - perhaps to stop such as us from taking a few souvenirs?

After a while, the Blitz and the Battle of Britain was almost done and the war started going our way - first in North Africa when we heard on the radio about the Desert Rats and General Montgomery, who was a national hero - then the battles through Greece, the Balkans, Italy and finally Germany.  It was about this time that the Germans stopped the bombers coming over and sent their new V1 Rockets.  They would launch them day and night and, during the day, we could see them flying overhead.  They didn't need pilots or crew but flew until the fuel ran out, then just dropped from the sky and exploded, so when we heard one coming, if the engine noise stopped, we had to run for cover.  Later, they improved it and it became the V2. 

I think this was late '43 or 1944, because it was decided to evacuate those still at school.  I thought I would go, but they said, as I would finish school in December anyway, it wasn't worth going to a new one for just one term, so I left school when I was 13 years & 10 months old and started my apprenticeship as a shoemaker.  First it was just mending the boots that were inspected each week by Mr Whitehouse, my Instructor, and then cutting the soles and  heels on the machine (where Ted Elkins chopped his finger off - and then chopped another off, showing how it had  happened!).

We were then taught how to fit the uppers to the lasts, to prepare for the welt to be sewn on by the Blake machine (Mr Whitehouse did that himself).  After trimming the welt and upper, the sole was tacked on before being stitched, mostly by machine but also by hand.  The heel was then fitted - everything trimmed with a very sharp cobbler's knife before sanding and finishing on the buffing machine.  Often, segs were hammered into the heels to save wear.  As I got older, I was able to use all the machines and eventually, as Head Boy, was teacher to the younger ones.

Also about the time of Ted's accident, my friend Ken Brown had a sore knee - our Nurse couldn't fix it so he went to Dartford Hospital for an operation.  When he came back, he couldn't bend his left knee and had a stiff leg for the rest of his life.  When he finished his apprenticeship as a tailor, he emigrated to Canada.

There was a choice of jobs one could take when schooling was finished - Shoemaking, Tailoring, Printing, Carpentry or Help on the Farm.  The tailors made suits for the older boys - I can see them now, sitting cross-legged on a giant cutting out table, sewing buttonholes by hand, and unpicking them if they didn't pass inspection.

In Printing, they still used the old-fashioned way of picking each letter or number from a vast array of boxes, where every letter or number had its own place.  Every so often, they would be emptied and the misplaced ones put in the correct box.  It always seemed a tedious job to me but, out in the real world, it was very well paid at that time.

The Carpenter's job was a popular choice,  making window frames and doors and other things from the left-over timber.  They also made the wooden pews which were presented to local churches when required.  Mr Chipperfield, the Instructor, lived at the Lodge, just inside the School front gates, with his quite large wife and very young daughter.  It was quite a scandal when he left them and ran off with the youngest Matron we had.  Someone else took over the Carpenter's job and life went on as before.

The Home for Boys had its own Farm.  There were two very large shire horses, Captain and Daisy, to do the ploughing and pull the other heavy machinery required to tend to the crops.  Also, a permanent herd of about a dozen cows that provided all the milk that was required in the main Cookhouse and in each of the Houses.  Sometimes we were asked to help on the Farm.  On a hot summer day, a tractor and threshing machine would arrive and, with much excitement, we would watch the corn or barley being cut and the bales of stalks left over were tied and discarded by the machine so that following on behind would collect five or six and stack them on end like a pointed tent, where they were left until dry enough to store in the Farm barn.  As the cutting machine went up and down the field, we waited until there was hardly any uncut crop left and would then try to catch the rabbits that were hiding there, as they made a dash for freedom - we never caught them.  

Another annual job was potato picking - back-breaking, but we would keep the biggest potato we could find and take it to the huge School Boiler House and throw it on the ashes under the large fire that supplied the hot water for every House.  We would keep popping back to see if our spuds were ready and, when they looked black enough, we would rake them out, scrape off the burnt skin and eat them - what a feast it seemed at the time!

I think it was a man named Reg Flewin, a retired steeplejack, who looked after the boiler.  He was the general handyman, who seemed able to fix almost anything asked of him - a very pleasant man who lived in the nearest village of South Darenth.

There was also a team of gardeners that kept the lawns and trees spick and span and also took care of the quite large spaces between the Houses, where cabbage and cauliflower and such like vegetables were grown for the main Cook House.  There was a Bakery where all the bread loaves and rolls were baked.  I did a stint in the Bakery, where the dough almost filled a bath-sized tin by the time the dough had risen, and it took ages to cut and form it into the big loaf tins ready for the oven (what a job that was!) - there's nothing better than a fresh crusty loaf when you feel hungry, and young boys are ALWAYS hungry!

The Cooks made the main meal every day - we filed into the large dining room and sat at the large tables with forms to sit on (like the dining rooms in the Potter films), as the full plates were passed from one end to the other and quickly returned empty back again, ready for washing up.  We also had filling puddings - rice pudding could be cut like a cake and came in blocks about three inches thick, but it was moist and very tasty for all that.  Another favourite was "Plonger" (Spotted Dick) and steamed jam roll which, as a change, was sometimes baked - all very basic but filling nevertheless.  Breakfast and tea meals were slices of bread and a square of butter (if we had any butter left, we would make our initials or a mark and save it for the next time).  We often had jam with our bread but it wasn't until the war that we started being given the occasional boiled egg or a small piece of cheese.  Because of food rationing, sugar for jam was in short supply, but an egg and the taste of cheese was a luxury for us - before this, all the eggs and cheese were used in the main meals, one way or another.  For breakfast, we always had a bowl of cornflakes with a little milk, then two slices of bread to finish off, before lining up for the walk to the School playground, before lessons began.

Another very fond memory is the Sunday Services held in the Chapel, which was just inside the main gates.  Every Sunday morning and evening, we would all file into our places.  How we managed, over 200 lads and perhaps a dozen staff, in such a small place is difficult to believe but we squeezed together, some at the sides of the church facing inwards, and most in the middle facing the pulpit.  The oldest boys (about two dozen) always sat at the very back and, at every opportunity, while the hymns were being sung, would sing descant.

Some of the hymns which we were learning at School music lessons were not always easy to remember and the singing faltered at first.  The well-known ones, like Abide With Me, There is a Green Hill, and perhaps the most moving of all, considering the news every week of the crews on the Atlantic convoys losing their lives as the ships were being hounded by U-boats day and night, were when we sang with real meaning, "Lord, Listen as we pray to Thee, for those in peril on the sea".  Brave men indeed and so many never came home.  It made us realise that war certainly wasn't a game and had gone on far too long. 

Those visits to the Chapel every Sunday gave me (and, I'm sure, many others) a kind of faith that has stayed with me to this day - something to hold on to, to believe in.  It has helped me through my early years, then my working years, and my Army service - it is with me still, it fills me with hope and it gives me peace and I don't want to live life without it.  I don't shout about it because I think, To each his own, but I've tried my best to live by it. 

Another very important lesson I learnt was Respect.  We were always shown respect by the Matrons, the Teachers, in fact all the Staff and, in our turn, we respected them and also each other.

There was a Visiting Sunday, once a month, when the families and friends of the lads came to see them, bringing smll gifts or a little cash to spend.  Everybody looked forward to this day and they would press their faces against the window in the Common Room, waiting for their own people to come and take them out.  I hope I explained, the Home wasn't an orphanage as such, although there may have been orphans during and after the war; it was a Home for Boys whose parents couldn't manage, for one reason or another. 

In my case, my father died before I was two years old, leaving my mother with three boys to look after.  Tom, the eldest, was 11 years old; Arthur (who had polio) was about eight years old, and I was almost five years old when, in 1935, a Retired Army Officer who was connected in some way to the Home for Little Boys in Kent just happened to be visiting the British Legion Office in Gateshead.  He was told about our family and made enquiries and thought he could  help in some way.  He must have met us and urged the British Legion to pay for us to go to the seaside for a holiday and to be properly fed.  He then arranged for me to go to this wonderful Home for Boys in the Kent countryside, and for Tom to go to another Home that he knew of near Fulham, London.  Tom was considered too old to join me in Kent.  This left my mother (who had then remarried) able to take care of Arthur and a new daughter.

Anyway, getting back to Visiting Sunday - I was most often the only one left standing at the window.  This went on for a number of years, until the sister of Gerald and Ted Elkins, who lived at Number 8 with me, asked them who it was, left at the window every time she came, and they told her that I came from Gateshead and it was too far for anyone to come.  Vera asked the boys if it was alright with them if she asked me to join them and they agreed.  That began a friendship that was to last more than 10 years.