Meadow Fae

It was a school, I think it was called Queen's something... obviously because of its location on Queen's Drive. My mum went to it.

Ryeland Crescent Nursery. I went there.

There was a bakery on one corner and a baker/butcher type shop on the other corner. Inflation being what is is, in the early 80's your penny cake equated to a 12p iced bun, which we'd save from our dinner money so we could eat on the way home. Never lasted long, I grew up on Glapton Road, and it was usually gone by the time we got to there.

There we go.

The Sherbrook. April 2008

Not me. I've merely moved a couple of dozen doors away from my childhood home. Meadows Thru'n'thru.

Nowadays, there's 'Mad Simon' who haunts the precinct with a machete (allegedly) who is scary even when he hasn't mixed his meds with his booze.

I went to Collygate School (on MUNDELLA ROAD) in 1973. I don't remember much about it, apart from singing in the choir in the hall (you got told off if you got caught yawning) and I remember walking along the path between the two sets of classrooms after having my polio injections and thinking the sugar cube tasted funny. Right now it's a shambling ruin of a building and it makes me sorry to see it in that state. There are none of the schools I attended in The Meadows left standing apart from this one. From the looks of it, it won't be long before that one is gone too.

It is a flat lot now, nothing has been built on it yet. Of all my schools, only Collygate Infants building remains, and nor for long, from the looks of that.

There was the fragile looking gent who my mum said suffered shell-shock in the war, he'd walk along stammering and shaking, and I remember as a child being terrified of him. Think he was called 'Stan'.

There are builders 'doing up' The Sherbrooke now. I'll try and get a photo when I pass it on the way to work tomorrow.