[Visiting Beeston]

Hi Jill. I went to Beeston Fields Infants then on to junior. Didn't stay long, we moved to Lenton then West Bridgeford. Born at Myrtle Grove then moved to the council house at Boundary Road. Myrtle Grove long changed and completely rebuilt. Nothing original. In those days we had complete freedom so know everywhere down to Trent Weir to Bilborough, Bramcote to Wollaton Hall. Used to swim in the Trent downstream from the weir when there were lots of stony banks. Water is a lot higher now. Also swam in the canal where the water was warmer from the old power station. I was a bit of a juvenile delinquent so always getting into trouble somewhere or other. Remember the old cinema in High Road. It was closed down then but we managed to get in and check everything out. First movie I snuck in to see Boris Karloff in a horror movie at the cinema on corner of Boundary and Derby Rd. We also got scrap cast iron and lead from all the places that were up for demolition and sold it for a bob a pound. Used to get  2 bob + for caddying at the golf course. There was always a ways to make money in those days when pennies mattered. It was a great place to grow up with the freedom we had and the safe environment. No one got really hurt apart from Johnny Wragg who fell out of a conker tree and broke his neck. Cuts, scapes and the odd broken arm or leg was just a right of passage and burns from fires we made to cook stolen potatoes. my Mum worked at the Prince of Wales pub on the High Rd for a few years and the Fish and Chip shop round the corner at the same time. We used to call in the get fish and chips for lunch. Mum met my Stepdad Stewart Murray (Boatbuilder) whilst at the Pub. A lovely man who died 2 years back and I miss him very much. Mum has been gone for 25 years. Died from everything imaginable caused by Post Polio Syndrome. She lost her 1st born Hilary to polio but she managed then to go on and have 5 more kids. Tough woman and never complained about her lot. Just got on with it. Her kids outlived her for which she was grateful and proud of. We done her proud was the saying then. My real father Jack Gilbert who I was never close to served in the war. I say served but he only did a couple of weeks before becoming a POW for 4 years. His POW camp was liberated by the Russians who too a year to repatriate them home. By then he had become a Communist and swore that the government owed him a house and he lived in a council house for 60 years thereafter. Always had the latest Vauxhall though. He worked for the council as head builder and was behind all the council estates from the 60s on. He never left the shores of Britain again and hated immigrants and anything foreign especially Australians who he described as wheelers and dealers in the POW camps. They always had the smokes and other goods which they traded in the camps.

I left Beeston after getting in trouble with the coppers. Same again at Lenton and West Bridgeford when I got sent to an Approved School for 3 years. By the time I got out mum and dad had moved to Dad's home town in Scotland,  Girvan Ayrshire. It was a good move and I never got into trouble again. WELL! never got caught anyway. I ended up in Leicester working as a bouncer at the Palais de Danse until 1973. I went to Brisbane  Australia in 1973 a year after Mum and Dad. My life was okay but there was always a throwback to my early life. I could never settle into anything in life. Relationship, Employment and Residences were always short lived and the most I stuck at anything was 8 years of marriage. No kids and marriage for me was worse than the approved school. No regrets. Lots of experiences, more than most for sure. Literally 100's of each category. For me that's life with the likelihood that it can change at a moments notice. Tell me about you? Martyn

 

[Visiting Beeston]

Snakey Woods was the place to go. Winter time for sledding. Autumn for scrumping and I remember the wild pear trees. The allotments supplied us with gusgogs  etc. As long as you didn’t get caught. The track from Derby Road is only partly there now and the open fields are long gone.

Martyn Murray. Formerly Gilbert of boundary road