Recently, I have been reading about Victorian London.

As I lived there for the first 16 – 17 years of my life, the place holds a lot of memories and is close to my heart.

I remember the old lady that lived next door to us (whom I regarded as my ‘nan’), telling me that she recalled the top of our street being ‘fields and pasture’ when she was a young girl – this is one of things I had been trying to research.

My street, was built when the railways began; a vast ‘mainline system’ eventually ran at the end of my garden up on the railway banking. I used to watch enthralled, as the carriages thundered by – the epitome, was when a ‘steam engine’ chugged by! A wonderful sight and sound indeed! At this time, the steam trains were being ‘phased out’ and ‘diesel trains’ were taking over – I am truly fortunate that I was able to see these wonderful modes of transport during their ‘era’.

Another quandary of mine has been to research something my mother told me when we were still living there. Mum told me that during the war, a bomb had landed on our house and had made the ‘crater’ which then lay beneath our (interior) coal shed (!) As my mum is now long gone, I have not had the opportunity to question her more about that incident, so I have grown up thinking that the incident must have happened during the 2^nd world war – I may be wrong to assume that, as last evening (after I had finished blogging here) I came across a hand drawn map of bombings during the 1^st world war! The map indicates where bombs had just fallen and the damage which had occurred – the roads and streets were tantalisingly close to my house – literally the other side of the railway track!

My objective, is to understand: if / when / how bad, it was.

I will, succeed . . . (eventually) lol xx