1939 10 Swanfield Terrace, Laneshawbridge, Lancashire, England. My birthplace.


I'd sort of promised myself (and my readers) that I'd try and write a little about each of the places I'd lived. A daunting task really.

The list of these is a couple of entries back if you care to look. So here we go, beginning where I began, well, emerged, I'm not sure where conception took place!

This is 10 Swanfield Terrace in Laneshawbridge, a village in Lancashire not far from the border with Yorkshire. Below the arrow and to the right of the man, is the house. The why of my being born here is mostly a mystery and belongs in another entry. It's be hard not to stray into those circumstances - after all some of it's sinister enough and weird enough to belong in a novel.


My birth certificate gives this as my birth address.

This link will give some of the history of the place:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laneshaw_Bridge

In 1983 I visited the village during my great genealogy phase. Nobody was at home at number 10 Swanfield terrace but I wrote to the address and below is the reply. Quite interesting stuff.
Click to enlarge and click the "+" to further enlarge to read.

As for the background to my being born there? Mine is a muddled family history. The four family names then, i.e. my grandparents, were Hutton, Addlesee, Webber and Calvert.

My father was Harold Eric Hutton and my mother was Freda Webber. She was 17 when they married, prompting the thought that she may well have been with child then. But there's no evidence to support that. I turned up two years later, when she was nineteen.

My mother's family were from Halifax in Yorkshire. Very sketchily, and it's largely guesswork: their import business had failed and their next venture, a carpet shop had failed too. My grandmother had set up a bakery in Colne which is very near to Laneshawbridge.

My parent's marriage seems to have been a very rocky affair. Sooner or later I hope to write it in what detail I know. I never met my father but I knew my mother and, knowing her, it could well be that she drove him to extremes of behaviour. She always asserted that he gone for her with a knife on at least one occasion. His second wife and daughter tell of a very different and rather loveable man. We'll never know but I'm tempted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

So how she came to give birth to me in this odd little house essentially in what might be described as the middle of nowehere I really don't know. Was she fleeing from him to save herself and her unborn infant as her fearful tales suggest or ..............

Anyway I emerged, on March 13th., supposedly blue and with the cord around my neck. Survive I did despite it all.

A few months later the whole family seems to have reappeared in faraway Sevenoaks in Kent.

I'd give a lot to know the details of those few years. Oh yes indeed.

1961 When I was 22 & Mitch was 1 & Martin wasn't .......



...............I/we arrived in Singapore.

Heat exhaustion was well enough known no doubt but unknown to me. Maybe it had been explained to us. I'm not sure though, the Royal Air Force seemed to have sent us from England to the Far East remarkably ill-prepared.

A family of three, we somehow found accomodation. Nobody gave us salt tablets or told us about salt tablets. Nobody told us to drink plenty.

The unmarried airman was pitched in with other airmen who'd been there for weeks, months even years. But us married families were essentially dumped a few miles north of the equator about as green as it's possible to imagine. We got no advice because, somehow, there was nobody close to advise. Green? We were very, very white!

So a great many men, women and children of that period no doubt got very sunburned and very de-hydrated. That results in that debilitating and sometimes fatal condition known as heat exhaustion.

I reported for duty at 390 M.U. (an aircraft maitnenance Unit) at R.A.F. Seletar, maybe a mile and a half away on my newly purchased bicycle. The heat, the humidity, of course I'd never known anything like it. Sweat, sweat, sweat.

That first period in this new world was a tale of increasing fatigue and decreasing appetite. I'd cycle to work in the morning and stumble about my duties then cycle home for a lunch I'd probably not eat but merely lie on the bed, sweating. A headache and awful tiredness making me utterly miserable. Then back to work for the afternoon and back home as a repeat performance.
Probably, in medical terms, I was dying. And it went on for days and days. I didn't know why or what to do. Sounds stupid now but pride kept me plodding along.

I didn't die or end up in the base hospital but it was a hellish time. Presumably somebody, somewhere got the message across to me. I must have started drinking more and adding salt to my diet but in time I got over it.

I sometimes wonder at how "we" sent our young men overseas in the several centuries of Empire. Presumably the new arrivals learnt from the old hands already there, or perished.

I was 22 and knew little of the lands 'beyond the sea'. Then, suddenly, we climbed into a Britannia and 25 hours later, climbed out onto the tropical dot on the map called Singapore.

Five years earlier troop ships were still being used to send servicemen to the corners of the Empire. This allowed the young novices a chance to "get their knees brown" and absorb the accumulated wisdom of the men who'd done it before.

A year later I was sunburnt and dark as any native and fitter than I'd ever been or would ever be again.

All for Queen and Country!