A Coventry Kid's Tale

Chapter 4: Approx 8 years old

The next night he laid in wait, it was cold laying in the snow on the bomb site off East Street. The lady of the night and the dark skinned man returned to her home to be met with a barrage of snow balls! This soon dampened the dark skinned mans ardour, for he ran fast from whence he came. The lady screamed at the child "You *#*#*, I'll get you". She never did the for child was too quick. This was only good fun in the winter, the child's interests were varied!

It was also at this time he fell in love with a girl, Sheila Hartop was her name, then came Pamela Green, Hazel Tooth, Janet Kingdom, Janet Croft, Kathleen Turner, Sigourney Weaver (where did that one come from?), Diane Carey (the last two especially he liked), and many more, except Catherine Lyons for she always had green snot running down to her mouth and would lick it off, ugh. His love life complete he still continued to roam the city of Coventry. (Some of the above names are out of order for the child's memory is failing him!)

Now, on the Radford Road there were two orchards, wow, what a find. He would climb into a tree and eat his fill. One day the orchard keeper came out and shouted "hoi, get out of that tree". At this the child dropped from the tree and ran for his life. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed about fifty other children also running for their lives. He soon learned not to run, for the orchard keeper did not know how many children were in the trees! What lovely times he had in them trees. The other orchard was bigger, far bigger. The orchard keeper could not even find any children to shout at. The orchard keeper was not really worried as this orchard was for cooking apples. No child would eat these, but the child learned that when the winter draws near, the cooking apples turn yellow. Now they are sweet and you can eat them by the dozen, and still get stomach ache. The poor child never learned!

The child on some of his forays always had his eyes looking at the ground. The child had learnt that if you walked with your head held high then you could not see anything which had been dropped by other people. Over the years this paid off well. His finds included, a rolled gold propelling pencil which his father used for years, a solid gold "foxes head" tie-pin, which even the child used to wear to go to the Locarno when he was older. Also a lot of money, for spending straight away. Coming back to the Pool Meadow after being taken on a day trip to London, the man in front of the child stood up to get off the coach and all his loose change fell out of his pocket. "If you can find it son" said the man to the child "then you can keep it". Like a bullet out of a rifle the child was on the floor, going under all the seats until he had captured all the loose change. Almost £1, an unbelievable amount of money. What a lovely day out...