D17, Commuter boy #100WorkingDays

 Getting to school became a regular commute via the nearby railway station and the underground. It meant being disciplined about getting out of a house that didn’t have central heating til later. If ready quickly enough the 0755 gave me time to take relaxed approach to the underground and the walk from the eponymous Southfields station. The 0815 was the next train, and it was a close run thing not to be late at school if it was late. The station had a newspaper vendor who when there were strikes sold wartime newspapers for 1d, that’s one old penny. I used to buy them occasionally and wished I’d kept them. My station one winter’s morning.

The change at Wimbledon took me across the station and onto the District line. We passed Wimbledon depot, alongside the changing picture of railway developments. As mentioned before railways were now a well established interest. I still had an albeit larger railway at home. So each journey to and from school held an interest greater at times than school.  This gave me the opportunity to get my name in print as the Railway World magazine relied on observations of interest in a column each month. I’d write in with items I thought new, such as the change of the No Smoking stickers applied to some carriage windows, from a triangular shape to being round. 

Other items must have caught my eye as I recall getting my observations mentioned a few times. A quietly satisfying thing. And the start of several years commuting.

Big Brother, d7, #100WorkingDays

 As often happens a sibling arrived. In fact I had two siblings, both girls. The first was born nearly 3 years after me, and sadly was stillborn. I’ll say more about her another day. Then my still here little sister arrived. I have no recollection of a pregnancy, I do recall being at the neighbours up the road awaiting the arrival of the taxi bringing mum, a baby, and my dad who was clutching a brown paper parcel. That was intriguing and I soon discovered it was for me. The contents were a train set, a simple oval of track with one point and a siding. There was one engine and 3 or 4 wagons. All in OO  gauge Tri-ang Hornby if you want the details. Set up on the living room floor on the brown paper with the mains controller. It is reported I was completely hooked and could only be pursuaded to eat chips over the next 3 days. If you’re keeping up with the blog you’ll catch a theme here. So now we were four, and in time little sis became a playmate.