I Have A Dream...

August 28, 1963. This ten-year-old could be seen roller-skating up and down the straight street of St Georges Square in the SW1 district of Pimlico. This Victorian layout barely deserved to be called a Square. Rather, it was an elongated strip of green, back then, boasting a disused set of tennis courts at one end which was towered over by the spire of St Saviour's Anglican Church, built to separate the garden from the main road of Lupus Street at a busy area where this street also intersects with Belgrave Road. Hence the church also served unintentionally as a sound barrier from the busy traffic, making St Georges Square a quiet place to live and to stroll around.

Gardens, St Georges Square, Pimlico.

It would be relatively easy to imagine St Georges Square in its pre-War heyday, especially around the 19th Century. Townhouse owners would leave their servants to tend to their duties while they stroll arm-in-arm with their wives around the central garden. The perfect gentleman, attired in the peak of traditional but rather tightly-fitting English tailoring whilst she would find her corset rather restricting and somewhat uncomfortable, yet does not complain as the two make a comment to each other over the well-manicured flower bed.

Meanwhile, gentlemen dressed in white whack the ball over the net in an energy-sapping tennis rally until the ball hits the net, the rally ends and a point is scored. Like cricket, tennis was perceived as an English gentleman's game, which unlike football, carries an air of snobbery, although they may not admit this to themselves.

All these - garden, disused tennis courts, church - were all nicely slotted in between two parallel streets, each bearing the same name. But the postman would never be confused. One street of terraced townhouses were all with odd numbers. It was the street on the other side of the garden strip which carried all the even numbers. We live in the odd-number street.

But I'll go back a few years before 1963. Probably around 1956 or 1957. Left free to play outside our basement gate. After a while, quite likely after a prolonged silence, Mum decided to see if I was okay. Upstairs from the basement, the street was deserted of any pedestrian or traffic alike. Mum begins to panic, quite likely calling out my name from the top of her voice yet still out of earshot. Eventually, she sees someone approaching. She then asked him if he had seen her son anywhere. The man replied that he did see a three or a four-year-old boy across the other side of the busy Grosvenor Road, past the far end of the square, holding onto some railings and looking down into the River Thames.

Mum ran more than 300 metres down the street and crossed the main road to see me standing there, innocent and totally unaware of any potential danger, enjoying the view of the river, perhaps impressed with the more numerous boats which plied along. Not too long after that incident, when Mum used to send me on shopping errands, we all became aware that travelling as a sole backpacker was a trait I inherited whilst still in her womb.

Indeed, it was a different world in those days! A world when ownership of a car was more of a privilege than a necessity, along with "helicopter parenting" and political correctness were both totally unknown and unnecessary. It was when children were children who could go out to play safely unsupervised, whether roller-skating up and down the street, kicking a football in the central public garden, or if out in the sticks, to play in the woods with schoolmates, perhaps damming a stream or building a secret tree-house. Those days when a grazed knee was quite common, rough-and-tumble was part of growing up, and words such as paedophilia would never appear in any Oxford or Collins dictionaries.

And yet, even during such wonderful and innocent childhood days, under the surface was a feeling of deep discontent. The ship Empire Windrush had brought the first generation of Jamaicans across the Atlantic into Tilbury as early as 1948 under Government recommendations to rebuild post-War Britain. Indeed, it wasn't long before angry young Englishmen began to put up posters ordering Coons Go Home, and other insulting posters. Even as late as 1978, National Front posters were still on display in the streets.

Like the one poster, I saw pinned to a tree every morning after alighting at Weybridge Station in the heart of leafy Surry. And it remained there for months. As I walked along Brooklands Road to the site of a disused car racing track on which the giant British Aircraft Corporation works occupied before closing down during the 1980s, I was confronted with the words:

Support National Front for a WHITE England. 

What more can I say? Seeing this poster in the home country of both Darwinian evolution and Francis Galton's eugenics may send shock waves among our present generation, especially among Black Lives Matter street protestors, there's little doubt that such language was inspired by Enoch Powell's 1968 Rivers of Blood speech he delivered in Birmingham, insisting all coloured immigrants should return to their original home country before any interracial conflict arises.

"Shall we take a stroll, my dear?"

It was worse in America. The black slave as seen as a mere chattel to be used by his owner's discretion and regarded as an animal going back long before Darwin thought up his evolutionary theories.* And so many a British churchgoer would praise the likes of devoted Christian, William Wilberforce to usher in his stance of having slavery abolished, and so, in Washington DC, one black man, Martin Luther King, on August 28, 1963, made his famed speech at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in front of an audience of 250,000 civil rights supporters which opened with his famous words, I have a dream...

Like William Wilberforce, Martin Luther King was also a devoted Christian. He was one of the founders and the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference which encouraged black churches to campaign nonviolently for freedom against pro-slavery bias as insisted by the Ku-Klax-Klan and any other pro-slavery organisations and supporters. And that was a hundred years after slavery was officially abolished, yet the driving force among white American supremacists to revive slavery is very much alive and kicking.

Included in his famed speech was his stance in condemning capitalism as being associated with slavery, as well as his defence for the poor and his opposition towards the Vietnam war. After all, according to him, the average plantation owner used unpaid forced labour to grow and harvest his crops, to put on sale to the market with every intention of making a profit. It's for this particular reason for Luther King to be assassinated whilst still in his prime age of 39 years. That is the belief held by the FBI that Luther was part of a conspiracy towards Communist support. Under orders of FBI director J. Edger Hoover, he died of a gunshot wound on April 4th, 1968, just sixteen days before Enoch Powell gave his Rivers of Blood speech on April 20th, 1968. 

This I find so astonishing! Surely, for America to protect her own interests and also to serve as a warning against any more Communist conspiracies both within and elsewhere, particularly for the USSR, worldwide broadcast of the assassination would have surely reached Enoch Powell's ears in good time before even writing his speech. Yet he didn't call it off in respect of Luther King's demise. Instead, his fiery speech against black immigrants runs almost parallel to the views of the KKK who, incidentally, burn crucifixes, as if in complete denial of the Christian faith, although many of them may claim to be Christian.

What the underlying belief I find really creepy that there is some correlation between the views of Enoch Powell, along with the KKK, the National Front, the English Defence League, and other far-right political parties, and that of the Nazis. In one way or another, all these groups insist that the white man is superior to all other races. While the English far-right believes that all blacks and Muslims should be kicked out of the UK (even if they are born here of immigrant parents or grandparents) - the KKK believe that all blacks should be enslaved and owned as personal property, while the Nazi says that all who don't fit the ideal white Aryan race should be wiped off this planet.

All, except the Nazis, claim to be Christian or have Christian connotations, that is, they hide behind a respectable Christian front while they deny the very essence of the faith - that we are all made in the image of God, regardless of race, that through the trespass of Adam and Eve, we are born with a sinful nature and therefore face Judgement, unless redeemed through faith in the risen Jesus Christ who died to atone for all our sins.

Created in the image of God! If one look can launch a thousand ships, then this little statement can kill all racism stone dead. But instead, the natural man's fallen state allows evolution to percolate into his mind and eventually into his conscience until denying it in favour of Creationism sounds rather loopy, and end up facing ridicule by atheists, many of them are scientists and the rest of the majority are well educated. Therefore, to him, Darwinism must be true after all and therefore holds a degree of justification for believing in, defending, and even advocating racism, whichever form it takes.

Martin Luther King Jr.

And as I write this, I have wondered whether Brexit too falls into the same pit. After all, back in 2016, one of the strongest arguments for leaving the European Union was about immigration, both from non-EU countries and mainly from one EU country, which was Poland. After the referendum results, which was for Leave, won by a narrow margin, spikes of violence erupted in some cities against both Poles and Muslims, and the Union Jack and English St George flags began to make a mass appearance.

Indeed, is any of this Christian?

We want our country back! - was the cry. But we are living in it now, aren't we?

No, I guess we aren't. The country that is wanted back is typified by St Georges Square, Pimlico, in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. White, smartly-dressed gentry, their top hats over milk-white faces gazing at the wet green grass surrounding beautiful flower beds, the soil soaked and beads of recently-fallen rainwater clinging to the petals and leaves as the gentle breeze blows. As English as English gets, maids, cycling along gravel paths cutting through country fields, sporting gentlemen engaged in a game of cricket on the village lawn, the snobbish spirit of tennis players at St Georges Square and at other tennis courts elsewhere. This idyllic, non-eventful, gentle life of the indigenous English who has the God-given right to colonise other "backward" nations but woe betide anyone thinking of colonising them...

I have a Dream... Indeed, don't we all.

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*For a full discussion about American Negro slavery, click here.

An Angry Warden and Starbucks.

Nostalgia, Nostalgia. How could I ever forget the angry warden chasing me down the street like an enraged bull? And then my mother giving me a stern telling off...

Okay, that was well over half a century ago. Sixty years ago more like it.

As one now retired and a legal pensioner, I have wondered whether there are any others of my generation or age group who looks back with an element of sentimentality at various locations which had played a major role during their younger lives. Like standing outside a primary school where they began attending more than half a century earlier, or to stand outside a house, apartment, or any other residential property they grew up in. Or is this level of sentimentality or even mawkishness reserved for us much-maligned Italians, such emotionalism virtually unknown to the average Brit, whose stoicism is meant to be world renowned?

Yes, I guess I do possess a high level of sentimentalism in line with any Italian in his right mind. So no surprise then, when earlier this week I had a spare day with no commitments to be made, when I made a trip into Central London to take a peek at two locations which played as significant role in my childhood days: My primary school in Fulham, which I was already attending sixty years earlier, and my former Pimlico home, where my young parents moved into with a two-year old son as far back as 1954. 

Our childhood home street, Pimlico.

Then I recall the children's playground within the adjoining Tachbrook Estate, long demolished to make way for modern gated apartment blocks. And with the disappearance of the old estate, the playground had long disappeared with it. What a great shame that is! I have fond memories of this playground which boasted a twelve-inch deep paddling pool, a sandpit, a concrete locomotive engine permanently fixed to the ground, and next to it a brick-built ship, and a hard-ground football or netball pitch surrounded by a high wire fence. The warden's office was tucked away behind the sandpit. The entrance into this playground from the street was through a tunnel passing through underneath a Victorian house. A gate closed the tunnel entrance for the night.

From a young boy's perspective, it was obvious for the warden to be taller than me. But looking back, he didn't seem to have been much taller than I was, therefore I estimated him to be about 5'6" 1,67 m in height. Maybe 5'8" at most. But compared to my own height as an adult, he was considerably short. And for someone, I guess in his mid forties, he often reacted with the children - not always in a positive way. I was one of the more unfortunate whom he didn't take a shine to. So when a dispute arose between us, Mum escorted me out through the tunnel. When we were both outside, I suddenly turned and closed the gate, locking it from the outside. The way his fingers clinched at the railings had a remarkable resemblance to a frustrated caged primate at a zoo.  

He shouted at me to unlock the gate. Feeling stunned by his reaction, I unlocked the gate. That was when he ran out and chased me. I believe it was Mum's presence which deterred him from any further action. Childhood memories as I wondered on the outcome had I left him there, locked in within his own playground, whilst Mum and I headed home, a mere ten-minute walk away. 

And therefore a couple of Facebook comments which appeared under the photos I took of my former home environment setting the basis of this blog.

Both these comments were from regular church-going Christians who remarked that Pimlico is such a posh area of London. The very fact that these two expressed such identical opinions seems to indicate a whiff of hypocrisy whenever I question our British, class-ridden culture. Criticising our English social class system and the Tories, like any good Socialite, whilst growing up in a very posh environment seemed to have tickled the fancy of these church-goers. However, all is not what it seems. It's very true that there is a posh look to these six-storey Victorian town houses, and it's also true that these properties were privately owned, and not under any public housing scheme. But by the 1950's these houses were divided into tenements, with each of the floors being an apartment in its own right. The rent from each tenancy was paid to an absent landlord, although ours lived just further down the road.

We lived in the basement below street level, a former servant's quarters alongside the cellars. This apartment boasted just one usable bedroom, the other bedroom long disused and literally covered in giant black cobwebs, and filled with discarded items thrown out by former tenants. There was also a tiny kitchen with an adjoining coal cellar, an underground windowless passage leading to the basement of the house next door which had the same owner, and a living/dining room which door had its own Yale lock. At the rear end of the corridor a flight of steps led up to the ground floor, and to all the other floors above whilst the corridor continued on past our one bedroom, then past the disused bedroom, then into the cellars. From the yard from which the outside steps led to the street, there was another cellar directly underneath the street, where our outside WC was located.

As for the other tenants whose rent payments went to the same landlord, directly above us, on the ground floor lived two men in a permanent gay relationship. There was also a spinster whose upright piano she allowed me to have a try on, although I never possessed a talent for musical instruments. Then there was another spinster who lived with her elderly mother. Then not to forget this apparently insane female living in the basement next door, whose intermittent screams were loud enough to penetrate the rather thick walls. In turn, there was also a family with two boys, both somewhat older than me, whose toys and games they had made me gasp with astonishment (although why I had never met and related to those boys remains a mystery.) After all, my parents had always reminded each other to budget carefully. 

From the former Resident's Garden, taken May, 2018.

Posh? Maybe so, maybe not. But as long as I can remember, I never saw myself as a victim of poverty or suffering from any form of deprivation. Rather, I was quite happy there. Never mind that by the age of eleven years of age, I was still sleeping in the same bedroom as my parents and younger brother, I felt no regrets. Rather, I was rather fond of the environment.

And that was especially the disused bedroom. Regardless of the cobwebs, there was an old Singer sewing machine table, complete with foot pedal and flywheel. The times I spent in trying to spin the flywheel as fast as I could just by rocking the pedal to and fro I always find intriguing. And to find a fully working record player among the discarded junk.* And the banister along the stairs leading to the ground floor - I used it to sit upon to slide backwards. And I could I forget the pair of roller skates my parents bought for me one Christmas. I spent quite a bit of time skating up and down the street as well as on the disused tennis court ground within the central resident's garden. Indeed, with all my schoolmates scattered across Westminster and Fulham, our home provided a good source of activity for this curious child who did not seem to mind being mostly by himself.

Indeed, there was something I liked about the place, creepy as it seems at times. After all, with a child's imagination, I would never know what kind of creature could be lurking among all that junk. But the modern two-bedroom home in Bracknell we all moved to in 1963 could never hold a candle to the basement life in London, but at least my parents can have some bedroom privacy at last!

And so where do I stand in regard to current affairs? Do these two who commented on my photos see me as a stout Socialist, a devotee of Karl Marx, the doing away with class culture and as someone who wishes for our country to turn Republic? Although my late father did lean favourably towards such ideas, for me, I have never been either a staunch Socialist or Capitalist, but I do, and always have done, favour capitalism over the other. In practice, by being self-employed for 35 years as a domestic window cleaner, in a way I did practice capitalism. After all, it was I who first invested in equipment, then set the prices, made agreements and contracts with my clientele, and worked to provide a useful service to satisfy the customer and make a profit without any State interference other than to pay my share of taxes. There were good times and lean times. The good times was when I made enough profit to pack everything away and set off to the airport.

I believe that it is right to own property, to invest and make a profit. There is nothing wrong with any of that. But never at the expense of the customer or consumer. For example, it is good for a business such as Starbucks to make a profit whilst serving the customer to his satisfaction of a good coffee and pleasant social environment. I prefer Starbucks to remain in the black, so that I can continue to buy from the business. Likewise I prefer a superstore chain such as Sainsburys to make a profit than suffer a loss. After all, I rely on the business to buy groceries and other daily essentials. There is nothing wrong with a private company such as Sainsburys or Starbucks to make a profit, for my daily and weekly routines depend on it. Therefore capitalism, when properly administered, must be okay after all.

But as I see it, it the abuse of capitalism which irritates me. That is excessive greed. For example, bank branches closing down, one after another, while City bank bosses amass vast bonuses. And many a customer, including myself who is not into Online Banking, must suffer the closure of the town centre bank branch which was used by the customer for decades. Or in a case of a major department store closing down because of loss and owing of debt while at the same time the company directors pocket bonuses and a healthy pension. And at the cost of depriving the staff of their jobs and the customer losing out of an essential service. It is cases like these which temps me to think more favourably towards Socialism.

As for social class, one very striking example of very annoying class preference is the ongoing McCann case, when their three year old daughter Madeleine disappeared from a Portuguese hotel bedroom in May, 2007 whilst the parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, were eating out. Both parents are doctors, affluent and middle class. Therefore the Police still feels fit to continue with the investigation, eleven years after the incident, with up to another £154,000 of taxpayer's money allocated to the investigation, which is an addition to the £11,000,000 spent in searching for the little girl. Little wonder that Gerry and Kate had suffered vitriol over the years, as we plebs cannot understand the vast resources used to find their missing daughter while over the time, there has been many more children from more "ordinary" people going missing, but we don't hear a single quip about them. And I can rest my case that, had Gerry been a labourer who is married to a housewife, then they would have been totally forgotten ages ago.

Madeleine McCann, at the time she disappeared in 2007.

Sure, just as I spun the flywheel of the Singer sewing machine as fast as I could, so our Englishness continue to spin the wheel of our class-ridden culture as fast as it could. And believe me, churches are affected by this ongoing rotation, to the extent that our churches can be defined as "The Tory Party on its Knees". Surely, God must be proud of that.

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*For my blog touching on this, click here.

A Wheelchair Abroad.

Most, if not all, of my regular readers are most likely aware of my passion for independent travel. It is something that I always loved from boyhood, when during my primary school days (under twelve years of age) I thought nothing of walking alone through the streets of my former home town of Central London. Then again, it was normal for children to play outside unsupervised, or in my case to wander off up to a couple of miles from home (I recall a walk from near Lupus Street in Pimlico to South Kensington, two miles away, and back again in an afternoon, much to the astonishment of my parents). The idea of paedophile was not even a word found in the English dictionary, let alone feeling wary in anticipation of their presence. As one elderly chap at the sauna said to me only the previous evening: These days parents no longer let their kids out of the front door alone.

Pimlico London, my childhood home

I think God was generous to allow me to be born during the Baby Boom, an era which began not long after the end of the second World War, and continued into the mid-sixties. Sure enough, as we marvel at the latest high technology, ease and speed of travel, and other commodities totally unknown during my younger days, unless God allows me up to another thirty years of lifespan, I won't be around to see even greater marvels coming into existence and into daily use, together with environment-friendly projects such as garden bridges spanning the River Thames, something still only on the drawing board as I write. But on the other hand I can't help sensing that living in hardier times - when parents almost kicked their kids out of the house to seek adventure, to gape at the black, soot-covered industrial buildings across the Thames with chimneys belching out black smoke, and hundreds of domestic chimneys releasing grey smoke from living room coal-burning fires, perhaps an occasional school day morning with the air visibility choked with smog, it might indeed be the right kind of environment to exercise the immune system. After all, peanut allergy now common in young children wasn't even heard of.

And how could I ever forget those all-green, slam-door trains which rolled in and out of nearby Victoria Station? Or the tremendously loud sound of the steam engine as it pulls out of the terminus, the semi-indoor structure amplifying the noise? The wooden panelling furnishing the interior of such trains, along with the side-corridor which ran the length of each coach, providing a level of luxury unknown by comparison of today's commuter trains. During my childhood, train travel was a very rare treat, as my father, having just passed his driving test, had become a fanatic of the steering wheel. So during the very rare times I found myself inside a train, such experiences remains unforgettable to this day.

And so as I grew older and more independent, so travel extended overseas. Having tasted a package holiday in 1972 to a hotel at a Spanish resort with a college mate, I decided that free-hand travel, better known as backpacking, was more to my ideal. I find choosing where to go, where to spend the night, even bed-hunting after arriving at a city or resort more of a mind-strengthening challenge, a contest of trial and error which broadens the horizon in a way that a package trip could never achieve anywhere near as much.

And so, having been spotted by a work colleague whilst trumping through the Creole streets of New Orleans in 1978, I was called brave after I was asked whether I was on my own. Brave? It was a form of praise which had beforehand had never entered my mind. And it didn't even end there. Seventeen years later in 1995, whilst flying to New York with United Airlines, one of the stewardesses took an interest in my Greyhound Bus "Ameripass" itinerary I'll be starting on after landing. After informing her of my planned visit to the Grand Canyon and afterwards finishing at San Francisco, after stopping at San Diego and Los Angeles whilst on the way, she gasped, My, you are brave! As with the previous occasion, I took in the compliment. But really, it had everything to do with my childhood walk from my Pimlico home to South Kensington some 32 years earlier.

Hiking into the Grand Canyon, both in 1978 and 1995, walking through a dodgy street through Downtown Los Angeles to get to a rather remotely-situated Greyhound Bus terminal, to snorkel over the Great Barrier Reef in 1997, and to hike through a rainforest of Blue Mountains National Park - all these, and more, were sources of excitement and the spirit of adventure. And that is despite one or two of my church friends warning me of dire consequences. But equipped with such knowledge, they either preferred to go with a fully escorted Christian group rather than take the plunge and going for it on their own, or remain at home.

So how did I feel about taking my wife out for a weekend in Paris to celebrate our Wedding Anniversary? The plan was to experience the Eurostar international train service from London St. Pancras to Paris Gare du Nord, passing under the English Channel through a 31.4 mile 50.87 km. long tunnel under the seabed. I was keen on the train. My wife was keen on Paris. The holiday was a perfect plan for both of us.

A Eurostar Train awaits departure from London St. Pancras.

Having been to Paris several times throughout the 1980's, I was no stranger to the French capital. This included standing on the top of the Eiffel Tower and watching the panorama transform from late afternoon daylight to early evening darkness. But for Alex, Paris was her first time experience. And to add to this, her first ever trip abroad in a wheelchair. Before then, we as a couple had travelled together to several places - The two Greek islands of Rhodes and Kos, Lanzarote of the Canary Islands, the Italian island of Sicily, Malta in the Southern Mediterranean, and Israel, including Eilat on the Red Sea, a narrow tongue of the Indian Ocean thriving with coral reefs. But with all these trips, Alex was not only able-bodied, but was able to walk and cycle long distances, out-sprint me, dance and skipped along well.

But not any more. She is now partially disabled. Whenever outdoors, she has to be in a wheelchair. This provided a very new challenge where travel is concerned. Especially in travelling abroad, taking the wheelchair out of the UK for the first time ever. And so after booking both train journeys and the hotel, and paying for them both, what challenges would we both face? So I decided to check with the website TripAdvisor, especially on Paris Gare du Nord.

There were more negative reviews on the station than positive. Recorded experiences of pickpocketing, unauthorised taxi drivers confronting the arrivals full face soon after stepping off the train, criminal gangs posing as authoritative station officials out to take advantage of the lost or confused. Tales of scam taxi drivers taking the victim to a slum area of the city, then only taking them to their hotel after further payment. Parting with fees ranging from 80 to 100 Euros, when the official taxi fee is only 15 Euros. With such dire reading of one review following another, all on the same theme, gradually my excitement for the trip turned into fear. A deep fear, not so much for myself as for my wife's safety. I felt as if all the demons in Hell came up to torment me, giving me visions of both of us being in a desperate state. On my own, I would know how to look after myself. But with a patient in a wheelchair, things were very different. I felt vulnerable.

On top of this, I discovered that the hotel I chose for both of us is located at Montparnasse, a district south of the city, about four miles 6.5 km from the terminus station. My original plan was a shortish walk to the hotel. Instead, some form of public transport was necessary. One which was wheelchair accessible. But thanks to the Internet, I became thoroughly acquainted with the Paris Metro/RER system. And there was one RER line linking Gare du Nord with Montparnasse - Line B, which was wheelchair accessible at all its stations, maybe because this particular line is near to ground level. I chose the station nearest the hotel - Denfert-Rochereau. As a result, every detail of the journey was carefully planned weeks before departure.

On the day, after stepping off the Eurostar at Paris Gare du Nord, I could see straight away why this particular terminus is far less favoured than its London counterpart, St Pancras. It does look like the sort of place for pickpockets and sham cabbies to linger around, on the lookout for the next victim. But glory be to God, nobody approached us. Instead, we found the RER Line B entrance, and we queued up to buy tickets. After this we made our way to the ticket barrier. But not only would the wheelchair-wide barrier refused to let us through, but it wouldn't even scan our tickets, even if they are appropriately striped. We were stuck there for probably thirty minutes, while watching hundreds of commuters pass through the individual barriers, each too narrow for a wheelchair.

It was eventually the kindness of one black commuter who saw our distress, asked us to stand at the barrier, and with his bank or pass card, swiped the terminal. At long last, the barrier opened and all three of us were able to make it to the station platform. I discovered at the other end, at Gare Denfert Rochereau, that wheelchair accessible barriers were operated by the cashier or platform porter, and I had to ask while I was buying the tickets. Talk about learning by trial and error. It makes travel so much exciting and adventurous!

Gare Du Nord, Paris

Overall, the whole trip was an eye opening experience. After checking in, airport style, at London and boarding the train, the ride was smooth and very fast. But it was the Channel Tunnel I found most impressive. The train enters the tunnel while still in England, and emerges out of the tunnel in France (reverse for the return journey). To me, the whole Eurostar system is the tangible symbol of the European Union. And history bears this out. A tunnel under the Channel was something the French had in mind for up to a century, maybe even further back in time. It was the British who were against the idea, fearing an invasion, and it was they who blocked the plan. The European Union has resurrected the concept in the 1980's and the Tunnel was eventually opened in May 6, 1994 after six years of construction.

Such ideals of political unity allowed such a trip like ours to take place. And aside of the sham technology of the French ticket barriers, the whole trip with the wheelchair was a stunning success, taking in the Tower of Eiffel (second floor only - the third at the top is not wheelchair accessible), a long walk along the River Seine to the Notre Dame Cathedral (over 5 km, 3 miles) which took the greater part of the day as we also stopped and rested by the glass pyramid at the Louvre, a spacious courtyard outside the famous art gallery where the Mona Lisa painting is housed. The open space was filled with happy people sauntering around. We watched a motorbike rally cross the River on one of the bridges and contrasted this to the solemn service taking place in the Notre Dame. We managed to arrive back at our hotel just before nightfall after walking approximately 12 km 7.4 miles pushing a wheelchair all the way and taking up the whole day, before commencing to return home on the following morning. 

As I see it, the walk from Pimlico to South Kensington and back had laid the foundation for the world of trial-and-error travel experience, with the climax, so far, of pushing a wheelchair accommodating a disabled patient across a foreign capital, rather than hiking the Grand Canyon as the climax.

Sweeping around a Corner.

Retirement. It is so hard to believe that such a turning point would happen to me. Sure, I have seen it happen many, many times. Always to others of course. As for myself, how I could I have ever thought it would happen to me? Indeed, retirement gives me the opportunity to look back on my entire life.

Such as, I could recall in the most sharp memory images, when I was a young boy growing up in Pimlico, close to the north bank of the River Thames in London. Rollerskating up and down the quiet street, with far fewer cars parked along the kerbside than at present, this was one of two parallel streets forming an elongated rectangle, with both streets bearing the name of St. Georges Square. In between the two streets was a strip of public garden, fenced and gated. It was here where dog walkers brought their pooches while I kicked a ball across the long-disused area of hard tennis courts, which had their heyday before the War, and the adjoining area of lawn was ideal for picnics during the summer. And every year on November 5th, a giant bonfire dominated over thousands of fireworks let off by older children, many unsupervised by adults, yet according to my knowledge, there was no record of any accidents caused by misuse. Such was the 1950's and early sixties style of discipline.

Pimlico apartments where I grew up

One end of the street joined Grosvenor Road at a T-junction, where I only have to cross the main road to walk alongside the river. On the other side of the river, heavy industry hums away on its daily business, many of its buildings blackened with soot. The industrial estate was dominated by the four classical chimneys of Battersea Power Station, resembling the legs of an upturned table. Across the other side of Chelsea Bridge, the heavy industry on the south bank of the Thames gave way to Battersea Park, famous for its permanent Fun Fair, dominated by the Big Dipper, the largest wooden roller coaster on the site. Close by was the Water Chute, where a passing car speeding down a long incline threw water with powerful force onto a glass screen shielding us from a soaking.

How I loved standing by that screen as the water hits it just a few inches from where I stood. Outside the fairground but within the park, there was the Tree Walk, a long boardwalk suspended high in the trees, passing a building where inside, a room moved - throwing us from one side to the other, while near its roof a giant figure of Popeye stood, flexing his muscles, and next to him was his oppressor Brutus, who continually swayed to and fro in permanent laughter. The street where these amenities were located was lined with all manner of stalls, giving a permanent carnival feel. I also recall the miniature train, and a magnificent fountain display just outside the Fun Fair. Not to mention a couple of swing parks as well - Battersea Park really was a fun paradise! And the four chimneys of the nearby power station looked across the whole park as if silently supervising the area.

At present, Battersea Park is only a shadow of its former glory. Thanks to a fatal accident on the Big Dipper roller-coaster in May 1972, where five children were killed, the fair closed down and everything demolished and removed, including the boardwalk and all other facilities. Also all the stalls disappeared, and nothing would ever be the same again. Oh the highlights of childhood, devoid of responsibility, that early phase of life when owning a train set or Meccano was far more important to me than my parents earning enough to sustain a family. As Battersea Park metamorphosed from a fun paradise with a carnival atmosphere to an area of quiet greenery occupying a square hemmed in between Chelsea and Albert Bridges, so reaching teenage years involved the loss of that sense of innocence that comes only in the early years as more responsibilities takes over - especially after leaving school.

Battersea Fun Fair before 1972

Water Chute, Battersea Fun Fair

And here such a big change of life came in April 1968, at age fifteen years, when I left school with no qualifications, and landed a job at a family-owned business in manufacturing period furniture. And my very first task on that initial Monday morning? Picking up the broom leaning at a corner and sweeping the floor. Than having swept the floor of one department, I had to repeat the process at an adjoining shop floor. Every weekday morning began with the sweeping. I did not feel bad about that, as back then it was the accepted routine carried out by every school leaver who had failed to achieve any educational levels, let alone a university degree. Although pushing a broom was very humbling among a workforce of skilled craftsmen, I believe it was the broom which transformed the boy into a man, rather than at school.

But I was always perceived as different. Everyone at work made sure that I knew my place, at the bottom rung of the ladder, and they made sure I stayed there. And somehow I was made aware that I as an Italian was seen as inferior to the British, even if I was actually born in England myself. The War was often mentioned, with their boasting that it was won by the British, with the Italian forces relegated to uselessness in military conflicts. The truth - which they made sure remained quiet - was that the War was won by the Allies, with the U.S. fighter 'plane Elona Gay dropping the first atom bomb on the Japanese island of Hiroshima, thus ending the conflict when Japan surrendered. By heck, I wish that I knew all this as an adolescent while sweeping the floor! Such knowledge would have been a weapon in its own right to shut the mouths of everyone in the factory.

Do I want to write a self-pitying dirge? No way! Rather as an opportunity to glorify God, along with the liberating power of the Gospel. And how comforting to know that there is a Strong Tower into which the righteous run into, and they are safe. Now as one retiring, I can look back at my working life, and calculate that, of the 47 years since leaving school, only less than six years of production didn't involve time spent cleaning. This was when I worked in a precision engineering firm between October 1973 to June 1979. All other times involved cleaning, even as a pool lifeguard earlier in 1973, when I had to mop down the pool edge walkway, and even jumped in to scrub off the scum from the safety rail within the pool's edge. This was done early in the morning before the amenity opened to the public. Then from August 1980, after trying out various other jobs including a few months in a warehouse, I eventually became self-employed in domestic window cleaning, which kept me going for the next 35 years.

Living in a country where social class is such an obsession can really be disheartening. As I watched one former Prime Minister shout Education! Education! during Parliament, I have seen the obsession among young people of both genders become enthralled with the possibility of achieving their A* Level which would open the door to University. Their obsession is as if their lives depended on it. Let's face it; imagining themselves sitting at an office desk in front of a computer, and maybe with a telephone as well, is far, far more appealing to these young students than the thought of pushing a broom in a noisy factory shop floor.

Only today (Saturday) an article appeared in a national newspaper, which was written by a Psychiatrist, criticising the appalling bureaucracy which has such a hold on the National Health Service. He relates a story out of personal experience about an elderly female patient who had fallen from her bed, and as she lay on the floor, she called for help while wedged between the bed and the bedside cabinet. Her cries was heard by a nurse who sat at her desk, taking her coffee break and ignoring the patient's calls. When the doctor summoned her to help in lifting her back to her bed, the nurse refused. The situation was resolved when a visitor entered the ward and assisted the elderly woman back to her bed.

The Psychiatrist explained that the nurse was a victim of a system where a university degree is now essential to enter the profession. This has developed a culture of "Too posh to wipe" - a bad attitude - confirmed by one of my clients who works as a nurse herself - where such graduates believe that wiping a patient's bottom is far too menial to merit their degree. The writer then explained about the ambition of many a young nurse to climb the career ladder into Management, where she enters the office staffed with men in suits and who had never handled a stethoscope, and yet were responsible for meeting financial targets and destroying the compassion towards patients, which was the whole object for having the N.H.S. in the first place.

Swimming pool where I was lifeguard in 1973

The man in a suit who has never pushed a broom in his entire working life. How much I wanted to be one myself so many years ago, perhaps because that was what my parents would have liked me to have become. The suit, a symbol of high education levels and career success. Held in reverence by society as a whole, even by some manual workers. Instead, I was shown my place and kept there. Despite my knowledge of the Bible, accumulated over the years, I was never permitted to teach or exhort. I recall one of the Elders, who is not with us anymore, who answered my request to teach a class by saying that someone else was better qualified for that role. Better qualified? Because he worked in an office? Then this blog page. When this was typed, my total score of hits topped 51,000. At first this looks healthy. But I was tempted to change my blogger name to Dr. F. E. Blasi. If I had, chances that the total score of hits might have been closer to 100,000. But I would be deceiving my readers. Lying is not exactly godly. Then again, the general flow of all my blogs does not reflect those written by a doctor. I believe that many readers would have seen through the ruse.

So I look back at 47 years as a manual labourer, with the last 35 years as self-employed. Now I'm entering retirement. Unfulfilled ambitions? Rather, I believe that pushing a broom across the floor was very beneficial psychologically. The feeling of humility, I believe, was the key in converting to faith in Jesus Christ. It was the driving force to grasp knowledge of the Bible, and to plead with my Maker for the Big Picture of God's entire revelation. Faith in Jesus and Bible reading has inspired me to visit Israel as early as 1976, which opened the door to world travel. Faith in Jesus had always been the backbone of feeling content about living in rented accommodation instead of home ownership, and riding a bicycle instead of driving a fast car. Faith in Jesus as Saviour has put life in its proper perspective, not to chase riches here on Earth, but to store them in Heaven. It has helped me from envying other people's good fortune or higher social position, knowing that the same fate awaits us all.

Battersea Park was indeed a fun paradise for families. In a way, the whole park was a reflection of Heaven - a place of joy, happiness, a cessation from worry, anxieties. It was a place of rest, to refresh the soul. True Heaven will have all this and much more. It will be eternal, a place of everlasting joy.

But to get there, I had to trust in Jesus Christ - his death, burial, and resurrection.

To help me towards faith in Jesus as Lord and Saviour, it was necessary to stoop low and push a broom in full view of all my betters.