Wasteland

From the time I was born up until they passed away, my grandparents lived at 75, Burlington Road in New Malden. For a long time they rented the house but, later on, my uncle Brian bought it to provide them with a bit of security and comfort.

The house backed onto a large piece of wasteland, maybe two or three acres in size. There was a fence at the back of the garden and then another fence running around the border of the field. My grandad fashioned a gate into his back fence and dug a scrape under the field's fence, so that we could get through. (Later, the council would erect a big wire mesh fence around the field.)

I'm not sure why the inner fence was there. I think the land was council-owned, though. It was very rough ground and one of the children we played with there said it was because it had been bombed during the war, which had finished less than thirty years before. Later, this information morphed into a story that there were unexploded bombs in the field but I was just old enough to be sceptical about this.

It's funny to think back to that time. We would just take ourselves off to play and come back when we felt ready to, usually because we were hungry. I don't believe my parents loved me any less than I love mine but they seemed less worried about us as we went off to play out of sight.

Anyway, the reason I'm telling you all this is that I stayed with my friend Mark last night and this morning, as I went back to my car, I saw this field from the car park and it took me straight back to the wilderness beyond my grandad's back gate.