They say you can produce up to ten pages about yourself, so it's going to be a question of if I can remember enough of interest to fill them.As they say it's good to have memories of the past, but it's good to write them down for others benefit. At this time it's difficult for me to put any pictures into these pages, as all the photo's I had scanned into computer files have disappeared and I need to get them and scan them again to fill out these pages. But anyway here goes for the story of the past.
As an Essex Boy born on June 5th 1959 in St Johns Hospital, Chelmsford I used to have a claim to fame of not having lived outside of a ten mile radius of my birthplace, Firstly in Brentwood, Secondly in Wickford and lastly in South Woodham Ferrers. School Life was at Crescent Road Infants, Wickford C of E Infants, Market Road Junior and lastly Beauchamps Comprehensive
Being the Eldest of three children, first child of Gladys and Bob Hoad, it always fell on my shoulders to look after sister Kathleen and little brother Ian and that could always be a challenge.
My parents Bob and Gladys met in Rayleigh when both part of a youth group attached to the local Baptist Church. During their time there Bob caught Gladys's eye and they were soon going out together. Bob worked for F.W. Maul and Son, a plastic moulders run by Gladys's father. As a young trainee teacher Gladys would be living at home and would be seen round the factory and so the courtship flourished. After meeting the family, the wedding was being planned. After they were married their start on the property ladder was the purchase of property in Brentwood, a semi detached house in Kings Chase, Number 78, a very basic property with no hot water system in it and an electricity supply set up at 15 amp with round pins on the plugs and the opposite on the sockets. These ancient systems were soon to be evicted from the property as Mum, along with a neighbour installed a boiler in the back of our open fire and then plumbed a complete hot water system from that, fitted a new bathroom and on completion rewired the whole house from 15 amp system to a 13 amp system, jobs that took ages to complete. During the time the work was going on there was a lack of floor boards around the house causing deep holes to be left around for the duration. One of these holes happened to be at the foot of the stairs and that is where what could have been a serious accident happened. As we all do when we're kids, Kathleen and I had been playing upstairs and mum had failed to put the home made child gate up at the top of the stairs. The disaster was that Kathleen decided she wanted to go down stairs and at the top of the stairs lost her footing and ended up in the hole at the bottom, on arrival there were screams galore and this bought mum running to render assistance. Fortunately Kathleen didn't suffer but it taught mum a lesson. One of my pastimes was that of climbing up the toy shelves and then diving onto my bed. This was always good fun and gave me a good head for heights and my enjoyment of rock climbing.
As money was tight for mum and dad furniture was sought from many different suppliers, and this included the army surplus store, this was known as Kathleen and I started out life sleeping on ex army beds.
As mum and dad were both Christians they liked to go to church on a Sunday. Being of the Baptist denomination it was by chance that Brentwood Baptist Church was situated at the top of Kings Chase. So it was, on a Sunday morning we would all head off up the road to church for the morning meeting. This would go on for two hours and during that time I would go out to the creche and spend time playing with the toys there. It was also at this time dad would run the senior bible class for the teenagers, so we would have to be at church early to set the chairs up for that time. So it was in these early days of going to church that I would have to put on my Sunday best suit and tie and after mum had put the meat in the oven, we would leave, giving us about half an hour to get there.
After church it would be get home and start preparing the sunday roast, a job that I would get involved in from the age of seven years, and that's why I enjoy cooking and especially doing a three course roast for guests.
The rest of the time my social life hinged around friends next door up the road and next door but one down the road, they included, Ann, Edward Christopher Davies and Jill Travers, all round about my age or older. As I grew older, we would all go across the road and play in a builders storage yard next door to the local bowles club. We would all enjoy climbing up on the different stacks of materials, this in the days of NO Health and Safety. The other place we would go and play was in the woodland at the bottom of the road on land owned by the Ford motor company
Here we would climb the trees quite often getting home with minor scrapes and cuts, but having good fun all the same. It was also in this time scale that I learnt to ride a push bike, having an old second hand one bought for me and mum and dad encouraging me from outside the house down into the turning circle at the bottom of the road, so was my first cycle ride without any assistance. This is how the road looks now and the house still has the steps built by Gladys back in the 1960's,
