Loughborough

I had a Friends Reunited email today suggesting I add Rosebery County Primary School to my profile.  That was my primary school in Loughborough.
 
I was born in Loughborough, then when I was about two, we moved to Shepshed, then after about five years, back to Loughborough and we lived there until I was ten.
 
In Loughborough, my mum used to take in lodgers from the librarian college – it wasn’t a university then – and I remember being tasked to take their dinners to them.  Sometimes they’d give me 1d tip, which is, of course, the only reason I agreed to do it in the first place.  We must have had quite a big house, because I know the lodgers had two bedrooms, my parents had one and my brother and I had one each.  The lodgers also had their own bathroom and downstairs sitting room.  I don’t remember it as being big, maybe because we didn’t use it all ourselves and we were definitely not well off.  I have the impression we had to have the lodgers for financial reasons. 
 
My best friend back then lived just across the road with her mum and nan.  I clearly remember asking about her dad (I must have been a horribly smug child, just assuming everyone would have the standard 2-parent family) and my mum telling me I shouldn’t ask about such things as the family may have had (unspecified) bad luck.
 
Our neighbours on one side were two elderly spinsters.  One was called Miss Abercrombie and I was deeply envious of her name because I figured that at school, she’d always be first on an alphabetical register.  Oh, the innocence of childhood!  With hindsight, they were probably two ageing lesbians and the years had given them a patina of respectability.
 
My parents’ best friends were called George and Mabs.  They were dedicated churchgoers and Mabs was always baking for some sale or other.  She used to look after my brother and me sometimes.  I hated going to them.  Mabs had suffered some chest disease in the past (I do know what it’s called, but I can’t remember) and spoke in a permanent whisper and George was simply creepy with a haircut like Prince Charles’ but totally white.  I remember one time; I must have been seven or eight, he started talking to me about completely inappropriate things.  No big deal, but I avoided him like the plague after that.
 
I spent hours one winter learning to walk on the stilts I had received as a Christmas present.  In the end I could walk on them quite happily for a couple of miles and that was my party piece for a while.  It was in Loughborough that I received my first broken bone – falling over a crack in the pavement whilst roller-skating.  If that had happened these days, I’d have probably sued the council for several million pounds!  But back then, all I got was a trip to the hospital and a nice nurse telling me kindly that they were just going to put a plaster on my arm.  I thought they meant a sticking plaster and screamed the place down when I realised I’d have to wear this big, white, hard thing for three weeks.
 
“Thcreamed and thcreamed until I was thick.”  Challenge – where is that quote from?
 
Memory Lane, inhabited by people like Julian, Dick, George, Anne and Timmy.  Mustn’t forget Bunty too.
 
The me back then was nothing like I am now.  I suppose that in some way it contributed to the me now, but I’d be hard pushed to see any similarities.  And coming back to the present, I have no idea why one chance mention of Loughborough got me writing, but it did…  and like all closet writers, I want a reader – hence I’m posting it!