by Carl Halling

Created on: September 18, 2011

I was born at the tail end of the Goldhawk Road

Which runs through Shepherds Bush

Like an artery,

And in the mid 1960s

Served as one of the great centres

Of the London Mod movement,

But I was raised in relative gentility

In a ward of nearby South Acton

Whose vast council estate

Is surely the most formidable

Of the whole of West London.

Although my little suburb

Has since become

One of its most exclusive neighbourhoods.

My first school was a kind of nursery 

Held locally on a daily basis

At the private residence

Of one Miss Henrietta Pearson,

And then aged 4 years old,

I joined the exclusive

Lycée Francais du Sud Kensington,

Where I was soon to become bilingual

And almost every race and nationality

Under the sun was to be found

At the Lycée in those days...

And among those who went on to be good pals mine

Were kids of English, French, Jewish, American,

Yugoslavian and Middle Eastern origin.

While my first closest pals were Esther,

The vivacious daughter

Of a Norwegian character actor

And a beautiful Israeli dancer,

And Craig, an English kid like myself

Who became a lifelong friend.

For a time, we formed an unlikely trio:

“Hi kiddy”, was Esther’s sacred greeting

To her blood brother, who’d respond in kind.

But at some stage, I became a problem child,

A disruptive influence in the class,

And a trouble maker in the streets,

An eccentric loon full of madcap fun

And half-deranged imaginativeness.

And my unusual physical appearance

Was enhanced by a striking thinness

And enormous long-lashed blue eyes.

Less charmingly, I was also the kind of

Deliberately malicious little hooligan

Who'd remove some periodical

From a neighbour's letter-box

And then mutilate it before reposting it.

The sixties' famed social and sexual revolution

Was well under way, and yet for all that,

Seminal Pop groups such as the Searchers

And the Dave Clark Five;

Even the Fab Four themselves,

Were quaintly wholesome figures.

And in comparison to what was to come,

They surely fitted in well

In a long vanished England

Of Norman Wisdom pictures;

And the well-spoken presenters

Of the BBC Home Service,

Light Service and World Service,

Of coppers and tanners

And ten bob notes;

And jolly shopkeepers

And window cleaners.

At least that’s how I see it,

Looking back at it all

From almost half a century later.

 My third and final school

Was the former Nautical College, Welbourne,

Where at still only twelve years old

I became the youngest kid

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