Back garden

This morning, the Minx and I made our way south from Islington to my folks' house in Worcester Park, to have lunch with them, Dan and Abi, and my brother and his family.

Dan and Abi may be fourteen and twelve now but they're more than happy to play games with my niece. Here they are, chasing bubbles around the back garden (although rather looking as though they are involved in some amateur highland dancing).

Thirty-five years ago, you'd have found my brother and I playing on this same lawn, usually a game of our own invention, the melodramatically named 'Killer Frisbee', which did involve a frisbee but thankfully no fatalities.

My grandad could remember when these houses were built, sometime between the wars, I think. Maybe he worked on them - he was a plumber - as I'm sure I can remember him telling me how he walked across the fields from New Malden to get to them. There aren't many fields around here anymore, although there is a broad strip of wild greenery that runs along the route of the Hogsmill river between my parents' road and the A3 to the west.

Perhaps the fact that the houses were built among the fields accounts for the generous gardens, maybe forty or fifty yards long. You'd probably get three houses on a plot this size, these days! 

Just beyond the bushes behind Dan is my dad's vegetable plot. There's also a largish shed and a greenhouse but there used to be a smaller shed there, too, where I kept my bike. Every morning, I'd walk down the garden at 6am to fetch it so that I could do my paper round. It was fine during the summer but in the winter it was not so good as I was scared of the dark. At that time of year, I hated walking across the lawn, staying clear of the edges, and then, once I had my bike, I had to manoeuvre my way back with that and go down the pitch black side of the house. It makes me shudder to think of it (even though I'm OK with the dark, these days).