Leverage.

 I was born in Farnborough Hospital in January 1966. It was miles from where we lived in Crystal Palace, the reason for the inconvenient baby producing was that my mother had survived TB when she was a child. Being hospitalized for most of her child and teenage years. Her dad died whilst she was in hospital. She had it tough.

The age gap between myself and my siblings is 15 years and 10. I never really thought about it until relatively recently. Why did did my parents wait to produce this glorious little human?

Pure speculation on my part, so here goes.

I was leverage

I believe they just couldn't afford 3 children. So what changed?

My existence gave them a tipping point to a better area. KENT. That magical garden of England.

They were living in a block of flats in Crystal Palace. Mum hated it. I remember she described small children being tied to lamp posts playing outside their homes. Parents using the latest rope nanny technology if you like. There were bomb sites everywhere still from the war. My brothers were chucking bricks at each other. She wanted out. Who can blame her?

One way to do this was to have another child which would push you up the waiting list to get a nice council house in Kent. The plan worked. At 11 months old in the depths of winter we moved to Orpington. The house was a good semi detached house. It had a lovely big garden with two apple trees. Not the roughest area in Orpington, it had a park nearby. Compared to where they had come from it was an upgrade.

Only...What do we do with this kid now? Dad was against it, as you know, and I bet my brothers weren't too chuffed at this little kid changing the family dynamic and making everyone poorer. My mum had to give up work to look after me. She was employed in a toy shop before she had me, putting all the load on my dad, who was a milkman at the time. I am guessing the pay wasn't great.

Now a little aside here. I don't think rents were that expensive so I don't really know what my dad was doing with the money. I do know things were tight because when I was about 3, playing with some lovely metal toys...Big metal toys you could sit on. My dad yoinked me off them and sold them to a rag and bone man for a couple of quid accompanied by me screaming little tears down my chubby, dusty cheeks. That didn't seem to phase him.

 I loved that metal double decker bus. I used to have a little PG tips monkey figure I used as a ticket inspector. Funny what you remember.

I did talk to him about that when I was in my 30's. He thought it was funny. Probably thinking " What was I like?" 

Mum did take control of the finances later I believe. Maybe he was gambling. Who knows?

That's where I grew up. Orpington is a strange place. It is incredibly old in some respects. After the war there was a huge building programme and with relatively new train stations they could get people out of London to resettle. Part of the glorious commuter belt. I think that was part of what made these London borough towns a weird place to live in. People scarred by war and no real old community spirit to help them deal their shared trauma.