Oliver Postgate - Seeing Things: A Memoir

On a dull day in the early 1990s, I took the number 13 bus to Hendon, got off at the corner of Shirehall Lane and walked along it towards the house where I was born.

Shirehall Lane, a quiet suburban street, was definitely familiar. The big elm trees had gone but the same houses were there, though they seemed smaller and closer together than I remembered. But as well as that, something was different, something was missing. Then I saw what it was: people. Nobody was coming or going, nothing was happening. The street was deserted.

As I walked I tried to conjure up the people who used to be about. For a start there were two sorts of ice-cream man, Walls and Eldorado. They would be coming along on their box-tricycles, pinging their bells. Errand boys on their heavy bikes would whistle as they passed. The dustmans cart had two big horses. The ragand-bone man had one very small horse which pulled a small cart loaded with strange articles. The ice-man had a noisy black lorry which dripped. He carried a huge gleaming block of ice on a sacking pad on his shoulder, holding it with a pair of fearsome black tongs I was afraid of him. Hopeful people with suitcases were going from door to door selling things brushes, laces, insurance, salvation to the housewives in the houses.

I turned the corner into the cul-de-sac and saw a line of small, shabby, semi-detached houses. In 1925, in one of these, number four, I was born and had spent the first ten years of my life. I walked up to number four and stood in front of it. No wave of recognition came over me, no golden memories flooded back into my heart. The only feeling I had about that poky pebble-dashed house was that it was quite extraordinarily small.

Then, gradually, I began to realize what was wrong. In those days I had been much nearer the ground. So, rather creakily, I lowered myself on to all fours, leaned forwards, nudged open the garden gate with my head and peered in at child, or perhaps large dog, level.

That did the trick. The first thing I saw, just inside the gate, was a piece of thick metal pipe sticking up out of the ground. On top of it was a small metal box with a curved top and a grille in its side. I dont know what it was a drain-ventilator perhaps but sixty-five years before I had known it well and had enjoyed its company. I now looked at it with great affection, recalling very clearly the feel of its sun-warmed metal under my hand.

Beyond the pipe-thing, under the skinny privet hedge, I could feel again the black beetly earth between the roots and, behind that, at the foot of the house, I saw with a shudder the violent texture of the edge of the rendering. There the bottom of the thick stony skin of the house had curled up and broken off, leaving a jagged edge of powdery cement to moulder away and suppurate shiny brown pebbles. The mixture had fallen as a loose gritty scree against the side of the house. It was still there.

Feeling slightly foolish, I hauled myself to my feet and dusted off my knees. So, yes, that was the house. I now recognized the raised brick path which wended its way from the gate to the front doorstep. But it was only three paces from end to end, and where was the wide lawn where the tall horn-poppies grew? I had roamed the flower-beds lifting off their pointed hats so that the bright yellow-gold flowers could spread out in the sun, and when a bee landed on a flower I would stroke its back with my finger.