Made in Chertsey 1932/42

                     INTRODUCTION

In the big looking glass, I see a thin, lanky seven-year-old, I am wearing my new school clothes, short trousers that are too long and boots that are too big. Mum always buys our clothes on the big side so that we grow into them. I am not happy with what I see.

"Who is going to look at you Alan"?

 My mother says the words in a kindly way, hoping to dispel my fear of 'standing out'. Unknowingly, it has the reverse effect, it makes me think that I am not worth a first, let alone a second look. I would remember these words for the rest of my life and always be on the edge of the stage just looking in—That is, until I discovered writing.

 After I retired, my daughter in law Edi, helped me to join a writing group. A month later I am on the stage of 'The Green Room', reading my first story to an audience, and making them laugh. When I left the stage, a man said. "That was out standing". Now I can't stop!

'Made in Chertsey' is a fictionalised account based on true events and the people in them. Of course, all of these events have a seed of truth in them. Some of these seeds will germinate and flower naturally, others will need the fertiliser of my imagination—before you ask, this fertiliser is non-organic.

 A few seeds fell on the wayside of my memory and were forgotten until another story that is well remembered, brings them back to life. The human brain is astonishing. 

Most of the characters in these stories have sadly passed away. My mother who was very fond of using a saying or a phrase to describe any person or situation would say.

"They were no nonsense people who said it as it was" or "They are the salt of the earth". There is no better way of saying it except with another (misquoted) saying.  "They were ordinary people who were extraordinarily kind".

Without some of them I doubt whether I would have survived to tell my story. I have used their names as a way of giving thanks to them, and to tell any of their living relatives just how important these friends were to my family. Like any town, there were dark corners, usually hidden behind nice curtains or a neatly trimmed privet hedge. I wasn't aware of any really bad people until a few years ago, it just goes to show how well it was covered up. 

Some of the stories are based on just a few seconds of a memory, such as seeing a young RAF airman go past in a car, he turned to look at me very briefly and I saw his badly burnt face, something I will never forget.

Other stories are not even mine I was too young to have any memory of them, I suppose they could be called family stories or even a saga. They would be told over and over again and stray further away from the truth at every retelling. I will say at the beginning of any story if it belongs to someone else, as in this next story by my sister Iris. It is a story that she gave me a few years ago, just before she died at the age of ninety-two.

 Because Iris's story is from the memory of an eleven-year-old child, she could not have known everything that was happening around her. As I have said before, it is part fiction but with a lot of truth. Her story is so important to me that I have made it Chapter one.