Propps Hall Drive

I guess we moved to Marlborough Drive in Failsworth when I was around four and to Propps Hall Drive (Number 54) about a year or two later. Number 54 was a nice big three bed roomed house with a garden front and back.

We had only just moved there when I caused the first stir. I went to the bathroom, which was upstairs to the front, and being a big boy of five now had to lock the door. Well the problem was I couldn’t unlock it despite my Dads best attempts to coach me through this most difficult of tasks.

After a while and it may have been from desperation, he climbed a drainpipe onto the porch roof to the bathroom window. Boy was I in trouble again.

I think it was this ‘act of bravery’ that prompted me to use that method to gain access to my bedroom on a number of occasions. Fifteen feet up on a brick wall trying to traverse five feet from the drain pipe to the window ledge. I’m lucky to be alive. I could have been killed, either by falling to the concrete below or my Dad catching me.

Linda was only two at the time and she was always getting away. She didn’t just walk, she ran.  The only problem was she couldn’t turn corners so we didn’t have much of a problem finding her, it was just a question of which direction did she go?

When we got to 54 there was an old toy racing car in the garden. Solid tin/rust and flaking red/maroon paint with a big bull nose; pedal driven of course. I think it was this that first started my love of speed and cars that would often get me into some kind of trouble or other later in life; and with bikes and roller skates during the next few years.


Templates in Time