Page 10 - Demo

6soning. In the surrounding area was an old artillery piece. The breach had been removed but we used to run round the surrounding wall and swing on to the barrel as a makeshift roundabout. While there, we did go to the Brussels exhibition and stayed with another family for a couple of days. I think the Belgians may have been relatives of the French and they were really nice to us. The only English the man knew was %u201cGuinness is good for you%u201d, which was an advertising slogan, and he would regularly repeat it to us and laugh. The visit was a very nice break from France, But the journey was a bit of a nightmare. Our French exchange%u2019s father was a terrible driver who nearly stopped when another car came towards us in the dark. We were nearly home when we were stopped at Dunkirk as terrorists had blown up some petrol fuel tanks there. France was having a major problem with Algeria at the time. To have a soldier pointing a machine gun at you whilst sitting in the car was an interesting experience. At the end of the exchange visit we flew back from Le Touquet in a Bristol Freighter. which landed on the grass at Croydon. That was my first plane trip.As a young boy I enjoyed being outside. We all spent a lot of time on Bookham common, making dens and generally playing. We used to catch lizards and took them to a chap in Effingham who had a private zoo of UK animals. He gave us 6d (2.5p) for a lizard to feed to the snakes but 1 shilling (5p) for a sand lizard to exhibit. We could wander round his zoo whenever we wanted, and it was always interesting. I made a museum in a shed and collected all sorts of things including birds%u2019 eggs, which was quite legal in those days plus skeletons of birds, rabbit and fox skulls. And anything else that interested me. At some point, probably when I went away to school, my mother threw it all away which was very annoying. I also made airfix models and created a large tableau in our playroom complete with aircraft on fire with cotton wool smoke trailing behind and tanks wrecked with holes burnt in them