Page 12 - Demo
P. 12


                                    8on each level. You went out through a large open window on to a metal ladder attached to the wall. You went down the ladder onto a small flat roof over the first level and then jumped onto a pile of coke. The amount of coke varied but in the only fire practise we had whilst I was at school it was quite high. We moved from Great Bookham to Little Bookham shortly after I went to Wellington and so moved away from the children next door. Eventually we moved to Guildford which made meeting up with other Bookham friends harder and so we drifted apart. The only person I knew in Guildford was Pat Brownrig who was in Lights and my year. There were several other boys who did live in Surrey, and we gradually became good friends. However, they all left in the lower 6 year whilst I stayed on for my A levels. The picture of my parents was taken at their Ruby wedding, I think. Mum had had stomach cancer and had part of her stomach removed. The cancer returned later and a few days after the photo was taken, she returned to hospital and had another major operation. And this operation was more successful, and she lived many more years. As she and both my grandmothers had cancer it was not surprising that I suffered from it later.I enjoyed the Combined Cadet Force and did several courses during the holidays. The best was a Commando Course at Lympstone. There was a Tarzan course up in the trees which we went round starting with a death slide which must have been 50 feet high or more. A Major was killed when he slipped through the rope that you looped over the wire, so it was seriously high. We thought it all great fun. Of course, there were no safety harnesses or anything like that in those days. One night we did an exercise on Dartmoor to practise getting out of an ambush. The drill was to charge at whoever was shooting at you. We had Lee Enfield rifles loaded with blanks. The first time we were ambushed we were terrified even though we knew it was going to happen, and just flung our- 
                                
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