Life on the Run Read Online Free

we pulled over as close as we could to where he was submerged, and as he came up to the surface for the second time, my brother grabbed him while I tried to keep our boat upright. We both succeeded and got the lad, who was about my age, to the bank. I remember the reaction of that boy to this day. It was really quite strange; he thought he had enjoyed the experience floating under the water and did not realise how close he had come to disaster. Somebody collected him from the jetty, and a quick thanks and we were on our way.
    If that was a near-death experience for that young boy, another incident happened much closer to home a little later. My family and I were at home one weekend when there was a knock on our front door. Dad opened the door and the lady next door staggered in covered in blood. I remember my parents getting a bucket of water and towels and tea towels to try and stop the bleeding. We did not have a telephone but someone, probably my older brother, must have gone to the phone box on the corner of the road, because an ambulance came, and later the police. The man next door had tried to kill his wife by hitting her over the head with a hammer, and a little later he was taken away. I remember he was only out of circulation for a short time and seemed to be back with his wife at their home next door very quickly. He was an old soldier from the First World War and had apparently had some temporary mental problem and was not detained for very long.
    I mention elsewhere that I have never been a great fan of football, but as a young boy my father did take me to watch Windsor and Eton FC matches at Stag Meadow on the edge of Windsor Great Park. The club were know as the Royals in those days before the name was somehow highjacked by the county town and Reading Football Club. Windsor had a reasonable team and I will always remember one player, Billy Griffiths, and wonder what modern referees and players would make of him. He was a hard man and in almost every match he would end up knocking a player down with a punch, and I can only very rarely remember him being sent off. He was a good footballer and other players would be going for him, and it was not surprising that he took his revenge in this extreme way. He seemed to get away with it most of the time, and his skill probably helped to keep him on the pitch. He was a sporting character and I did meet him once very much later in life when we were both at an athletic event where one of his family was competing, and like so many sportsmen, he was very much a gentleman off the pitch. Footballers had a lot to put up with in those days; there were the very heavy dangerous football boots with those lethal studs made from leather and nails. Then there was that solid toecap; no soft leather like the modern boot. Tackling was hard but I do not recall seeing any more players injured, in fact probably less than today.
    After the war, there were the 1947 floods in Windsor following a really bad winter. I lived about a mile from the River Thames and one Sunday afternoon we went for a family walk. Someone had told us that the river was high and there was some flooding, but we had only gone about a quarter of a mile towards the river when we found everywhere covered in water. Most of Windsor was underwater and in some areas nearer the river, the water was at first-floor level.
    Quite naturally boys of my age turned the floods into a game, and we took a tin bath down to the flood water, a long way from the river, and paddled around in it, while my brother and others were involved in more serious activities; getting food and supplies to many of the homes underwater, in some cases up to the first floor.
    A couple of years after the war, my family were hit by the plague; or rather it seemed like it. It was in fact scarlet fever. I was the first to go down with it around Christmas, but the doctor called it tonsillitis to avoid me going to hospital. I remember taking some rather large