Life on the Run Read Online Free Page A

unpleasant pills (that was when someone was watching, otherwise they were hidden under the bed), but the ones I took did eventually improve the condition. But it did not help my mother, brother and sister who all picked it up from me, and all had to have a stay in the isolation hospital at Maidenhead.
    By now I was better, and spent a lot of my time keeping my youngest sister amused. The funny thing I remember about this period, was the way we were partly treated like lepers. A very well-meaning friend and neighbour used to come along and put food she had cooked for us on the windowsill at the front of the house, tap on the window and run away. She had three children of her own, so this was an understandable precaution, although I found it strange at the time. After the scarlet fever had been diagnosed, and after my mother and brother had been removed to hospital, in came the local council to fumigate the house room by room. Each room was completely sealed and given the treatment; it really was like having the plague.
    In September 1947, I had started at the Windsor County Boys’ School, the local Grammar School. I had done reasonably well at the Royal Free School, where only two subjects were put onto the chart showing performance. Blue for Maths where I was always at or near the top, and red for English where I probably hovered below the halfway mark. There was then an interview in the library of the Grammar School and I thought I did OK. This was confirmed when I was awarded a place at the school. There were three classes at entry A, B, and C and I made it to the B class. I always thought, and still do, that I got there on merit, but my mother told me years later that I got there because we lived opposite the town mayor, Fred Fuzzens, and the headmaster thought I was related.
    The cost of new school uniform and other clothes, were out of the reach of my parents, but fortunately we had friends who were quite well-off coal merchants in Windsor. They had two sons and their quality clothing was always passed on to me.
    I started my new school in the September, and I well remember the watermarks in the classrooms where the school had been flooded. It had been rumoured that there were initiation ceremonies connected to the goats that were tethered on the school field, but I never suffered from this or other bullying. I remember just one occasion when someone did approach me on the field at break, but before I knew what was going on, one of the school rugby players gave him a flying tackle and sent him packing. I am not even sure he was going to pick a fight with me but I never had trouble again.
    Rugby was the school game, and at the end of the very first term, I went with a school friend and his father to Twickenham for the Varsity Match. It was packed, standing room only and we were tucked in one corner behind a lot of other people. Fortunately my friend’s dad was a big man and throughout the match he would lift us onto his shoulder in turn so that we could at least see something of the match, as well as soak up the atmosphere. It did something, because I have always enjoyed rugby far more than that other game of “football”.
    At my previous school, I had mostly gone home at lunch time, but at my new school I had dinner most days and it was very good, especially on Fridays; partly because we always had excellent fish and chips and probably jam tart and custard (I might have four or five helpings); but there was another attraction. The wife of my games master would be serving the lunches that day, and she was very attractive, wearing revealing low-cut dresses. In an all-boys’ school this was a big attraction! As was the once-a-week session in the school gym for the girls of a neighbouring school, who came in for their PE lessons in their navy-blue knickers.
    About the same time, my brother Bernard, who had completed his two years’ National Service with the Tank Corps, was now a commissioned officer in