Ken Wilbraham takes a light-hearted look back at his post-war childhood in Guilden Sutton, near Chester, where life at Number 40 was never dull and the path beyond the stile led him into a child's rural paradise. He and his pals enjoyed constructing dens in the woods, fishing in the pits and ponds, riding their bikes on the sandstone-topped wall of a railway bridge and "rubbing shoulders with nature". Family life was chaotic fun - for Ken's proudly practical father would never throw anything away and the family house was a monument to his unfinished projects.
Born in June, 1941, my life has been dominated by science, engineering and research, firstly at home, then my scholastic years and finally whilst employed as a chemical engineer by the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. I slipped comfortably into a literary straitjacket of formal, factual and precise writing. Boring, some people might say, and certainly my secondary school English teacher gave up early on my ever producing an 'imaginative' piece of writing.
Retirement in 1996 brought a determination to visit a world that had eluded me. I was now free of anyone standing over me, dictating what could or couldn't be said.
Signing up to a WEA (Workers Educational Association) course on creative writing got the ball rolling. I wanted to get down on paper an account of the wonderfully carefree days spent in Guilden Sutton, a small village just outside Chester, soon after the Second World War. Progress on the page has been hindered by my passion in many other areas such as old cars, DIY, golf, sailing, gardening and taking over control of the kitchen!
Now, with some reluctance and sadness, I have arrived at the end of that journey. I hope the reader gets a fraction of the enjoyment I have had in writing it.