A life in letters: Robinson family

The Robinson family lived through the wall from us in the 1950s at 15 Maxwell Avenue, Westerton.  Their Westminster Chime clock in their living room could be clearly heard from my parents’ bedroom sounding away the night hours, rather to their dismay.

There was a high hedge between Mrs Robinson’s back garden and ours. My mother often talked to her through the hedge on summer days, while I waited hopefully, knowing her propensity to fling over the hedge empty cardboard food-boxes and packets which I could use for ambitious construction projects. I’m not sure if my mother was wholly in favour of Mrs Robinson’s method of recycling cardboard, but she saw my joy as I danced around on the grass, hands outstretched to catch the deluge of containers which arced over the privet, each one accompanied by an enthusiastic whoop from next door.

Then the Robinsons moved out, and the Murrays moved in. I remember spending an afternoon in the Murray boys’ bedroom, crawling through elaborate plastic-sheeted tunnels which they had constructed under, and around and between their beds. 

I also remember their practice, which I thought was very odd, of not going away for the holidays, but each day setting out for a different destination, accompanied by a packed lunch which seemed, to my watching eyes – I could see through the open door of the kitchen above the level of the hedge – to take half the morning to prepare. This appeared to me to be a deeply unsatisfactory way of going about having a holiday.