A place where whatever itches...you can scratch it. This is how Richard Cudlow started and where he's ended up. Hope you enjoy!
I was born in Balham, London, just after the end of the war in Europe.
Two weeks to the day after V.E. Day.
My family consisted of three older sisters, a mother and a father who was still in the Royal Air Force but just home from the war.
We lived in Haverhill Road, Balham.
Later, just after my younger brother was born we moved to Kensington. It was a city full of bomb damage and confusion.
Very exciting for a four year old.
After a few years we moved to Croydon and a succssful 11 plus exam took me to Archbishop Tenison's Grammar School which was, at that time, based in South Croydon.
The school moved to brand new premises in East Croydon in 1960. It was opened by HRH the Queen Mother accompanied by Dr Fisher, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The photo with the Archbishop was in the local paper and was my second taste of fame. (The first was the photo at the front of this site when I came second in a Daily Express "Bonny Babies" competition).
It was a Grammar School of the "old school", the teachers all wore gowns and school uniform was strictly adhered to.
We boys were convinced that our Latin mistress, the awe-inspiring but now much appreciated Miss Taylor, was at the school opening in 1714. We also believed that Latin was her first language.
Of course, the girls thought she was wonderful because of the terror she instilled in the boys.
While Miss Taylor was the senior Mistress of the school our Headmaster was Mr Norman Cresswell. A man, like Miss Taylor, who was passionate about education.
It was he who took the school to Grammar School status and that is something that I will always be grateful to him for.
The curriculum was all embracing. Geography was the world with plenty of red on the map. We were taught to be proud of our country and its achievements on the World stage.
History was chronological from the ancient Greeks, to the Romans, the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages and on to Victorian England.
Physics, Biology and Chemistry were all taught as seperate subjects with their own 'O' levels and 'A' levels at the end.
As I said, one of the "old school" and I've appreciated it every day since.
As I approached the end of my time at Tenison's, a long conversation with a young police woman and the discovery of Agatha Christie's Poirot books, made me consider the Police as a career.
In the end I decided I wanted to see more of the world than I would on a beat in Croydon and so applied to join the Royal Air Force.
I was accepted as an Aircraft Apprentice and was trained as an Aircraft Electrical Technician.
The training was intense at RAF Halton where we were known as 'Trenchard Brats'.
I was in the 99th Entry and our parting shot to mark the end of our training was to spend one night dodging Snowdrops* and removing all three flag poles from the parade grounds. We then re-installed them in the hills behind the camp with a giant 99th flag of our own. *(For the un-initiated, Snowdrops were the RAF Police so called because they wore white hats.) The next morning's reveille was a joy to behold. Orderly Sergeants and Duty Officers went out to raise the flag to find no flagpoles.
What joy we must have brought to their little hearts!
We graduated in July 1964 whereupoon I was posted to RAF Honington near Bury St Edmunds from where they flew Valiants, Victors and Vulcans.
Of course, I'd applied for somewhere quite different. When you were due to be posted the procedure was to invite you to submit three choices of where you would like to go. In all my career I never got the posting I asked for. The whole thing seemed to be a waste of time.
I knew I'd recognise the clerk responsible for my postings from the laughter lines around his eyes.
I served for 12 years and got to work on aircraft as diverse as Vulcan bombers at Honington, Lightning interceptors with 92 Sqdn at Gutersloh, Germany, Beverley Transporters and Andovers of the Queen's Flight at RAF Abingdon.
I wish I'd known at the time that when the members of the Royal Family came out to board their aircraft, Her Majesty the Queen and I shared the same ancestor. King James II of Scotland was the fourteenth great Grandfather to both of us.
All in all, an enjoyable period in my life where I had experiences that my school friends could only dream about. To be sat in the cockpit of a Lightning fighter or a huge Beverley Transporter with the engines running doing electrical and instrument checks was, to us, all in a day's work.
Two things will always be with me from my service life.
Firstly, the unique serviceman's sense of humour. There was no such thing as "political correctness", everything could and would be laughed at. And secondly, the camaraderie. They had my back and I had theirs to an extent that just doesn't exist in civvy street.
After demob, I knew I would have to join the rat-race and support my family. I had two young children who meant the world to me. I entered the insurance industry. I settled down to a nine to five existence which I quickly learned wasn't me at all. Something was missing...
I knew I wanted to write when I began making up stories for my children.
We were living in Sussex at the time and I even managed to get some read out on South Coast Radio.
Writing took a back seat as I let earning a living and looking out for my children, take absolute priority. Early retirement at last gave me the opportunity and my first novel, Overseer, was written.
The Books page is dedicated to my writing and I hope you will take a look.
We have also traced the family tree back to 498. It's fascinating stuff and, again, it has a page of is own.
Since retiring, God only knows where I found the time to go to work, I have realised my ambition to write (four novels, one anthology and counting...)
I also became involved with Hospital Radio in South Wales.
What an eye-opener that turned out to be.
The joy for me was that, unlike commercial radio stations, I was able to select the music I played for the patients. My love was the music of the forties, fifties and sixties and I was thrilled to find out, from feedback from the patients, just how much that music was appreciated.
I would also include a sort story and snippets about life that would bring back happy memories for baby boomers like me.
I also, for mental stimulation really, taught myself how to create a website using html, css and javascript. This site is the result. What I like about it is that the coding languages mentioned are constantly evolving so that you can never say you've learnt everything.
Well, there we are, up to date. We are currently living back in South Wales having spent four enjoyable years on the Gold Coast in Queensland.
Visit again and soon you'll be able to make a cup of tea, settle back in your favourite armchair and listen to an edition of "Cudlow's Sunday Soapbox".
There'll be stories, snippets and a fair sample of "our kind of music"