Saturday 26 January 2013

'The German and the 'parachute' story


Part of a 'Polyphoto' sheet containing forty-eight pics of me wearing a home-made silk jumpsuit which, I was always told by mother, came from the parachute of a German airman who landed at the back of 36 Swinderby Road, during the Second World War. He was first found by my grandmother and some neighbours, who immediately stripped him of his parachute and disappeared. They later divided it up between them and 'the proof' of this tale is in these pics of me coming up to my first birthday in 1945.

I remember that the fencing at the back of the gardens between Swinderby and Ealing Roads was full of gaps and missing planks of wood during the early years of my growing up. Things came to a head big time because I was caught scrumping from a neighbour's garden (another story for another day).

For weeks afterwards, the police were still 'making enquiries' as to what happened to the airman's parachute. In Memories of Wembley, Derek Addison, then still living on Swinderby Road, recalls his version of the same story.

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