On My Way to Samarkand: Memoirs of a Travelling Writer by Garry Douglas Kilworth Page A

on a par with Picasso when it came to that part of the human anatomy. The nude female body was a source of great wonder to us at that age, especially since our own bodies were going through changes which both amazed and excited us. These days we would be regarded as late starters, I know, but at fourteen I had only Spick and Span , and mail-order magazines that sold ladies underwear, to give me any sort of information on what these soft, wonderful creatures looked like without their clothes on.
    School days were ghastly. I was both bored out of my brains and felt lonely and lost. I had few friends at the school, though I did pal up with a boy named Bob Nottage, whom I was to run into quite coincidently a year later, when I joined the RAF.
    The caning master at the school was the woodwork teacher, who enjoyed handing out punishments. My uncle Peter had been thrashed many times when he attended the school, once for climbing on the roof of the building and throwing roof slates down to shatter in the playground. Peter Kilworth was infamous at Rochford school, both for his frequent absences and for his bad behaviour. Naturally as a Kilworth I got tarred with the same brush. Uncle Peter was only a few years my senior, perhaps seven or eight, so several of the same teachers that had taught him were also teaching me. Peter had destroyed many a music teacher in his time and myself and others carried on this fine tradition. I was sent with a couple of other boys to receive six strokes, but it was winter and we stopped by a hot radiator, pressed our palms on it to give us red weals, and returned to show the music teacher the results of our ‘caning’.
    The market town of Rochford is just outside, almost tagged-on, to Southend-on-Sea. I thought Southend in those days was a great place, full of excitement and wonder, and spent many weekends wasting time and money there. The ‘Longest Pleasure Pier in the World’, one and a quarter miles from shore to end, was a big draw to teenagers, as were the promenade fairgrounds and Peter Pan’s Playground. Then also there were amusement arcades full of penny slot machines. Westcliff and Leigh-on-Sea were a little too far away in those times, to pull me away from the magic mile, and I certainly never travelled to Shoeburyness or the posh Thorpe Bay end, where I was to meet my future wife.
    It was at Rochford that I built my first bike out of separate sections, purchased with money I had earned at potato picking alongside gypsies and newspaper rounds, or from parts cadged from uncles. Uncle Charlie, being a postman, had a really wide comfortable saddle which he gave to me and then requisitioned another, saying the old one was damaged. Peter gave me some cowhorn handlebars, which were really cool. I went everywhere on that bike, especially to Canewdon and Stambridge, with Milky, Scotty and Dinger.
    A bicycle in the ’50s was cheap transport to travel to distant regions, and of a weekend we might find ourselves in far Paglesham, or Foulness, or Fambridge, one of those remote villages at the ends of the earth where men spoke with a strange dialect and savage dogs chased you along the lanes, snapping at your ankles. I could do many tricks on my bike too, like steering with no hands, or standing on the crossbar going down a steep slope. We came off, we took tumbles, but no one broke their neck. They should have, I suppose. Boxcarts too, were great fun, and since there were few cars in those days we could zoom down Stambridge Road hill four abreast in a boxcart race.
    Days were spent out in the fields, hunting rabbits and hares and poaching pheasants with my Uncle Peter. I learned to whistle shrilly with two fingers in my mouth and any hares hiding in the ruts of the ploughed fields would prick up their ears, thus informing us of their whereabouts. I also had the aforementioned ferret Pugerchov, which I would send down rabbit holes to chase up the rabbits into the nets. These I was taught to skin and