I’ll mention often in
this blog about my old ‘friend’ Dave. (Dave’s
Vault of Evil).
Well, just across the
road from Dave’s house in Blakes Rd (ByeWays) was a disused chalk-pit. (One
of many in the area). We were a bit bored, so Dave suggested we make
a Secret Cave for ourselves by cutting one into the side of the
chalk-face. We could keep ‘stuff’ there that we wanted to keep
secret from our parents and friends. This was to be ‘only’ known
to us. We wouldn’t tell another living soul about it..... EVER!
YEP! Seemed like a
great plan to me, and off we went with our bowie knives and a
hand-axe to burrow away into our future ‘Den’. We spent almost
three whole days digging and carving our way into the pit wall, and I
have to admit, it looked great.
We cut hollows into the
walls so that we could store stuff away. Dave had his side, and I had
mine. We stocked it full of apples, cherry’s, pears and damsons
which we scrumped from the nearby orchards. We had several bottles of
‘Corona’ lemonade and cherryade, which Dave filched from his
Mum’s larder. (They were well-off and she used to stock up with
such things). All in all, our Den was a ‘crackin’ little place
which no-one knew about …... except us.
We built it fairly high
up the chalk-face to deter would-be nosey parkers, but we would get
covered in chalk each time we went there as we scrambled up to get
in. So we had the idea of cutting steps, a bit like a ladder, into
the chalk so that we could get up there a lot quicker and cleaner.
(Even if it did mean the nosey-parkers might also get up there
easier).
It took us a Saturday
morning to cut out our steps, and once done, we decided to go back to
Dave’s house and get his Mum to cook us some lunch. She was very
kind like that. (As most were in those more sociable days).
Lunch eaten, a quickie
game of chess to let our lunch go down and it was back to the
‘Den’...... Except it WASN’T!…..It wasn’t there any more
….. AARRGGHH!!
Where we’d cut in too
deep for our steps, we’d obviously weakened the whole wall and it
had all collapsed into a pile of rubble at the foot of the chalk
face. Bits of our ‘stuff’ could be seen broken and smattered
throughout the heap, making for a very sad day for both of us.
Then, we both looked at
each other, realising at the same time that if we’d 'not' gone to
lunch, and played our game of chess afterwards, WE might have been
‘smattered’ in the rubble as well.
NO. We didn’t
carve ourselves out another one. Instead, we found a dirty great big
Pine tree near the 'building site' (Beverley Gardens) just up
the road from ‘My’ house, where we built the best tree-house
modern building materials could build.
All FREE! ….
(From the building site?) …. Hmmmmmm??
Fred .......... (Age 10/11)
