My chess loving, Bergman loving co-worker friend just saw this and asked if I could send it to him. I did. It reminds me of the youth I never had. They did not have surfing in England, or basket ball, or base-ball, although we did play "rounders" which is similar. We had bomb sites to scramble over. When I was fourteen we found an abandoned car and my friend's dad towed us in it all the way up to Hamstead. We could not get it to work, so we rolled it down the hill of Hampstead Heath. Talk of litter bugs! That friend had an eventful life and eventually disappeared. No one was ever able to find him. The thing is I left England all those years ago and mainly did not keep up with my best friends there. Now that I am aging, I wish I still had those friends.
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It must be an aging thing because I often find myself thinking of people I knew when I was younger and wishing I'd kept in contact. I always forget that you are in fact a Londoner. I know Hampstead Heath very well actually - was it the Parliament Hill side that you rolled the car down? My, that is steep. that's the hill with the view of the Houses of Parliament.
I don't remember Parliament Hill. The car rolled towards The Vale of Health, which always struck me as the opposite of its name. In early childhood, I also lived in Hampstead, quite near White Stone pond (?). My father often took me there for fairly futile attempts at sailing a model boat. This now makes me think of Stuart Little.
Yes it is Whitestone Pond. Do you remember the donkeys there? It was called the Vale of Health (the bit you mentioned) because of the well nearby that was meant to have mineral properties.
I used to love it round there but when I returned about two years ago I was shocked to see that what I thought of as the rolling hills and parkland of the Heath looked small. My rural environment here has spoilt me somewhat.
with the internet, i've managed to find the people i've been most curious about...
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