Narrator: Brian Baker
Date: 2004
Here’s the scene. It’s 1959 and the Baker family are living at 112 Middle Wall, Whitstable. Even in those days Middle Wall was but a shadow of it’s heyday at the end of the 1800′s when it was the place to live if you were upwardly mobile. The house was actually two homes, 112 at the front and 114 at the rear, with a passageway down the side to the rear gardens. At the front there was a minuscule garden and then the pavement. If you look at the house now you will see that this has gone, along with the front door, when the road was widened and levelled. To its left, laid back, was a builders workshop, and then the Congregational Hall (now The United Reformed Church).
I was six and attending Westmeads School, whilst my eldest brother at eight had the shorter walk to the Whitstable Boys School. The craze at the time was to own a go-cart (soap-box cart) and all our mates had one. We broached the subject with our father but to no avail so we decided to build one ourselves. We hunted high and low for the parts, driftwood off the beach, wheels from old prams abandoned on the old railway line and set to work making it.
Needless to say, at that age our skills with saw and hammer had not been honed to a high level. The resultant monstrosity we had given birth to gave witness to that simple fact. The wheels, when they stayed on, seemed to take an instant dislike to each other and insisted in going in different directions. The wood stunk of seaweed and some of the nails we had used seemed intent on seeking their revenge on us.
We thought it would grow on us, that perhaps we would get to love its eccentric ways, but sadly it’s painful existence was a short one. It’s death came suddenly and honourably. We had taken it to show our pals who had gone up Borstal Hill and along Martindown Road (now the Sherwood Estate) into the fields with their go-carts. They were well bred enough not to laugh at our cart but you could see the look of pity in their eyes. Us Baker’s are a stubborn lot and proud to the end. We challenged them to a race down the hill which they accepted. There we were, the modern charioteers, re-enacting past great battles as we flew down the hill towards Joy Lane, the sun setting over Sheppey casting glorious red shadows over the scene on the ground. Well, that was the idea. The reality was that they disappeared down the hill and our cart took off into the air when meeting the first clump of grass. When it landed it sort of exploded. There were bits of smelly wood, spokes, and tyres everywhere. We were cut, bruised and muddy, but it was our pride which hurt the most. We slowly collected up as much as we could find of our cart and headed home.
As we walked, funereal like with the remains, down Borstal Hill and along Canterbury Road we discussed our next move. We knew we had failed miserably but it wasn’t the cart’s fault. We carried on passed our house and turned down into Cornwallis Circle. The annual bonfire was being built in the centre of the Salts ready for November 5th. We took the remains and added then to the bonfire. A few days later we watched the bonfire burn in celebration of something that our poor cart would never understand because we hadn’t had a chance to teach it about Guy Fawkes and other facets of interesting English history. I might have shed a tear at its passing but I would never had admitted it – boys don’t cry.
Something about our melancholy must have had an effect at home because a few days later, after my brother and I arrived home from school, our father gave us the go-cart he had secretly been making for us. Not one to do things by half-measures he had built a chariot of glory. He had donated some of the new wood he was building his boat with. It was strong and smooth, no nails but joints and screws. The wheels were shiny and all the same size. It even had a brake! He made us take turns in it beside the house to make sure we knew how to handle it, then off we went.
How our lives changed. We were no longer pitied for we were now the envy of all our peers. We paraded down the High Street with our cart, basked in the admiring glances and praise from the old boys. We ran errands all over the town, collecting and delivering things for people. We thrashed the pants off our mates in any race they dared challenge us to. I once even, on a foolhardy solo run, decided to ride it down Borstal Hill. I did manage to stop before the railway bridge, but only just, with my heels vanishing off my shoes in their role as impromptu brakes. Oh, wasn’t life so carefree in those days?
Our role as the undisputed go-cart champions of Whitstable continued through the winter and as spring came we were looking forward to some longer trips with our cart. One Friday evening, arriving back home late for tea after running errands with our cart we committed the cardinal sin. Instead of putting into the back garden we left it in the front garden so as not to be any later. The next morning it was gone. We were upset, then angry with whoever had taken it, and then worried that we would be in trouble for leaving it out the front. We made a pact (a lie) to say that we had put it in the back garden and someone must have stolen it from there.
The following week our father was reading the Whitstable Times when he asked if we’d seen anything odd going on out of our bedroom window the previous Friday night. We hadn’t. Apparently the Butcher’s shop in the High Street whose back entrance was diagonally opposite our house had it’s safe stolen that night. The police were still trying to find out how the burglars had managed to carry the heavy safe away.
My brother and I exchanged guilty glances. Our go-cart had gone out in a blaze of glory as a getaway cart in a safe heist but we kept our pact, until today.
We never owned another go-cart. We had experienced the best and the worst of them. We moved on to other boyhood interests like fishing and catapults and suchlike, for as one chapter closes another opens.
Do you remember;
When you could come down Borstal Hill in a go-cart and survive the traffic?
The Guy Fawkes bonfires at Cornwallis Circle?
The fields above Joy Lane before the houses took over?
Allowing your children out in the dark without worrying?
A picture to complement the story.
112 Middle Wall - 2004.
The house is still there as this picture from 2004 shows, but the front garden has gone, along with the front door, the Go-cart, the Butcher’s safe, the innocence of childhood, and the chariot fields.
Will these burglars stop at nothing?
