I was born in 1929,the year of the Stock Market crash and a forerunner of the economic depression of the1930s, wrote Alan Ure, but I was too young to know much about these events.

My earliest memories are of seeing King George V's funeral coach passing along the railway line behind our house in Wellesley Road, Slough in 1936; of seeing the glare in the sky of the Crystal Palace ablaze in 1936 from our bedroom window; and of the coronation cavalcade through Slough after the crowning of King George VI in 1937.

On a personal note I remember the absence of a father. My parents married in 1928, my mother to a man 12 years her junior (She was 36 and he was 24). They were not a good match; she had been to a finishing school (housekeeping was not in her vocabulary) and was very strong-willed.

He was a journeyman carpenter and liked home comforts. He did not find these with my mother so he left us in the 1930's after fathering two more children. This left my mother almost destitute for the mortgage on our house was in her name.

But, true to her temperament she did not give up. In 1938 we moved to Marlow Bottom (Called Tintown because the dwellings were made of corrugated iron and asbestos sheeting). Our bungalow had no gas, no water and no electricity and was a quarter of a mile from the nearest road.

We kept chickens, goats, pigs, etc and I used to catch wild rabbits in snares for which I received 6d (2 1/2 new pence) each. It was now wartime and we received an allowance of chicken food; I used to take the eggs to the local egg-packing station in High Wycombe.

We celebrated Christmas with a chicken. In these days of supermarkets its preparation is a long-lost 'art'. (The squeamish can miss this bit.) First it had to be killed, which my mother did by holding it head-down on her knee and giving it a quick jerk that broke its neck.

Then we dunked it in hot water to loosen the feathers, and then we all joined in to pluck it. This was followed by singeing to remove the loose hairs. Finally my mother removed the giblets before cooking.

At first I attended the C of E Boys' School in Marlow but one day in assembly the headmaster told me I had won a scholarship to the local grammar school. So in 1940 I started at Sir William Borlase's School, Marlow founded in 1624 with the motto 'Te Digna Sequere' (Follow Things Worthy of You).

This was a school still steeped in the traditions of the 1920's. We were taught Latin and had School Houses (Britons, Danes, Normans, Saxons), daily chapel attendance and school uniforms, the latter being relaxed due to clothes rationing.

This was lucky for me because my mother would never have been able to afford the complete school uniform, etc.

One memory was of getting only 3% in a mathematics examination. I privately concluded that this was the fault of my teacher, a conclusion that proved to be correct because at the age of 15 I gained an Oxford School Certificate with Matriculation Exemption, passing in eight subjects (including mathematics).

After Matric came the VIth form and preparation for A levels and University, but it was not to be for me. After six months I had to leave school to start work at the age of 16 to help out with the family finances.

I did not get my degree until over 30 years later (with the Open University).

I like to think I was fairly popular at school and, in support of this, I give below an ode that was presented to me by my schoolmates when I left Borlase:

Farewell Ode to Cheese

Farewell, stout-hearted Brit
Whose cheesy waft did once us hit,
Ye carefree, bold and ancient brave,
Dwelling down in Marlow Bottom's cave,
Who nightly strolled down in the park,
With Marlow's females after dark,
Who left the high and open hills,
For to woo fair Gladys Mills.

Again, farewell stout-hearted Brit,
Whose cheesy waft did once us hit,
The course of our form's growing fewer'
The one and only brave Man Ure,
Who dwells down in old Marlow Bottom,
Who girl friends by the score has got'em,
Whose parting to the Bourne End Mill'
Our hearts with grief must surely fill,

But even so we scent him still,
As we always did and ever will.
And so Farewell, Oh dear old cheese.
For none shall you forget with ease,
We all made fun and laughed at you,
Yet you angered not, but instead laughed too.
We wish you well oh dear old Brit,
And hope in life you make a hit.

Your memory with us shall never die.
So to you, Good Luck, Farewell, Goodbye!!

From 1945 to 1949 our living conditions deteriorated still further and we ended up living in an old pigsty. That's when we hit rock-bottom but the only direction from there was upwards and it has been so ever since.

The old pigsty at Woodlands, covered in snow, where we ended up living in 1949.

Alan Ure, Leicestershire, 2002