Michael Bond: Reading to Paddington

By Richard Webber
Posted: 2010/06/13

Author Michael Bond, 84, whose Paddington Bear stories have become international bestsellers, tells RICHARD WEBBER about his childhood growing up in Reading

SIX WEEKS after I was born in 1926 my father, a Post Office sorting clerk, was transferred from Newbury to Reading. We bought a three-bedroomed terraced house in Gloucester Road for about £200, which had gas lighting at the time. I remember electricity being installed because there was a big discussion about whether we needed more than one power point.

There weren't many accessories so my mother didn't think we would need extra.

My bedroom was very narrow with floral wallpaper and I remember counting the petals at night when I couldn't sleep. The window looked out on to Belmont Road, one of many long, straight streets of identical terraced houses built towards the end of the 19th century. In New York they'd have been called West 23rd or something similar but in Reading they had rather grand names like Connaught, Norfolk and Cranbury.

Our house was the penultimate one in a row and boasted a back entrance to the garden reached via a zig-zagging narrow pathway with a high fence either side. My father considered it a mixed blessing as he had to keep it creosoted, which took a lot of time, especially when I helped.

When I started school I used the entrance as a shortcut but wasn't keen because of the cobwebs and the fear that I might meet a bogeyman round the next corner.

I'd often play in the garden and in summer would occasionally put up my tent and sleep in it, accompanied by Binkie, our dog. The far end of Belmont Road formed a T-junction with the main Oxford Road where there was a hospital and a pub called the New Inn, and where open-topped trams rattled their way to town.

My window faced north so didn't see much sun and, as our house lay at the bottom of a steep hill, neither did my parents' room at the back.
Other rattling noises could be heard from a nearby railway goods yard. The nightly bangs and crashes from wagons being shunted as train sets were assembled seemed endless.

I'd try to work out the length of each train by counting the bangs. Every morning I washed in cold water from a jug standing alongside a bowl in the bathroom. The bowl was supported in a metal frame and when the plug was removed the water emptied into a bucket.

After using the toilet I would run downstairs as fast as I could. I had to reach the bottom before the cistern stopped flushing, otherwise the world would come to an end. Children's minds are full of secret fears. In the front room downstairs (only used on special occasions) there was a three-piece suite that included a sofa, one end of which could be let down to make a bed. Each item sported a white antimacassar, a precaution against the hair oils of the time. There was an aspidistra in the window and a glass-fronted cabinet kept locked when it housed a bottle of Burgundy, prescribed by our doctor when Mother felt she needed building up.

In the dining room the table came in very handy. Sometimes I'd turn it upside down and pretend it was a boat. I'd sail the world in it and have so many adventures. And after being given a fret saw it ended up with wood cuts all over it. My parents were very long-suffering!

The most precious thing you can give a child is your time and my father would come home from work and take me to Prospect Park and play games. If it were summer we would normally opt for cricket although I'd do most of the batting while he ran around fetching the ball.

I was about 12 when we moved to be nearer the private school I attended on the outskirts of Reading.

It was a sad occasion. I visited the house a while ago. Although it's been modernised it was still strange.

MORE INFORMATION:
Michael Bond's latest book, Paddington Here And Now, is published by HarperCollins Children's Books. The Life and Times of Paddington Bear is at Reading Museum until July 4.