PROJECT EDGWARE

Occasionally, our teachers at my boarding school would give us projects to do during the holidays, and although these were never arduous tasks, I always resented them as intrusions into our precious time at home. Nevertheless, being the conscientious little chap I was, I always did them as best I could, as the one presented here bears testimony.

As far as I recall, this was the very first such project I was assigned, back in the Christmas new year break of 1971/72, making me 11 at the time. Certainly, my use of felt tip pens would be consistent with that dating, making these pictures exactly, an incredible 50 years old.

Looking at them now raises a mixture of emotions; of nostalgia for a happy and safe childhood on the one hand, and a reminder of the sense of relief I felt a few years later at escaping from dreary, peripheral suburbia into the city itself.

In any event, for better or for worse, here is Edgware; famous for it’s eponymous Roman road; boasting one of the oldest avenues of sequoias in Europe, being the home of George Fredrick Handel, and indisputably, “My Home Town…”