Catherine Maud Phillips lived above the Daltons at 56a Broughton Road. Maud as she was known was a round and crinkly old lady and had a budgerigar called Joey whom she often talked to. She lived on her own and I wasn’t sure if her husband had left her or died. She was a devout Catholic but found it difficult to get to church and would receive communion at home. My mother sent me to her to learn my prayers. Maud was always visited on a Saturday afternoon by relatives- a couple from Peckham called Beattie and Will, who would arrive in their splendid black Wolsey car. It stood out as there weren’t many cars parked in the road during the late fifties. Maud collected money for the Spastics Society (as it was then politically incorrectly known) and she often asked me to deliver her coupons and collect the money. 

Hilary and Peter Dalton lived to our left at No 56. Hilary worked as a vetinary nurse in Chelsea. Her husband left the family and she lived with her son Peter. He was older than me but a confident lad and good fun to be with. He had a larger record collection and we also got up to a lot of mischief , playing in the street with spud guns and throwing water bombs at the girls across the road. During one such occasion in the early sixties I was chased by them and ran iinto the path of a car. It was my luck to be struck by one of the few vehicles that came down Broughton Road at that time. I escaped with minor bruising but remember my frantic mother putting me to bed and bathing my wounds with cologne.

When Mrs Phillips died towards the end of the 1960s Irish couple Joe and Margaret Feely moved in. Joe took it upon himself to educate me on the finer points of pochine, an illegal Irish whisky which almost took my head off when I sampled a drop in return for a drop of Spanish Anis. Joe was an extremely affable chap but enjoyed his drink and a lengthy political discussions. We often talked about the Irish troubles and Irish history as we stood across from one another on our back staircases. He once took me to meet his friends in an Irish pub in Fulham Road where I listened to happy gaelic songs and music. When I asked Joe about these cheerful songs he said the lyrics were about killing the British!

The Knight family lived to the other side of us at 60 Broughton Road.They were Burmese and there were five daughters -Judy, Susan, Jackie, Valerie and Sharon-and a son called Charles. Their mother June Knight had long fine black hair which she regularly combed and she was a great Shirley Bassey fan. Mr Knight worked nights so we didn’t see much of him. Charles was my pal and we attended Langford Road School together. I once borrowed my dad's gearless bike and Charlie and I cycled all the way from Fulham to Southend but were so tired and stiff when we got there that we took the train back as far as Romford. The Knights owned a TV set long before our family did so I used to go and watch programmes like Superman and Roy Rogers at their house. But in 1961 tragedy struck as a fire killed Jackie, Sharon and a male lodger (see Fire at Broughton in News Stories section).

The Scripps family later moved into No 60 Broughton Road after the fire. There were two boys- John and Peter and two girls - Peggy and June. Mr Scripps was a scruffy sort of chap with grey hair and moustache and his wife seemed to be forever plagued with mouth sores and bad eyes. She sadly died quite a few years before her husband. During the trendy sixties Peggy, who was my age, dressed like a hippy in colourful mini skirts and wore flowers in her hair and a small bell around her neck.

My sister Isabel and brother Luis with June Scripps in Broughton Road during the early 1960s.