We moved to Broughton Road in 1953. You have to understand that we were the first outsiders to move into that very homogeneous and very respectable upper working class community. Well,  I can tell you we were not welcome - a so-called writer and his totally out of her depth wife and a very active, lively and difficult little boy. I remember one day when our son Philip was playing in what was then a dust bowl of a garden (later I turned it into a fantastic blaze of flowers just to show those old biddies who had made my life a misery) Mrs Baxter the wife of our 'sitting tenants' below had threatened him in some way saying that the police would take him away. Now Philip was a lively little boy but he never did anything destructive or naughty so you can imagine my distress when I went down to confront her? We came from another world and children were not threatened in that way. Class distinctions?

Mr. Baxter suffered from chronic bronchitis and we would hear him coughing away in the night. You remember that those houses were not sound proof in any way. There was one neighbour though who was very kind to me. The old lady next door in the upper flat used to knit wonderful jerseys for Philip for five shillings while I was laboriously knitting smaller ones for Karen.

I bought the house freehold for nothing in those days and with the rest of the money we lived on so that Mike could write his "Ginger Man". In actual fact we were very poor and had to live frugally. But how could the Broughton Road people understand that? When Philip was of an age to go to school he went to local primary school as did our daughter Karen.

The Wandsworth Bridge Road was a wonderful shopping place- fresh fish on a sloping slab of ice coated perfection and other very good green grocers not to mention the famous Co-op. I also remember the bakery Greenmans on the corner of Langford Road. Mrs Greenman was very kind to me and was always worried that her children might have a mother complex, as if we all don't! She gave me wonderful Jewish recipes. She was not happy in Fulham. All her relatives had made good from the East End and gone to live in villas in Golders Green. She always saved me a loaf of the wonderful black rye bread Mr Greenman produced to sell in carefully wrapped cellophane bags to posh West End delicatessens. He would be pounding his dough with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and the ash dribbling into the dough while listening to opera. Once I actually found a cigarette butt in my loaf of bread!

When we moved there there was still a bombed out waste land in front of the terrible gas works which spewed out its toxic fumes, and the famous Fulham Power Station with its four chimneys one could see at the other end of the road. Then the council houses were built on the waste ground and the occupiers were definitely looked down on by the Broughton Road residents. After the clean air act the gas works were painted in bright colours no doubt to cheer us up and hide the horrible past pollution.

On Guy Fawkes night there was a was a tremendous bonfire and a mass of fireworks set off. As usual, Philip had escaped us and gone to join the fun. We of course were terrified of a terrible injury which always happened to the children on that night so out I went to search for him. It was then that we decided we had to have our own Guy Fawkes in the garden, Also I was endlessly running up and down theroad knocking on doors to find out where Philip was because of his fascination with television. We had no idea what he was watching, as if it could really have been anything much in comparison with today! So once again we decided we had better have our own television.

We left Fulham because I was worried about my daughter Karen's chest and bronchitis and moved to the Isle of Man and fresh air. She and Philip went to the local village primary school. It was very good.

Now I live in Venezuela can you imagine?

Note: Valerie Heron-Lopez is the former wife of author and playwrite J.P. Donleavy. Read about him in Personalities.