My earliest and fondest memories are of our time spent living at number 1 Lauderdale Road in
Maida Vale, London. This grand old crumbling stucco fronted house, like so many of it's type,
had been divided up into a number of privately rented flats; ours was in the basement.
Looking back on it now through grown up eyes and old photographs, I can see that it was rather
more dreary than I remember, there was a distinct lack of colour.
Dad had tried his best to brighten the place up a bit, a massive wall hanging depicting a vague interpretation of Sir Edwin Landseer's 1851 painting, 'Monarch Of The Glen' hung imposingly
above the fireplace in the front room. Mum and Dad had bought it at one of the London markets and between them carried it all the way home.
Mum always hated it, but Dad said it was to give the children 'a view of the outside'.
Above us lived another young couple with their two children. On the surface they appeared to be far better off than we were. He was an artist and he'd inherited some wonderful pieces of old furniture from his late Italian father; a celebrated WW2 illustrator.
An exquisite Chinese lacquered cabinet stood in their light and airy sitting room which overlooked the street, it's intricate Mother Of Pearl detailing mesmerised all those who looked at it (me!).
A 'Baby Grand' piano dominated the space by the large bay window. Both the children took piano lessons, the sound of them practising 'chopstix' would filter down most evenings to our flat below.
The walls of the flat were hung with numerous paintings in fabulous gilded frames, many depicting ballerinas in various poses, painted in muted pastel shades.
Dad's wall hanging must have appeared pretty vulgar by comparison, but if they ever thought so,
they kept it to themselves.
Even though the flat above seemed much grander than ours we were still allowed to have fun.
I remember getting under an eiderdown during a game of 'Hide and Seek', it was as thick as a
mattress and as green as the most brilliant emerald. I was so tiny that I couldn't be found, I didn't want to be. I was lost in the smooth sumptuousness of the satin fabric; a vision of Mum spraying our itchy army surplus blankets furiously with moth killer, before taking off for our 6 weeks Summer holidays to Spain, invaded the deliciousness of the moment.
There was a wooden bench on the pavement outside the front of the house, it looked out onto a large
raised roundabout in the centre of the road which had been planted up with rose beds.
Every Summer the roses came into bloom, filling the space with a riot of colour, the pink roses
were always my favourites.
If the weather was good we would all play together in the garden upstairs at the front of the house. Often we would just sit on our bench and watch the world go by, if we were really lucky and the wind blew in the right direction, we could smell the roses.
The time came when 6 children into a 2 bedroomed flat just didn't go, it was time to move on.
Mum and Dad, who had been on the council waiting list for a number of years, had been allocated a brand new 4 bedroomed maisonette on a new housing estate in Victoria, we would be getting our very
own rooms. Well almost, I would be sharing a bedroom with my older sister.
Dad had asked us how we would like our room decorated.
My sister went for horses on her side and I chose pink roses for my half of the room, naturally!
Antoinette Satchell© 2011
