Back in England after father had been demobbed from the navy, we embarked as a family on a tour of Kent where we were ceremoniously ejected from a caravan park in St-Nicholas-at-Wade for non-payment of rent, invited to leave for the same reason from a one-bedroomed flat in Margate near the harbour, and then condemned to three months incarceration in a hostel for the homeless in West Malling before finding a semi-permanent base in the bomb site that was Gillingham.

Above is the archway our family sheltered in overnight down near Tivoli Dykes after being ejected from the flat in Margate as it was too late to visit the welfare office until the next morning. Just think, if I sell enough books they might put a plaque up there one day.

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As usual it was the time I spent in the cinema that impressed me the most, the films released in 1960 some real classics of the silver screen.  Here’s a double-bill my dad took me to see, the main film “Dinosaurus!” getting me into an altercation with a kid at school who maintained that as it had an “X” certificate I wasn’t old enough to have seen it. He reinforced his position by then punching me in the face. However, if you look closely you can see it has an “A” and not an “X” certificate. I rest my case your honour. “The Mole People” scared the living crap out of me though.

If there’s one film from that year which stands out as a highlight of my cinema-going career then it has to be “Ben-Hur”, the daddy of all Hollywood epics. My mum took me to the Ritz cinema in Chatham where it was shown in 70mm. It’s difficult to convey the impression the film made on audiences back in the day so all I’ll say is this. If you’ve only ever managed to watch the famous chariot race sequence from “Ben-Hur” on TV as opposed to a giant cinema screen then you’ve not really seen the film, just a visual palimpsest* of the original version. 

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Here are a few images I purloined from a brochure you could buy in the cinema about the making of the film. My mum didn’t have enough money at the time to purchase it but now, after only sixty years, I’ve finally managed to get my own copy through the magic of Ebay. Note John LeMesurier to the left of Charlton Heston in the last image. He played the doctor who’s just informed the villain Messala, played by Stephen Boyd, that unless they saw off both arms and both legs he’s going to die as a result of having been trampled under Ben’s chariot. Personally I’d have asked for a second opinion.

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Other movies that come to mind from 1960 include those shown above, “The Magnificent Seven” another of my all-time favourite Westerns. 

Finally, a big shout-out to another biblical epic, “The Ten Commandments”. This started  

a family tradition in which my parents would send me off to the cinema with a couple of my siblings without ensuring that we had enough money to actually get in and see the bloody film in the first place. 

* Something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form. My thanks to Umberto Eco for introducing me to a term I’ve been waiting years for an opportunity to use. My work here is now done.

The year 1959 got off to a great start when I found myself along with my three-year-old brother and one-year-old sister sequestered in a children’s home in Kent. I turned seven whilst there and in general we were looked after quite well. Having said that the image above shows a copy of “The Vikings” comic my dad sent me in the post that one of the carers ripped apart in front of me in disgust. Considering what usually happens in some children’s homes I’d say I got off pretty lightly.

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The home was just a few stops down the railway line from where my Gran lived. She was in total ignorance of the fact we were nearby but the rather grainy photo shown above from a local newspaper taken in April of that year gave the game away and before we knew it we were on our way to bonny Scotland to be reunited with our parents. Looking at the photograph more closely I think we had a pretty lucky escape. That huge Easter egg in the middle looks more and more like it’s housing a face-hugger from “Alien” every time I look at it.

We ended up living in South Queensferry just a few miles outside of Edinburgh on the Firth of Forth. I took a trip back to the town a few years ago and the school I went to is still there although the cinema I used to frequent has now been converted into flats.

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Here follows a few of the films I saw during my stay in South Queensferry including “Rio Bravo” which on occasion vies with “The Searchers” as my all-time favourite Western.

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We finally caught up with the rest of the world and got our very first television set whilst living in Scotland. The most memorable program at the time was an early Gerry Anderson  puppet show called “Torchy the Battery Boy”. As you can surmise from the images below it was the stuff of nightmares, especially for a severely disturbed young Sassenach like me. Also, the program was so badly produced it made Anderson’s next effort, “Four Feather Falls”, look like “Citizen Kane” in comparison.

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This is my final “Maynards” blog for 2020. Normal service will be renewed in early January, although after the events of this year I’m not sure what constitutes normal anymore.

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year!

This is me in 1958 safely back in Blighty in Chatham, Kent, after spending two years in Malta. As you can see the Mediterranean diet did wonders for my teeth. Also, due to spending most of my waking hours in the sun I appear to have morphed from a stereotypical little English boy into a culturally appropriated Mexican kid called Pedro. You know the kind, the one you usually see in cowboy films hanging around town and waiting for the next stranger to appear so they can offer to look after his horse for a couple of pesos and a feel of his gun (although I might have misremembered that last bit).

Oh yes, I almost forgot. I Ieft for Malta as an only child and came back with a brother and a sister. I only asked my mum and dad for one of each but over time the family expanded to include six children, me, three brothers and two sisters. That’ll teach me to keep my stupid mouth shut.

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There were two picture houses directly opposite each other on Chatham High Street, the ABC Regent, and the much bigger Ritz. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. It was at the Ritz that I discovered the delights of Saturday morning pictures where I got to see classic serials such as “Captain Marvel” and “King of the Rocket Men” whilst watching the same kid go up on the stage every week and claim a free ice lolly on account of it was his birthday yet again.

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There were so many films to choose from at the time and I got to catch most of them, “going to the pictures” being at least a twice-weekly national event in those days seeing as television was still in its infancy. In real terms this meant that, in December 1958 for instance, I could see “Tom Thumb” at the Regent one week, in the process dreamily falling in love with the actress June Thorburn as the Forest Princess, and then in the same week pop across the road to the Ritz with my parents to take a look at “The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw”, a comedy Western starring Kenneth More and Jayne Mansfield. I must confess that the sight of Jayne’s pneumatic charms barely contained within the confines of a large Cinemascope screen meant I very quickly forgot about English rose Ms. Thorburn back over the road in the Regent like the fickle swine that I was.

My mum was a big Kenneth More fan so she took me to see “The Admirable Crichton” at the Ritz where I asked in a very loud voice to a crowded audience how come his legs had grown back after losing them in “Reach for the Sky”. That was still the level of my understanding as to how the mechanics of film worked. Give me a break though. I was only six. And an idiot.

Check the following link out for further info on the Chatham Ritz cinema:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wetXtjFnHmQ

When I was four-years-old we moved to Malta and ended up living in Birkirkara which is apparently the second biggest town on the island. According to the internet it currently boasts 24,356 inhabitants. In 1956 there was just me, my mum and dad, a thieving git of an islander who stole my cowboy outfit at Christmas, and a dead dog. My waking hours were spent in a small cinema in the town that had a roof which miraculously retracted during the evening to cool the place down. It was in this picture house that I embarked upon a lifelong passion and obsession for film which I have used over the years as a shield to protect me from the pandemonium and uncertainty of real life. And long may that continue.

Here are some of the movies I saw at the time that have remained permanently imprinted on my retina for over sixty years which means I can rewatch them anytime I want to. It’s also cheaper than buying the DVD.

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As you can see John Wayne films were all the rage back in the 1950s and “The Searchers” was the best of them. The film made such an impact on me when I saw it in 1956 that I later sold off one of my children for medical experimentation in order to buy a genuine copy of the poster you see above. Don’t think badly of me though – I still call him every Christmas.

Here is a selection of some of the images from my early childhood that have somehow miraculously survived the journey through the chaos of my life.

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The photo above on the left was taken when I was one year old with my mum, who is about twenty-one at the time. Check out the groovy apron, which was mandatory back in the 1950s. The photo on the right looks like it was taken around the same time, me with my Nan outside her house in Dumpton Park in Kent. I used to love going to see her as she lived not far from Ramsgate which meant we were going to spend the day at the beach.

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Here I am on the left at about a year later with my auntie Brenda, my mum’s sister. We’re on a narrow-gauge railway that ran between Ramsgate and Dumpton Park. In between the stations the train travelled through a very long tunnel, the darkness lit occasionally with second-hand illuminations bought from Blackpool. It’s just recently been reopened – Covid restrictions permitting of course – and is well worth a gander if you happen to be in the area. In the photo on the right I think I may be wearing the very shoes that let me down the day I tried to escape the jaws of a killer tortoise. And if that doesn’t intrigue you enough to make you rush out and buy the book then I don’t know what will.

The image above shows me at the age of three, forced to model a cardigan and a nifty pair of shoes for a toddlers clothing catalogue.

I never saw a penny.

Finally, the poster from a film I saw when I was very young, the earliest memory I have of  going to the cinema with my parents. As I mention in the book I thought that’s where the kids actually lived and I wanted to stay in the cinema with them. In some ways I’m not sure I ever left the place, certainly not mentally anyway.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the first of what I hope will be one of many posts I aim to create in order to accompany the publication of my thinly-veiled biography “The Maynards of Margate”. This is my very first attempt at trying to write, create and post a blog so bear with me whilst I try to master the art of modern-day online publishing and the intricacies of social media promotion.

All books have a starting point and “The Maynards of Margate” began back in 2016 when, whilst boring my three grown-up children with a story from my childhood for the umpteenth time, my eldest daughter rolled her eyes and said ‘Oh for God’s sake, get the violins out’. And that’s how it all began. I wrote a draft version under that title purely for family and acquaintances and then, with the encouragement of friend and mentor Mark Stay, successful novelist and scriptwriter extraordinaire and all-round good guy to boot, I expanded the original version into a longer book, adding a few more chapters along the way. A lot of the names have been changed to avoid litigation but essentially this is the story of my childhood as I remember it.

If you like my memoir then please recommend it to all your friends. If you don’t then keep it to yourself. After all, I’m trying to sell some books here.

PS. I’ll be posting a new blog each week based on each chapter. Hope you enjoy them.