Bradbury Lane Memories - Alan Baker

Memories grow dim and sometimes we need to jog the old brain box to remember things. I wanted something to show future generations of my family something of what it was like when I was young. I wanted to let them know I had another life before I got old and fuddy duddy.

I looked round to find photos of the houses and surrounding areas where I was born and raised. Unfortunately there were very few if any around. For instance most family photos were taken down the garden or with a pretty bush as a back drop..

I decided to try and draw what I remembered. This was not as easy as I thought it would be.

I am a reasonable draughtsman when required as I have earned my living drawing plans and producing bills of quantities. However what I wanted was something with a bit more feeling to it. For a time I gave it up as a bad job.

I semi-retired around the year 2000 and took a small job as a sort of security and odd job man near Vauxhall Bridge in London. Part of that job was to man the main switch board for a few hours. It was a pretty boring job and I started to fill in the time by drawing cartoons and sketches.

The sketches used to disappear and I assumed that it was the cleaner throwing them away. To my puzzlement I found that an American bloke was collecting my drawings and sending them home. So after that I did something that I was pleased with I started to save the drawings. Nothing spectacular but some of the drawings were of my childhood days and I felt that some of them captured the feel of the times.

I worked with a lot of Northern and Midlands blokes and some of them liked my drawings saying that they remembered places like that. I gave a lot of pictures away but hung on to the ones I liked best.

Now years later, for better or worse, I have brought a few of them together