Have Love Will Travel

The sun is shining,the day is looking promising and the clan is off to Coventry. Today we are embarking on a mystery tour of Coventry. We are supplied with a map and have to find clues as we go on a tour of Coventrys best tourist attractions. I am hoping the city has not changed too much and I will be able to recognise my old haunts from fifty years ago.

I was born in the suburb of Aldermans Green which was minutes from the slough which was really just a big pond where you could hire boats in the summer. Today it looks so small but as a child it looked huge. I attended primary school in Windmill road and on the way to school we would walk past the milk processing plant. The dairy was where they bottled the milk for the shops and households. It always permeated with a distinctive smell,which is hard to describe. It was not unpleasant but it was unique to the dairy. I would walk to school with my brother and every morning we would take the short cut past the dairy. When the new primary school was built in the same street I resides in I moved to a modern,clean prefab school. I only attended this school for one year as my parents had purchased a new home in Wyken.

Wyken was a middle class area, although we still lived in a terraced house it was so much more modern than the home we left. Mum spent the next twelve years renovating and improving the property. Mum was very modern and we always had the latest fashionable furniture,curtains, light fittings and whatever was the desirable addition to the modern home. My dad always had a hammer,screwdriver, drill or some tool in his hand. We wallpapered at least every two years. It was a lovely home and I spent the next thirteen years living there until like I my parents had done two years prior I emigrated to Australia. We spent so many happy hours at 98 Clovelly road.

Coventry city in the fifties and sixties was a modern city. Heavily bombed in the war,it was completely rebuilt after the war and was one of the first cities to have a traffic free precinct for shopping. Coventry was famous for its car industry,we made Jaguar cars and had a thriving silk ribbon business. We had many car producing factories and produced motorcycles of note. Today Coventry is a shell of its former self. All the car factories bar Jaguar are gone. Japan,Korea,China and Spain now make cheaper cars which are world class.

So just a short overview of Coventry before we embark on our day of sunshine and mystery.....Read more