My Life with Wellington (ePub)

Eighty miles north of London, on the edge of the fenlands, home of Hereward the Wake and Cromwell, is the cathedral city of Peterborough. Lord Burleigh, when he refused to allow the railway to go through his estates, Stamford diverted it through Peterborough instead, so it also became an industrial city. I was born and raised there, sang in the church choir, rang the bell, played in a brass and coxed eights, enjoyed amateur theatre, and left for an architectural college at eighteen.

But I was not happy. I had seen nothing of the world or my fellow man and little of my fellow woman, and thought in consequence inadequate to design for others, so I left. To get a stake, I worked as a railway porter and took off for London where I managed to obtain a place in an architect’s office until summer came and I took my new bicycle to Paris. But lotuses or the fleur-de-lis were not my flowers, so eventually, I cycled back, nonstop, to Peterborough.

I joined Garfield Weston’s Fine-Fare supermarket company and ended up troubleshooting with the regional supervisor but discovered town planning. Unable to get a job in that field, I passed a war office selection board for officer training and disappeared to Aldershot, but just in time, a place at Durham University for town planning came up, and I was able to go. But the costs were not covered, and I had to cut it short, not even able to find work that far north to switch to part time

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