TENDING my roses earlier this week, I was transported back to my childhood.

As a 13-year-old in 1953 (one of six children) we were lucky enough, our father being a doctor, to be one of the few families at that time with a car.

The only downside to this was the fact that my mum, a keen gardener, kept a metal bucket and coal shovel in the boot of the car and every time she spotted horse droppings min the street she would stop and it was my job (as the eldest of the four children still at home) to get out of the car, scoop up the manure and put it in the boot to be taken home and dug in around mum’s precious roses.

To say I found the task embarrassing is an understatement.

However, the crowning indignity (pun intended) occurred when, two days before the Queen’s coronation, mum decided that she would take me, my younger brother and two younger sisters, to view the wonderfully decorated streets on the coronation procession route.

To avoid traffic, she came to the conclusion that it would be best to do this late at night.

Accordingly at 11pm on Sunday, May 31 (the coronation was to be on Tuesday, June 2) she bundled the four of us into my father’s Vauxhall Wyvern (I remember the registration to this day - MKJ 716) and set off from our home in Penge for central London.

Agog with excitement at this late-night adventure, we were thrilled to bits as we drove along the gaily decorated streets and marvelled at the number of people who had already ‘bagged’ their places on the pavements lining the coronation route.

But to my horror, as we drove down The Mall, mum suddenly spotted mounds of horse droppings - probably left behind by mounted troops rehearsing for the parade.

Despite my protests I was instructed, as usual, to remove the bucket and shovel from the boot and pick up as much of the manure as I could - much to the amusement of, and inviting good-natured, but nevertheless embarrassing comments from the partying crowd on the pavement.

It was a long time before I forgave my mother for subjecting me to that ordeal and, indeed, it was the very last time I ever carried out that undignified chore.

ROBERT READMAN

Norwich Avenue West, Bournemouth

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