It has got windows with curtains, a front door, a table,  chairs and crockery. And, best of all, it's got a fireplace and chimney which work so that you can have a real fire. It's built of brick and tile, just like a real house. Dad built it for my sister, for her seventh or eighth birthday, before I was even born. He pretended he was building a garden shed so that she never realised exactly what he was doing. Sheila doesn't play in it much now because she is 17. I do, though. And of course on the swing, ever so often.

Back to the bike picture.  If you look at the end of the lawn, which I have my back to, you can see a small tree. Its a cherry tree. Not much good because the cherries are called Morello cherries and they are used for cooking. They look lovely but they aren't sweet. I think Dad must have made a mistake when he planted it. The blackbirds are always very happy with it, though.

But just past that little tree you can just see some flat things on the ground and I have mentioned these before. These are covers over the steps which lead down to our air raid shelter. We call it THE DUGOUT. Dad built it before the air raids started. I can just remember him doing it in the winter of 1938/1939. It's about my earliest memory. It all started with a huge hole and I can still see Dad standing at the bottom of it, making the walls out of concrete and big pieces of something called wire mesh. I know Graham helped him as well although not on that day. We haven't used it for ages now and it's a bit wet and smelly. I'm not sure whether we shall have to use it again. Birmingham hasn't had an air raid in ages. But the doodlebugs are falling in London. Dad is worried about them in case the Germans start aiming them at Birmingham. What he says is that the further they have to fly, the less accurate they will be. So, if they are aimed at the middle of the Birmingham, by the time they reach here they may have wandered off in any direction and then fall absolutely anywhere - including about six or seven miles away which is where Streetly is. I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to worry about this. It's just something else. But I'd rather not start having to sleep in the dugout again.

I'll also show you this picture of my sister in almost the same place. It was taken eight years ago, in 1936. On the same day as the other colour pictures. By then they had got me but of course I was only a baby and can't remember anything about that day. No cherry tree yet and certainly no dugout.

Funny how the old log has got turned up on its end in the bike picture from last March. Probably to use as a bird table.  In the earlier picture it was used like it is here, just for sitting on.

In this picture of the Wendy House, you can see just DAD'S FISHPOND as well. (As well as all the catmint).

No fish in it at the moment but plenty of newts and frogs and snails and water beetles and things like that. Some of them live on the surface and glide around on it.  Little beetles, other insects with long legs.  Looks like they are skating.  I wonder why they don't sink. I like playing there and looking down deep into the water and watching what's going on under the surface. The water is ever so clear and Dad says it's the snails that do that. Sometimes I catch something with a net, to look at for a moment or two and then put back. Now and then a big black beetle comes up from the very bottom, has a gulp of air and then zooms back down again. There are some pretty horrible things in there as well.  Like this one. They tell me that some of these turn into beautiful dragonflies eventually but I can't understand how that can happen.  They are just monsters that kill tadpoles. If they were even bigger they would be really very frightening.

At this end of the pond, you can just see something sticking up.  It's a concrete fish with ruby-red buttons for eyes. Another of Dad's efforts.  There's a pipe sticking out of its mouth. They tell me that, once upon a time, water poured out of it. I would love to see that happen again, but it won't and I've always been really disappointed that it doesn't work any more.  Dad told me why it doesn't. There's a pipe running all the way back up the garden, underground. It connects at the other end to a big rainwater tank at the back of the garage. The tank collects water off the roof of the wooden garage (which Dad built as well, of course!) down the side of the house. But this pipe has got bunged up or damaged or something and so it stopped working ages ago. Dad says he'll never be able to find out what's wrong with it and so there the fish stays, with something like a cigarette sticking out of its mouth and no water coming out of it ever again.

It was probably working when I was two. But I don't remember it and I do wish it could be got working again. And there's something else from then which I don't remember either. But Mum and Dad do and my brother and sister do as well and they often talk about it. One summer's day all of us were in the garden, each doing different things. What I was doing was falling in the pond. Everyone else was busy and didn't notice. Eventually my brother realised something was wrong, rushed over and dragged me out.  I looked like a drowned rat, he said. I think he probably saved my life. So now, from ever since I can remember, the pond has had bars over it and wire netting on top. Dad hasn't got around to taking it off yet but I expect he will, eventually. I could get out myself, now, if I ever fell in again.

I love the pond and spend a lot of time playing near it.  Our dog "Rex" loves to sit by it too, near the catmint, and eat his bone unless Dad is taking a picture of him.

I haven't got a picture of it, but most of the garden near the pond is vegetables, now. Spuds and cabbages and carrots and things.  They call it "Digging for Victory". Dad does most of this but Mum is good at hoeing and likes to do it.  I even do a bit of that myself, sometimes.  We've got a smaller hoe which I can use.

I'll just tell you one final thing about the lovely garden Dad has made for us.

Almost all the stuff in it - the Wendy House, the swing, the fishpond, the paths, the trees and the roses and all the other flowers - was done for my Mum and my brother and sister. I wasn't around then. But I suppose the air-raid shelter was built partly for me and there is now one other thing. It has been done over the last few months and is just for me. For no one else. You can see it on the left of the bike picture. It looks like A TINY RAILWAY TRACK, at the edge of the lawn. I'll tell you a little story about that.

Dad has been busy with the Home Guard for ages and ages. One of the days they meet - or "parade" as he puts it - is Sunday mornings. So normally he's never at home then. But one Sunday morning, a bit of time ago, he wasn't on duty and he took me to the house of a friend of his. Don't know if he is another Home Guard bloke or someone he has a pint with at the Hardwick. Or perhaps even both. I wish I knew his name. Anyway, this man lives in Hardwick Road, Streetly, in one of those lovely houses with a nice back garden with lawns and flower beds and beyond them, woodland with trees and ferns and bushes. All part of the garden. I've seen one or two others like it. My Mum's knitting group sometimes used to meet in one of them. I'd be taken as well, if it was the school holidays, and play in the garden while all the ladies sat inside and knitted mittens and scarves and balaclava helmets for the troops and nattered. There was always a nice tea although sometimes there was seed cake and I didn't like that much. The gardens were great for exploring. This garden is just the same. But what this man has done is to build a beautiful model railway in the woodland. Probably done before the war but still OK. All raised above ground, with bridges and tunnels and cuttings, threading in and out of the trees and bushes. It was simply great! And there were lots of engines. Basset-Lowke steam locos chuffing around the track. Some clockwork too. I had a wizard time.

All this inspired Dad. He started to build a single line around our back lawn. He used concrete and brass curtain rail. And did it a bit at a time, when he had an hour to spare to mix some concrete and do another couple of yards.  It took him quite a long time and it slowly got longer and longer. The picture shows one bit of it. It now stretches all round the lawn and that is exactly the distance one winding up will take a Hornby clockwork engine. This is the sort of loco I can run on it. I have had one exactly like that in a set since when I was quite little, before the war. It's all great fun. I'm starting to use my brother's Hornby on it as well. He doesn't know yet and I hope he won't mind. It's a pity there isn't a loco in that picture but I'm enjoying my new bike too much. 

And so what looks like a little railway track in the picture at the top really IS a little railway track.

We'll leave the garden now.  You've probably had enough of hearing about it. Anyway it's nearly autumn now and things are dying off.  All the runner beans have been picked. The petals of the red poppies fell off months ago and the whiskery leaves are going brown and scruffy.  Some of the lupins still have one or two flowers but mainly there's just furry seed pods. But the Michaelmas daisies are out now and we have apples on the three trees which are getting riper and riper - mine, Graham's and Sheila's.  Mine's a Cox's Orange Pippin. And the catmint seems to go on for ever. I hope I shall always remember Dad's garden when I grow up.  If I do, it'll probably always be summer because that's what the colour pictures will tell me. And I must never forget that it was Dad who did it all - for us to play in, to have flowers to look at and to have vegetables to eat in wartime. And for his older children to relax in, as they grew up - to sit in and enjoy the sunshine on a summer's morning and eat their toast and drink their tea or cocoa or Nescafé.

That was nine or ten years ago, now, before I was around. But it still looks the same.

I'll just show you one last picture. I'm only doing this because, as I've said, Dad is in it and he's the one that made the garden and all the wonderful things in it. (Probably with a bit of help from my big brother, whether he wanted to or not).  You never see Dad, normally, because he's always the one taking the picture. It's summer 1941, I'm five, I have nearly grown out of my pedal car and we've used the dugout lots of times.  Dad has got a bit of time in the garden and all his flowers are coming out again.  He will have been ever so pleased.

Thanks, Dad.

**********

As always, there's a lot happening in THE WIDE WORLD, beyond us here in Streetly and Sutton. I told you last week that we have now liberated Paris, Brussels and Antwerp. The day before yesterday lots of our paratroops dropped into Holland, at a place called Arnhem. And every night the RAF go on bombing German cities.