1950s North-east England
Though this is about the author, it also describes the world Miss Riddell was living in.
Growing up in 1950s and 1960s northeast England was good for small boys. Parents and other adults weren’t into micro-managing the way they’ve become in the decades since. Though I was born in the city, we lived out in the country where the hospital my father worked at, as a nurse, was located. Country life gave me an enduring fascination with plants and animals that has never waned. Everywhere I go in the world, my first interest is the countryside I’m visiting.
Nature back then taught me lots of interesting things, such as, if you try to break up wasp’s nests, the wasps fight back and it’s painful. Or, if you dam a stream, and the land is flat enough, the water backs up and overflows across your neighbors’ gardens. This last example may also have begun my interest in engineering, or at least learning how things work, for dams are harder to build than they look.
While we spent almost all the daylight hours outside, when it grew dark, we were indoors. My family didn’t have TV until 1961 so entertainment was radio and books. Huddled around the one coal fire, which was in the living room, evenings were spent imagining myself in the air with Biggles, or on a desert island with Robinson Crusoe. Reading was everything for me then and for the most part, it still is.
