Disability Arts Online

The smell of tarmac,
new fresh tarmac on the road
is something I have remembered all my life. 
And it was the most wonderful smell.

It was, if you like it was like a horseshoe shaped road,
that came off of a main road,
so you came into Shanklin Road
and you could go down,
right down to the other end
and come back out on to
the same main road further down. 

People were very friendly
and they’d all come from different areas,
predominantly in London,
and they were a mix of people
from different walks of life
and different trades
and also different levels of wealth. 
The people who had money had TV aerials. 

And if you were really lucky as a kid,
you would get invited into another kid’s house
who had a TV, it was fantastic,
black and white TV, very tiny screens,
must have crippled our eyes,
but it was lovely, it was really wonderful.

So everything was really great there,
and we actually stayed there for three years.