"When does childhood start? Does it begin with one's first memory? If it does then mine started sometime in 1930 when I dragged a chair across the living room and up to the guard which protected me from the blazing fire in the open range.

Laboriously I climbed up it and stood on tiptoe trying to reach the forbidden sweets on the mantelpiece. All would have been well if I hadn't glanced down into the naked flames which, no longer screened from my gaze by the wire mesh, looked very very uninviting. I screamed, my mother rushed in and lifted me to safety before I toppled over. Still, it was a minor triumph. I couldn't reach the sweets anyway and she gave me one to stop me crying.

My childhood couldn't have started then of course. I was already about three years old but the bit before the fire/sweets incident I can't remember. I had surprised everybody by walking at nine months and hearing my mother tell the story for years afterwards I used to think that if it was that special an effort should have been made to engrave it on my memory. Perhaps they did but it's not logged in my data bank.

So if this is going to be an autobiography of sorts then l'll have to go back to where I came from and how it came to pass that having been born at the then family home of 51 Azenby Road, Peckham, South London on 26th August 1927 by the time of the fire/sweets incident the family was living in rural Mid-Wales. Let's call this the pre-childhood chapter.

My father Herbert John Hodgson was a printer, having followed his father into the trade. Herbert John was born in Dragon Road, Camberwell, South London in 1893. Just as he finished his apprenticeship in 1914 so World War 1 started, and being in the Territorial Army, he was immediately pressed into service.

In fact he used to tell the story that he and his unit were going to summer camp (it was August) and had marched up to Victoria station and mustered on the concourse when a dispatch rider suddenly roared into the station and handed a sealed envelope to the CO. He opened and read the contents, called for silence and gravely told them and any civilians who happened to be there, that war had been declared. The summer camp was immediately cancelled.

After three years on the Western Front in France and Belgium, going over the top twice and being wounded on two occasions, he emerged at the end with deafness in one ear and nerves shot to pieces by shell-shock. But he used to say he was one of the lucky ones.

Before the war he had met a girl called Rebecca Jane Moore from Bermondsey. Becky was born in 1895 and worked in Lazenby's pickle factory in Tower Bridge Road where she wore wooden clogs and a leather apron to protect her feet and clothes from the vinegar sloshing about the floor.<./p>

When home on leave during the war he used to meet her every evening outside the factory. They were married at the Church of St Mary Magdalene, Southwark in 1917. My elder brother Herbert (Bert) was born in 1919 and my sister Lilian in 1921.

Work in my father's trade was intermittent and he went jobbing. This entailed cycling up to union headquarters in Blackfriars each morning and, with luck, finding a few days or sometimes two or three weeks, work with a printing company which needed temporary staff.K

One such firm was W H Smith and Son in Southwark where he worked long enough at one time to qualify for being included in a photograph of the whole workforce and did enough to be noticed for his skill by a Smith's director C H St John Hornby.

Sometime in 1923 he was sent by the union to an address in Westbourne Terrace, Paddington where, he had been told, there was three weeks work available. The three weeks was in fact a trial period which my father passed and this led to three years continuous employment working for Colonel T E Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) printing the first edition of Lawrence's book The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Not long after the completion of The Seven Pillars during which time the quality of the production and printing had aroused much attention my father, now back to jobbing again, received an approach from Robert Maynard, the controller of the Gregynog Press in Tregynon, Montgomeryshire.

The Gregynog was seeking a skilled pressman and Dad was recommended to Maynard by St John Hornby of W H Smith. A month's trial at Gregynog was agreed upon and this took place in early1927. It proved satisfactory and Dad was offered a three-year renewable contract. After consulting my mother (who was already carrying me) back in London he accepted and went straight back to Wales.

My mother, Bert, Lilian and I followed a few months later. It must have been October 1927 because I was always told that I was six weeks old when I was taken to Wales.

The Gregynog was a private press set in a mansion called Gregynog Hall in the tiny village of Tregynon, Montgomeryshire. Three miles away was another village named Bettws Cedewain and it was here that the family home was established and where I spent the first nine years of my life. The name of the village is derived from Bettws meaning church and Cedewain being the district in which it is situated.

Bettws lies on the B4389 about six miles north of Newtown and probably came into being as a convenient spot at which to ford the Bechen Brook, a tributary of the River Severn. The road runs parallel to the brook for a mile or so before you turn a right-hand bend and cross a stone bridge and then suddenly you are in the village street. Blink a couple of times and you are right through the village and out in the country again.

The move to rural Wales from the environs of South London must have been pretty traumatic for my parents and particularly for my mother. Dad had his work which he loved and took great pride in but Mum found herself transplanted suddenly into a tiny community far removed from the hustle and bustle of London. And tiny it was. About a dozen houses, church, chapel, two shops, two pubs, a working mill, blacksmith, cobbler, wheelwright, school and farm, six miles from the nearest town of any size, Newtown, reached via a twice-weekly bus service.

Instead of being able to walk to the Walworth Market for her everyday shopping or window shop along Peckham Rye my mother had little choice except to buy what she could in Andrews' village store, meat from Walter Phillips' van twice a week when it called on its round from Tregynon and milk from Bettws Hall farm, fetched each day by my brother Bert.

Each Wednesday she would catch Davies's bus to Newtown and no doubt pretend she was back in London for a few hours, walking along streets with actual shops.

Apparently the ladies of the village went out of their way to help my mother but she was subjected to some pressure to attend religious services and to choose between church and chapel. Not wishing to give any offence she very diplomatically went to both each Sunday, church in the morning and chapel in the evening.

Not so my father who spurned both and went cycling on Sundays. He used to say that everything was so quiet in those days that he could hear the sound of church bells before ever coming into sight of the village from which they emanated. Sometimes he'd cycle to Chirbury about twelve miles away and just across the English border.

When approached from Wales the first building in the town was a pub where he'd have a pint of ale with others who had temporarily emigrated from the drink-free Welsh Sabbath.

Our house was semi-detached and owned by the Hind family who lived in the other half. Daniel Hind was a gardener at Gregynog Hall, his wife was the village postmistress and their son Arthur the village cobbler.

The red Post Office van called each day and left the post with Mrs Hind who would deliver it to all recipients living within the confines of the village. Those who lived on farms and smallholdings outside the village boundaries picked it up from her house when attending church or chapel on Sunday.

Another faint memory I have is of clutching Mrs Hind's hand and accompanying her as she delivered the post round the village.

I had become a favourite of hers since toddling into her house not long after I had started to walk. I couldn't pronounce my name very well when she asked me and what came out was interpreted by her as 'Bonzo' and that's what she called me ever after.

Before I was old enough to deliver the post with her each day she would take me out to her chicken run and let me scatter the corn for them. I can remember attempting to eat the corn but it was raw and hard as nails and I spat it out in disgust. I wondered what the chickens saw in it.

My parents had two more sons after me, David and Ivor, both given Welsh names and born in 1930 and 1931 respectively. In due course each toddled into Mrs Hind's and received the honour of a nickname, Twt for David and Iffy for Ivor. Twt is pronounced to rhyme with foot and means small and Iffy is a Welsh version of Ivor.

I have a vague memory of Mrs Hind dressing up in some sort of uniform for the mail delivery each morning and carrying a leather bag stuffed with letters. Whether I expressed a desire to have a uniform I don't know but what I do remember is that one Christmas she presented me with a child's postman's outfit which she had sent away for and which I was very proud to wear on our morning round."

Article written by Bernard Hodgson