East Park Street top of Market Hill
Bob aka Kilburnlad
A bit about me
As you may have already read on the welcome page, my name is Bob and I take the pseudonym Kilburnlad for most of my web activities.
I was born in Carlton Vale, Kilburn. The cowboy picture was taken in the garden of 108, a house that no longer exists, as neither do most of the others that were there when I was a boy. There has been extensive redevelopment, which isn’t always a good thing.
I always wanted to be a cowboy when I was a young boy.
Kilburn
My childhood was one of freedom. From playing in the street around the house when I was very young, there being little traffic in the side roads, to venturing much further afield with our little gang when a bit older. During the school holidays it was nothing for us to walk to Hampstead Heath, or Primrose Hill, disappearing in the morning and not reappearing until late afternoon or evening. Parents didn’t worry and we enjoyed ourselves. A far cry from what most children experience these days.
The is me with a younger friend, Noel, who was from an Irish family, the Irish being a very much a feature of Kilburn. His older sister was my first love but I was too shy to tell her.
Old photos of my Kilburn
#1. A class at St John’s in my time
#2. Exterior of St John’s School
#3. The Grange Saturday morning cinema
#4. Granville Road Baths - swimming pool
#5. Granville Road Baths exterior
#6. Carlton Vale - my street
#7. St Johns & me next to teacher
Images may take a short while to load before slide show starts.
I follow a Facebook page, Kilburn 50s & 60s Group, and from time to time photos are posted that are very relevant to my younger days.
I’ve presented them as a slideshow, with brief captions.
St John’s C of E was my junior school. The seventh slide is actually of my class, with me next to the teacher. It was posted on a Willesden Local History Facebook page.
The baths and swimming pool were literally at the end of the road and meant that I learned to swim very early, and spent a lot of time there.
We always went to Saturday morning pictures at the Grange Cinema, and as you will see it was very popular with children in those days.
Education & career
My education:
Carlton Vale Infants
St John’s Church of England Junior
Salusbury Road Secondary (aged 11 - 13)
Willesden Secondary Technical School of Engineering (aged 13 - 16)
Willesden High (amalgamation of Willesden County Grammar and my technical school)
I then went to Brunel University (1967 - 71) where I studied Electrical Engineering.
A very serious looking Kilburnlad with a lot more hair in those days.
I didn’t pass the infamous 11+ examination. I’m not sure that anybody ever had at St. John’s junior school! Consequently, I chose to go to Salusbury Road secondary modern school.
In this 1960 school photo I’m fourth from the left in the second row, with a smile on my face.
I enjoyed my time at Salusbury Road but at 13 had the opportunity to take an examination for entry to a secondary technical school. Being interested in engineering, and all things practical, I decided to try for it.
I sometimes wonder how different my life would have been had I stayed at Salusbury Road. One of those big ‘what-ifs’ of life.
Having passed the 13+ exam I elected to go to a secondary engineerings school in Willesden. The catchment for the school was quite wide and I mingled with pupils who I wouldn’t have met had I remained in Kilburn. This was a positive experience.
This was the time when comprehensive schools were being established. As you can see from the summary above, the engineering school merged with the county grammar school while I was in the sixth form.
So I ended up going to a grammar school in the end!
I did a student apprenticeship with London Electricity and went on to work for it and its successor companies throughout my career.
Following the privatisation of the industry in 1989, London Electricity was to become part of a larger group, and over time expand even more. But not as London Electricity of course.
When I started, my patch was Hampstead, which was part of one London borough. When I left the company, which was at that time was owned by EDF Energy, it managed the electrical networks for almost the whole of the south east of England.
Technology
Computers have been a major interest ever since I bought a BBC model B in 1983. The revelation of writing my first simple program is something that will remain in my memory for ever.
Of course I eventually progressed to a PC but after some severe frustrations with Windows I migrated to Apple in 2008. As a consequence I now spend a lot less time sorting out computer and software problems. My iMac is very much a tool to get things done. And a very effective tool it is.
I also have a MacBook Air, iPhone and iPad, all beautifully synchronised through iCloud. Here I am in my study with the iMac and a second monitor, editing a fishing video.
I dabble in web design, as will be apparent from the fact you’re reading this on my web site.
I built and manage a site for my daughter’s Pilates business. It incorporates a membership system using the Sitelok software from Vibralogix. That got the grey cells working overtime!
In 2008 I launched a French at 60 website, in support of my book of the same title.
And more recently having started videoing my fishing trips, I built a Bob Goes Fishing site in support of my YouTube channel of the same name.
And another web project is Kilburnlad Photography, which was somewhat experimental when I built it, being my first project using the Source framework in RapidWeaver. It has recently been rebuilt and improved.
French
For some little understood reason the French language has always fascinated me. I had a brief period of corresponding with a pen-pal when I was about 13.
I also did two years of French at Salusbury Road school before moving to the technical school, where French wasn’t offered. However, in the first year of the sixth form a new teacher suggested to a few of us that we could take French for a year as some ‘light relief’ from our heavily technical A-level subjects. I took this opportunity and actually managed to pick up an O-Level, much to the teacher’s delight.
I didn’t take up French seriously until I retired in 2008. A few attempts to get back into the language before then really didn’t get me far past beginner level. I soon realised that going to a French class once a week wasn’t going to cut it. So I contacted French people over the internet to arrange verbal language exchanges. And for years since I have been speaking with them.
I continued to attend the French class and spent a lot of time listening to French but the most improvement in my speaking was due to the language exchanges. If you want to speak French you really need to speak with French people. I now can hold a conversation but am not natively fluent and have come to realise that I probably never will be. But I feel that I achieved my goal.
In 2018 I self-published a book entitled French at 60 as I thought it might help others looking for a challenge in retirement, or indeed anybody interested in learning to speak the language.