Mum’s roses and my crowning indignity

WHEN I was 13 years old, in 1953, my family was lucky enough to own a car. The only downside to this was that my mum, a keen gardener, kept a bucket and shovel in the boot, and every time she spotted horse droppings in the street, she would stop the car.

It was my job to get out, scoop up the manure and put it in the boot to be taken home and dug in around Mum’s beloved roses.

To say I found it embarrassing is an understatement.

Two days before the Queen’s Coronation, Mum decided she would take me, my younger brother and two younger sisters to view the wonderfully decorated streets on the procession route.

To avoid traffic, she decided it would be best to do this late at night. Accordingly, at 11pm on Sunday, May 31, she bundled us into my doctor father’s Vauxhall Wyvern and set off from our home in Penge in South-East London.

Agog with excitement at this late-night adventure, we were thrilled to bits as we drove along the decorated streets and marvelled at the number of people who had already bagged their places on the pavements.

But, to my horror, as we drove down The Mall, Mum suddenly spotted mounds of horse droppings left behind by mounted troops.

I was instructed, as usual, to pick up as much of the manure as I could, much to the amusement, and banter, of the partying crowd on the pavement. It was the very last time I ever carried out that undignified chore.

Robert Readman, Bournemouth, Dorset.