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The Goalkeeper’s History of Britain

PETER CHAPMAN

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For Marie, Alex and Pepito,

my mum and dad,

Maria and Marie I.

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‘… a nation of goalkeepers’

Napoleon I, speaking of the British (later misquoted)

Contents

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At the top of the street was a stretch of waste ground, a memorial in bumps and ruts to where the barrage balloon had flown. There hadn’t been another one for miles. Attached by cable to an air force lorry, it was lowered during the day, my mum told me, to be checked for signs of damage and deflation by the two airmen in charge of it. They sent it up again at night, its job to deflect any bombers that had overshot their main targets of the City and the docks. It had played its part in what all reports said had been a determined and heroic defence.

Ten years after the end of the conflict, signs of it were all around. Numbers 8 and 10, which stood next to each other on the canal side of the street opposite us, were a half shell of their original selves. From a padlocked gate in the railings, steps ran down into a basement area virtually covered with rubble to the pavement level. The weed-and tree-strewn interiors were home to a colony of cats, large enough in size and number to scare off the packs of stray dogs that wandered the street and surrounding area. The cats were fed by Mrs Clements, the elderly lady who lived on the top floor of our house. Three times a day she would rattle down four flights of stairs and across the road with tins of sour-smelling liver and fish relayed to her on their bikes by the competing catsmeat men of Frome Street and Camden Passage. In anticipation of her first delivery of the day, the cats would yowl through the pre-dawn hours.

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