North Finchley and Beyond Book

After David Golton died in December 2000 his sister Yvonne gathered together some of the articles she and her brother had written over the years for their own pleasure and entertainment and that of their family. These articles chronicle their lives in a bygone era. North Finchley and Beyond is a collection of some them into what Yvonne describes as a joint autobiography. The book is written in three parts. Part 1 is Yvonne's lively description of family life and growing up in the nineteen twenties and thirties when North Finchley was still semi-rural. Young Yvonne would be sent to the farm for a jug of milk with some trepidation at the possibility of meeting the cows on their way back from the fields. The muffin man came by on Sunday afternoons with a tray of muffins on his head, ringing a handbell to advertise his wares. Yvonne recalls the familiar sight of the rag and bone man's horse and cart and the knife-grinder with his big stone wheel. In Part 2 David tells his own story of his childhood and subsequent ervice in the Royal Navy. He also spent an interesting year in Antarctica as a meteorologist. "In the early morning of 18th December 1947," he wrote, "twenty- seven strangers started gathering at Tilbury aboard the newly commissioned John Biscoe expedition ship of the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey." They were welcomed aboard by their leader Dr Vivian Fuchs, and after two months of cebergs and rough and rolling seas David arrived at a small four-man base on the Argentine Islands, the dog training base for the expedition. Part 3 is a sequel to "Have You Got Your Irons?" (Yvonne Peters,Greenridges Press, 2004), as Yvonne continues her story and tells of her return to Civvy Street after she was demobbed from the WAAF.Read More