My Sentimental Journey. By Uncle Monty.

My Sentimental Journey

Back Home After 50 Years.

By Uncle Monty.

Highbury Photos

By Alex Albion.
~ . ~
Sentimentality always abides with me.

It's in my blood, my bones, my life, and my soul.
And even more so when I recently obtained, after

51 years, my dad’s 1959 British death certificate

that I found as a result of my own five-year

internet search to finally discover at where,

when, and how, he died at age 53. Sadly, I

have not been able to find any kind of image of

him save for what is in my long family memory

of him. I was a mere lad when he suddenly died

from Coronary Atheroma while on his way to

be operated on at London's Prince of Wales'

General Hospital. I was never to see him again!
~ . ~

View of Our Home At Highbury Today.

~ . ~
I learned more personal details about my dad's

life from his death certificate than I ever knew

about him from over 50 years ago since his pre-

mature death on Twenty-Seventh of April, 1959.

I learned what he did for a living. I learned that

he was adopted by the J. T. Montgomrie Family

of Lexington, Kentucky, when he was just over one

year old in 1907. Later he moved to Alberta, Canada,

to stay with my Canadian great grand-parents. When

he was 20, he headed back to Scotland at his home town

of Glasgow. He then joined the Royal Engineers and was

later stationed in the Midlands when he married my

mom, who was of old Welsh Congregationalist stock.

My dad was of Scottish Episcopal stock, but when

he and my mom married in The Church of England

they became proudly Anglican and my brothers and

my sisters and me were then reared in the same faith.

And, not one of them ever married outside our

English faith. Bravo!!!

~ . ~

I also learned that the Coroner Alan P. L. Cogswell

certified my dad's death "after post-mortem without

inquest." I learned, too, from the death certificate,

the old address at where he and my mom and

my seven siblings once lived at 19 Highbury

Grange, London N.5.
~ . ~

Street Sign for Highbury Grange, N.5

~ . ~

So off I went to Highbury Grange. I went

last Saturday to see the place after not seeing

the old homestead from more than 5o years

ago. As I stood outside and surveyed my boy-

hood home, I suddenly could not help myself

from my tears that overflowed with utter sad-

ness at seeing my lost home again. I remember

the place so well and like has if I had only been

there just yesterday instead of five long decades

ago or over half century to be exact. I was in a

state of mourning now and recalled my joy of

living there with my dad, mom, and my five

brothers and two sisters, who have all since

passed away except for my same

age brother in America.
~ . ~

Unkept, shabby, and rotting now was the

Highbury property that my dad bought in 1951

for about 2,000 quid with three floors and

plenty of room for us growing kids back then.

The old Victorian iron gate and fencing was

mostly gone, except for one half of the double

gate still standing. No nice curtains could be seen

at the six big windows unlike I remember as a

young lad who lived there for 8 years of my

life. The place now looked forlorn, dreary, and

disowned. The whole of 19 Highbury Grange was

our's, from the basement to the top third floor,

with 14 large rooms for a lively family that was

also our's. Now with 4 big bedsits, it's just another

London building warehousing today's nameless

and rootless menagerie of shifting "New Agers" and

of non-British folkz that are the product of our cold

culture of greed and impersonal digitial ways.

~ . ~

Only one person I saw entering the old homestead

after sitting on a low brick wall for an hour or so just

across the grange as I gazed at No. 19 of so many

years ago. About in his early 30's, the tough, rough-

looking black guy was unneatly dressed in a tight

black leather jacket and with a black briefcase held

in his left hand has he unlocked the black-painted

front door and quickly slammed it closed. I heard

him slam the door from across the street. His arrival

confirmed the sorrowful scene I saw of my boyhood

home that is now consumed by all that's seen in the

"Broken Britain" of today. Gone forever are the

golden days I remember of England back then.

All we have now are shattered dreams and

daily emptiness and a modern society full of alien,

foreign, and immigrant waste that has even de-

stroyed my Highbury boyhood home forever

and a day ...

~ . ~
Just Around The Corner (shown below) Was My

Aunt Nell's "Louise Villa," Which I Also Visited Alot.

~ . ~
Aunt Nell was posh! Very posh. So much so,

she disowned most of her common relatives like

my family even though we lived just around the

corner from her. Her "Louise Villa" (shown above)

at No. 85 Balfour Road, N.5. was my favourite home

to stay beside my own. She had a soft spot for me,

so I got enticed to visit my Aunt Nell by her,

herself. I loved the Villa, I did. I always hoped

in my boyhood way we could move from No. 19

to No. 85. But it never happened, of course. Old

Aunt Nell suddenly kicked the bucket and after

that I was forbidden from treading foot on No.

85. She didn't leave a penny to her relatives!

I guess they were mad at her both when she

was alive and when she was dead.
~ . ~

In 1959, we had no internet, no laptops, no

cellphones, no mass immigration to our shores,

no New Labour, no rip-off food prices like today,

no gangstra rap or hip-hop, no armed British

bobbies, no "broken society" save for the in-

frastucture bombed by the Nazis; no hideous

multiculturalism and multiracialism that has

been rammed down our throats over the past

decade by our socialist slave masters under vile

Tony Blair; little or no incivility and sheer rude-

ness, no blogs, no mass asylum seekers, no poor

quality education, no mass consumerism, and no

breakdown of our societal norms like we have to-

day all around us in "Broken Britian." There was

a sense of community and belonging back then

and a proud feeling of being British to the core,

while today we're told we're bad and no good

for being the native sons and daughters of the

Union Jack. Sentimentality it may well be,

but for me I will wrap myself around our

English flag and burn the lousey flag of the

European Union (EU) and all the other flags

that aren't British and never will be to me!!

And, I apologize not ...

~ . ~
Queen Victoria In All Her

Splendour at Highbury Barn.

~ . ~

I imagined seeing my good dad again, my

motherly mom waving at me, my beloved bro-

thers pulling my leg, my sisters smothering me

with their wonderful sisterly love, and seeing myself

again as a wild little kid running all over the place

and being ever so cheeky and loud to everybody

who came my way. I was now in an emotional

trance of the past as I thought of them at our old

homestead on Highbury Grange that was now

completely dead and silent of all my family and

of their treasured lives from 50 long years ago.

~ . ~

An elderly lady stopped and asked me if I was

alright. I was. I was just dreaming of things

past of 50 years ago in my life. The lady was

game to talk with me after I enquired of how

long she'd lived at Highbury Grange. "Since the

early 70's," she declared. A little after my time

at Highbury I told her, but she lamented with

me about the decline of the community and the

ever growing stream of people from everywhere

else except from Highbury or England. "It is

so terrible, isn't it?," said the lady in her early

70's with thick red lipstick adoring he elderly,

matron-like, and spinster face as she described

her own personal alienation of the society to

which she was born and bred like me. She told

me that most of the bedsits or small apartments

on the grange started in the mid-70's. "Get rich

and mafia landlords like Rachman started to buy

the cheapest properties they could. Then they

helped to destroy the pulse of Highbury by their

low-class renters and ignorant college clowns,"

she said like she wanted to educate me about

all that had happened since my family left

Highbury soon after my dad's 1959 death.

"If you stop to ask some one a question, the

attitude today is what do you want or what

are you trying to get from me," she stated to

me along with her long indictment of England

today. I was happy to share our thoughts

together and I told her why I was sitting

where I was across from the old homestead.

She empathized with me and seemed so

pleased she'd found someone who felt the

same way as she did at Highbury Grange.

Misery loves company ...

~ . ~
Queen Victoria in all her royal splendour

is still seen thesedays at Highbury Barn.

The barn is at the centre of the community.

The clock tower (seen in the above lead photo)

has been there since marking Victoria's 60th-

Year Reign in 1897 and it was refurbished about

18 years ago with its gold leaf restored. "Her most

gracious majesty" - to quote from the clock tower

plaque - was known to pretty much everybody at

Highbury and long before my family arrived there

in 1951. Back then The Royal Family was adored,

now it's more likely to be Allah! How times in Eng-

land have truly changed for the wicked worst ...
~ . ~
The Arsenal Football Club of Old.

~ . ~

Highbury and Arsenal went together like

peaches and cream for 93 years until the

world-famous English football club moved to the

nearby Emirates Studium in 2006. Founded in

1886, Arsenal or "The Gunners" moved to High-

bury in 1913 and held their first Highbury match

in the same year. My dad was an ardent fan of

all things Arsenal. He was a Gooner!! He took me

and my brothers to almost every match while we

lived at Highbury which as a community first came

into being in 1300. The Romans also settled there,

although such things later like Roman Catholicism

never took hold at Highbury as a strong English

Protestant stronghold. Today, it's a hotchpotch or

hodgepodge of new religions and weird creeds due

to the influx of massive immigration to England

by vile and vicious New Labour.

~ . ~

Thus, the popular song called: "Those were the days

my friend, we never thought they would end ..." really

hits me hard. For not only have those days now come

to an end, but they have been totally and systematic-

ally obliterated from the collective memory of what

was once our quaint and civilized society called

"Great Britain." And, that's also been made dead!!
~ . ~

Be Sure To Stop To Smell The Roses

On Your Sentimental Journey.

~ . ~

Stop to smell the English roses, like I did on my

sentimental journey back home after 50 years.
If we don't smell the roses, we really don't smell

all the life that is all around us. We, otherwise,

live only to eat and eat only to live. That's no

life. And remember to always "smile even

thu your heart is breaking," like mine.
~ . ~

So, deep within the vase of memory

I keep my dust of roses fresh and dear

As in the days before I knew the smart

Of time and death. Nor aught can take from me

The haunting fragrance that still lingers here --

As in a rose-jar, so within my heart.

Thos. S. Jones, Jr.

From "A Tapestry of Toil" By

Rev'd Desmond Morse-Boycott.

~ . ~

Sentimentally, Uncle Monty.

+St. Audrey, 2010.

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