The Bognor Chronicles

About the Book

My earliest memories are of crawling on the kitchen floor. The floor was hardwood boards, and there was a large crack along one board, and the cold air used to come up through the crack. It was nice and warm over near the cookstove, which was our only source of heat. We had a five-legged oak table, but the fifth leg didn’t quite reach the floor. We had an oak sideboard, a daybed, a rocking chair, and several pressed- back chairs. The floor had a hump in it, and I used to roll marbles down the grade. One of my first toys was the foot from an organ stool complete with glass ball and iron claw. I used to pretend it was a gun. My mother was always there. In the winter, all rooms were blocked off from the kitchen to keep us warm.

About the Author

I first met Ray in 1969 and, from then on, heard about his beloved Bognor. He talked about his family, friends, school days, boyhood haunts with such nostalgia that made it seem like some Shangri-la the world had yet to discover. Ray graduated from high school at Owen Sound Collegiate and Vocational Institute and went on to attend Ryerson Institute of Technology in Toronto, studying gas technology. After many years in that industry, Ray finished his forty-five-year career as a Senior Corrosion Technologist for an engineering firm whose specialty was underground pipeline coatings and cathotic protection. He travelled to many places across Canada on his assignments. Ray started writing his Bognor anecdotes in 1983 while he was working away from home. We have lived in Vallentyne and Sunderland for the past thirty-four years.