John Slaney: Trajectory part 1: Kirkby in Ashfield

Acording to my passport, I was born in Mansfield, Notinghamshire, in what is left of Sherwood Forest (in a maternity ward, not under an oak tree). I lived until the age of 8 in Kirkby in Ashfield, then a coal mining town famous for nothing except Harold Larwood and Joe Hardstaff, adjacent to Newstead Abbey (once sold off by Lord Byron) and not too far from the birthplace of D. H. Lawrence at Eastwood.

The picture shows Diamond Avenue in East Kirkby, birthplace of my father, shortly before it gained that distinction.

The image of my early years is grey and drab, postwar austerity (I still have my ration book), dark, damp, scruffy streets, railway lines everywhere. The smell of coal smoke evokes it all even now.

Dr J K Slaney                      Phone (Aus.):  (026) 125 8607
Automated Reasoning Group, CSL     Phone (Int.): +61 26 125 8607
Australian National University     Fax (Aus.):    (026) 125 8651
Canberra, ACT, 0200, AUSTRALIA     Fax (Int.):   +61 26 125 8651