The fragments of memories from childhood can rarely be dated accurately. There’s one exception though: June 2^nd, 1953, the day of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. I was nearly seven and a half years old, and in my second year at Rudston Infants School in Liverpool.

I must have been at school a year when the King died: I can remember Roger and Lynne next door arguing over whether he was the fifth, sixth or seventh George, and being told at school that we’d all have to learn a new National Anthem. “God save the Queen” sounded really strange and to my parents’ generation it was, though of course their parents had sung it as children in the time of Queen Victoria.

Coronation Day was a topic of conversation for some time before, and a few weeks before the event we learned that Uncle Emlyn and Auntie Lulu (Louise) had not only bought a television set to watch it, but that we were all going to their house to watch it and have a party.

At seven I was already aware that Childwall, where we lived, was a “nice” part of Liverpool. I’d been on enough No. 79 bus journeys to town along Wavertree Road to know that houses got progressively smaller and poorer, and the shops generally more run down, the closer we got to the city centre. I was also aware (because we’d visited regularly) that Emlyn and Lulu lived in Childwall Park Avenue, which seemed like the poshest road in Childwall and therefore possibly in the city itself. I realised later of course that there were bigger houses nearby, in roads like Queens Drive where Brian Epstein’s family lived.

Emlyn, mum’s older brother, was a building contractor who drove a Humber Hawk; a car was far beyond anything my parents could aspire to (Dad rode his bike everywhere). I didn’t think I’d be able to identify their house on Google Streetview: they’ve all been significantly modified in the intervening seventy years, but it was on the right hand side as you walked down from the “Top Shops” at Taggart Avenue. But I belatedly realised that I could easily find the address by finding Emlyn and Louise in the online electoral roll of Liverpool. It was No 64 and two things surprised me: it was a “left hand” semi (viewed from the road) not right as my memory told me, and the back garden was square and much smaller than I’d pictured it. *

The coronation ceremony began at 11.15 a.m. (I know now) and we probably started watching the procession to the Abbey before that, so it must have been an early start that day. On thing I do remember as we got up was Mum shouting “They’ve done it!” as she listened to the radio announcement of Hillary and Tenzing’s conquest of Everest. So much excitement for one day!

I’ve no recollection of the walk from our little postwar “new build” house in Rudston Road to 64 Childwall Park Ave (it would have taken about half an hour with two small boys) but I do remember my disappointment on running into their big front lounge to see my first television.. and there was no sign of it. One of the family (Emlyn or my my big cousin Alan who’d have been twelve) followed me in, and proudly opened the doors of what looked like a small cupboard to reveal the convex glass screen. It was tiny of course by today’s standards – maybe ten inches wide? –  but we’d nothing to compare it with. This was the first television set I’d ever seen but I must have seen pictures of one in the pages of the News Chronicle, or how else would I have known what to look for?

That’s just one of the fairly vivid memories I have of the Coronation and there’s a few more from later in the day to follow.

A recent in-person visit to Childwall Park Avenue has confirmed that all-powerful Google Maps got the numbering wrong, and No. 64 was exactly as I remembered.