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John Isles B.S. Judge

Exhibition Budgerigar Pictures

I was born in Blackpool in 1945 due to expectant mothers being evacuated out of London. London was not a safe place for the new born, the next generation. Doodle Bugs and V2 Rockets were raining down on London. Death, destruction and blackouts were widespread. My father was left behind. He had an important job in Deptford, near the Thames designing tank landing craft for the invasion. I can remember him telling me stories about Home Guard Duty and Fire Watch on bitter cold and foggy nights. Doogle Bugs would suddenly come out of the gloom and he said as long as you could hear their motors running you would be OK and breathe a sigh of relief. The time he said to worry was when their motors stopped. V2 rockets he said were a different kettle of fish, you stood no chance, they just came straight down and exploded. You were a dead man.

Fortunately for my father their motors did not stop, V2 rockets did not descend and he lived to tell me the tale.

In my early childhood I lived in Verdant

Lane, Catford, South London, opposite the large Heather Green Cemetery. My older brother, an art student, used to make devil-like ghost masks out of papier-mache and he and a fellow art student used to have fun frightening late-night passers-by as they would appear from behind a tombstone shining a torch on their masks. The late-night revellers would run for their lives while my brother and his friend would be laughing with glee that their masks had worked.

I had lots of friends in Catford and they were mainly in the flats in Waters Road that ran behind Verdant Lane. This part of South London was fairly built-up with not a great deal of open spaces near- by so, as kids and with lots of my mates, we used to go to the local Foster Park and particularly on the 5th November, Guy Fawkes night, to collect wood for the flats' massive bonfires. The wood was piled high on our home-made wooden trolleys, wheels used from discarded prams. In those days us kids had so much more freedom and no harm ever came to us except for grazed knees or a scratch or two. I suppose this was my first taste of nature in Foster Park with its massive trees and the birds that I would see there. It always seemed common sense to me from an early age that I would know all the names of our native birds. When I was 10 years of age, my Mum & Dad who were in the Grocery business at that time, purchased a small shop in the village of Kenley in Surrey. So I left South London and was taken to the countryside. My mouth dropped open with excitement when I started to explore the local area. The trees and leafy lanes as you can see in the picture were all around me. Riddlesdown, Kenley, Hayes area that we called the Dobbing and next to the Dobbing was the famous 2nd World War Kenley Aerodrome. We found, as kids, a crashed Lancaster Bomber on the edge of the runway and we used to sit in the cockpit and pretend we were pilots and flying. I had the biggest playground of open spaces that a child could wish for. To the back of our Grocery shop and up the garden was Riddlesdown Common but between my garden and the common was the Oxted steam railway line. This was not a problem as I would skip over that and into the dark woods of Yew trees. I soon made lots of friends and this was our playground for Cowboys and Indians, Robin Hood and you name it. Nature was all around me and I revelled in it. I went through a phase of collecting birds eggs and with this you learn even more, looking through books and identifying the birds the eggs came from. I know today egg collecting is very much frowned upon and rightly so. It's not a thing to be encouraged. Nature was on my doorstep. I would sit and watch fox cubs playing by the railway line and one day I went to watch them again and found they had gone. I spoke to a friend and he told me that the local council pest controller had come up and shot them all. I was very upset and I told my Mum. I would see this man on his pushbike riding around with his shotgun strapped to his crossbar and I thought how could he do that to those little baby fox cubs. I used to climb up trees because I had seen squirrels' nests at the top. I would put my hand in the domed nest very slowly, fingers twitching and praying ma was not at home. Out would come the pink baby. Could I take it home, what would Mum say and was it possible to raise it? Thank god I had the common sense at that young age to pop it straight back in the warmth of its nest.

How did I get started with Budgies. My father is to blame. The money it has cost me, I'm thinking as I write this article. He used to breed canaries when he was a young lad, so he bought me some Budgies, saying we'll try to breed something new. I was about 12-13yrs and I helped him build a small shed in our garden for our new feathered friends. Soon after I joined Croydon CBS and they held their meetings in the Library, Brigstock Road, Thornton Heath. Ron Harrington was one of the leading Budgie men at the time. His job was driving the 190 buses and would always wave to me when he was in the Purley area when I was walking or riding my bike. Ron and his wife were very friendly and helped me as much as they could with advice and selling me birds. I always remember as a boy he had a large setup at the bottom of his garden, with flights and birdrooms both sides of his path. One day I was in his birdroom and he said to me I have something special to show you John. He placed this bird in a show cage and it was a Light Green. I said that's a nice bird Ron and with that he touched the Light Green with his judging stick and it turned. The Budgie was now a Sky Blue. "Magic". I rubbed my eyes in disbelief. "That's a halfsider, son" he said to me. It's a genetic fault, a mix up of genes.

50 Years on and like Ron I'm still a Budgerigar Man but I have not bred a halfsider.