| Prefabulous | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Edmund
O’Mahony, 82, is a big fan of tea dances where he goes several
times a week. Edmund is a widower but has a girlfriend who is also his
dance partner. Today is Wednesday, the day when they don’t meet.
Edmund was the first inhabitant of the Estate where he moved on June
the 2nd 1946. He immediately loved living in his prefab where he found
a comfort not found in most accommodations at the time: two bedrooms,
bathroom, separate toilets, hot water and a fireplace engineered to provide
heat to the whole house. At the time, that was luxury. One day, journalists
came to interview Edmund. They aired the old man’s words: “I
wouldn’t swap the place for Buckingham Palace, even if it included
the Queen”. |
Richard
is 58 and has always lived at number 31 Dolphin Road. About 12 years
ago, he bought his prefab. In spite of him being a house owner - the
Council can not do anything against him- , he is fighting along the tenants
to save the prefabs. He is an active supporter of the campaign to fight
against the demolition. Richard is chatty and keeps talking about his
father, a sailor from Barbados, landed by chance in England for appendicitis,
he eventually settled there. “He was always full of colourful stories.
Friends and family would spend hours listening to him here in this room”.
Richard’s interior is the one of a bachelor, a collector on top
of it. The walls of his bedroom are covered with shelves holding hundreds
of miniature cars, painstakingly aligned. In the kitchen, mugs from all
over the world decorate the walls. “What I like most in the prefab
is the sound of the rain on the roof. It is as we were on holidays in
a caravan”. |
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| contact
: e-mail : |
Elisabeth
Blanchet elisabethblanchet@hotmail.com |
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