My name is Arthur Smith. I am 82 years old. I was born in Selly Oak hospital on 26 / 2 / 1928. The first four years of my life I lived in a caravan on a site with other caravans in a road off Alum Rock road, I have heard two roads, Gowen road and Jackson road. In 1932 I went to live in Devon Street on the corner of Somerset Street, it was a Cul De Sac. At the bottom was a railway lodge, my father opened a coal yard there, when my father sold coal it was £1.10 shillings a ton. I went to St Anne’s school until I was eleven then I went to Loxton Street. When I was about eight years old I used to go with my father to Paddy’s Bank railway sidings, his coal used to come in a truck there. I was in the truck shovelling the coal into the bag my father was holding, then he weighed it. One day I was there watching the trains, a passenger train came not very fast. there was also a stationary train. The passenger train ran straight into the guards van, it then finished up on top of the passenger train. The people on the train where looking out of the windows wondering why they had stopped. After a while they where leading horses out of one of the coaches, that happened about 1937. Before my father had a lorry he had a horse, my grandfather had a horse too. Before the war my father hired a charrabanc to take all the kids for a ride. On the corner of Devon Street opposite our house, Lucia the Ice-Cream lady used to be there for the kids going to school. During the war my father gave the coal business up and started factory clearance scrap metal and rubbish. I still do a bit of metal today and I reckon I must be the longest reigning recyclist in Britain. I was helping my father when I was eight to break cars up. When I was 12  I was carrying 1 cwt bags of coal. During the war we kept pigs. We used to buy young pigs about 8-10 weeks old and keep them to about 10 score. Towards the end of the war the club at St Anne’s went on a working holiday at Ashton Under Hill. They worked picking fruit in the morning then the rest of the day off. Roy Rawl, the son of the School Caretaker was sliding off haystacks into loose hay and he fell on a thatch peg that stuck in his leg. I stayed on at the farm and worked for Fred Archer the writer. On the farm there were two Italian prisoners, they lived in a brick building. Every Saturday I would cycle into Evesham and get macaroni for them. After three months I had to go home and help my father in the factory clearance. When I was eighteen I had to go in the army for two years and three months. Then back into the family business. In 1952 I emigrated to Australia, I sailed on the Otramto on its last journey to Australia. After thirty days I landed in Melbourne I worked on road works in my job and I used dynamite to blast rocks. After six months I returned to England as my father was ill. After a short time I got married and sailed back to Australia on the Orsova on her maiden journey landed in Sydney. After about a year my wife was having blackouts. She returned to England 2-3 weeks before me. After a few weeks she died with a tumour on the brain. Then I was single for about twelve years then met my present wife in a factory we used to do work for. She was Italian. My brother lives by Falmouth in Cornwall. I used to go there a lot and I had a boat there to go fishing. About 1980 I was watching a hot air balloon and all of a sudden it deflated and came down by the canal in Garrison lane, both balloonists were killed.