My memory of those days in Chester as not quite as vivid as my days in Kingston, but fairly-well remembered. My experiences in Chester's Barnardo home appears to be related to the feelings of love a 10-year-old boy is capable of having for girls of his own age or older, but I hope it not to disturbing or distressing. We were a mixture of girls and boys, but all of the names of the children I have forgotten, except one boy named Donald, though his sir name I am unable to remember. I think there were about ten boys in our dormitory between ages from 9 to 11. When a child reached 11 years of age or there about, they were sent to another home for older children, such as Bromborough or elsewhere. It is interesting that I also know a Donald Bylett in Kingston Dicky's home, and so two Donalds have played some part in my life in Barnardos homes. Sadly I have forgotten his sir name, but both boys had very attractive smiles and both had attractive faces, as well as myself ofcourse!

The people in charge of us were all women as far as I can remember, as well as the governess, if that is the correct title for her. She was getting on by then and had replaced an even older governess lady who stayed at the home in her own room upstairs until she became sick and then left.

I had been taken from Liverpool to Chester Barnardo's home by car by a unknown woman, and while journeying I studied the roads for getting back when I was ready to run home. When I arrived I am unable to fully remember what I did on that first day, but I think I had to get into a bath and given Barnardo's clothing, but within a few days I was photographed with a flash camera indoors by the lady in charge of the home. The lady told me it was for the records. I remember going to school on the first day because such a new experience is rather emotional and worrying, and that is when this Chester Barnardo's boy Donald first appeared accompanying me to school along with the other boys. I was told by the staff to keep with the other boys until I was in school. I can vividly remember that he was a blue-eyed, very whie-skinned blond-brown-haired boy with a confident manner, and had a very happy smile with a very happy disposition for the most part and rarely getting moody, and with good social skills when relating with adults for such a young age of 10 to 11 years of age. He looked a little like Donald Bylett of Kingston's Dicky's home. He accompanied me to school on my first day, and later on in school we went out with a teacher, but I've forgotten where. While we schoolboys were walking down the road, one schoolboy started to pick on me and Donald shouted: "Leave him alone you!" Donald told me it was because I was a Barnardo's boy that he stuck up for me.

I think he may have had a parent or relative because I once saw him with a woman and having a picnic near the river edge of the River Dee, which is after you cross the bridge to get to the grassy meadow side of the river, where the cows were. They were listening to portable valved-radio. There are no meadows or cows there now but houses instead. It may ofcourse have been a lady who was interested in Donald for adoption or just wanted to give him a day out, but I think it was his mother or a relative, but I am not sure what the policy of Barnardos was on such matters of losing their boys or girls to strangers. Anyway on that day it was a Saturday and we were let out on our own to wonder about Chester City, or the Roman remains, or the River Dee or to go to the swimming baths or cinema. Donald waved me over and we spoke for a while before I waved him goodbye, and then I walked further up the River Dee. I have forgotten what we spoke about.

Once in the swimming baths I had forgotten the number of my locker and only had my bathing trunks on. I had to ask the man if he could open all the lockers to find my clothing, which caused some annoyance from him. There was also thieves in the baths.

In those days Chester was not a tourist city and so I probably never saw strangers from other countries. As Donald was a very nice-looking, and a very bright, cheery intelligent boy, and socially confident with his attractive smile, it would not be surprising if a lady having no children would want to adopt him. I have no children myself and would probably have happily taken him as a substitute son if such had been my desitiny as an adult, and if he had wanted me to look after him. I must have been attractive-looking myself though, as a staff lady in Kingston Barnardo's home wanted to adopt me, and was in bitter tears when I left the Kingston home for a villiage new Shrewsbury.

Once Donald and is more closer friend had gotten oil paint on their fingers and hands while in the home, and were wondering how to get it off in the washroom and toilet room. I was with them and suggested that washing powder would get the paint off, but they thought it would not. They tried it and it worked to both boys delight, and Donald turned around to me and said in a cheery smiling delighted manner, "Well done Danny!, well done!" His parent, if he ever had any, must have been cultured people with such social skills because boys of today would probably not have within them the skill to express themselves in such socially-skilled and lovingly friendly manner. Though Donald was an orphan boy like myself, he did not appear to have the slightest bit of negativeness in him and it was a delight and very mind-uplifting to be with him.

About five of the best-looking boys, which included me and Donald, were sometimes sent to a young posh elegant lady, who lived just facing the River Dee, and in her home she entertained us and gave us orange drink and biscuits on her balcony over-looking the river, and then took us to the river edge to throw bread to the swans. All of the five boys, which included me ofcourse liked her. She gave us sixpence to spend as we were leaving. We all went there several times during my stay. She once said that she had to go somewhere and was nearly late, and so we boys journeyed back to the home, journeying through the park to get to the main road, which would take us back home.

Chester home had a large garden enclosed by a tall brick wall, in which apple and pear trees grew and hens layed eggs in their hut. It was like a secret garden that I often went into. The apples that had fallen on the ground had holes in them, which always meant a magot was inside. Once the laundry staff where in the laundry room and began explaining how the Brownies had left the orchard in a mess. I had been listening and thought that they were talking about the fairies or fairy Brownies, and so I said that I had not saw any fairies in the orchard, to which she replied by asking me what I was talking about. I told her about the fairies and she annoyingly told me that there no fairies, and that she did not want me to mention the fairies again. As I walked out of the laundry room, I saw her shaking her head, and heard her say, "I don't know!, old habits die hard!", to another staff member with her.

A new rough-and-ready dressed boy arrived at the home, who's home-town was actually Chester City, and mine was Liverpool incidentally, and he knew Chester well, and he soon made a close friend with me because of his efforts to like me and look out for for me, and every Saturday we went around Chester, and he showed me the street where he used to live, which was just near an old-fashioned closed-down slaughter house. He told me a very interesting story while I was in his street as he was showing me the slaughter house, that when the slaughter house had been used to kill animals some years ago, that the houses nearby had been haunted by ghosts, and that it had been blamed on the fresh blood of the animals being spilt. When the slaughter house had been closed down, then the hauntings stopped.

This is ofcourse very remarkable for a boy of only 10 years of age to be aware of such occultist knowledge, but I suppose he had picked it up from the adults living in his street. I had not made a close friend with Donald of Chester, but I would liked to have done and explored Chester with him, but he had his own close friend before I arrived at the home and he slept in the bed next to him. I can not even remember the name of my Chester-born friend after such a long time, but if he is reading this account of my stay in Chester, and wondering who I am, then perhaps he remembers us both romancing about ancient castles and hopefully finding ancient swords in ruined castles in some English forest. As is usually the case he simply was not there anymore, or had returned back to his single parent.

The strange thing about this boy when I think deeper about him is that I am wondering if he was a Barnardo's boy, because he was not in my dormitory and I never saw him in the dining room or the home. I just assumed he was a boy in the home because he was always near it when I saw him. I would be standing near a wooded lane near the home's orchard, when he would suddenly appear from nowhere and smile at me and happily greeted me on Saturdays, and took me about Chester and talked about strange unworldly things and past times. One day I never saw him again and I thought that he had left the home, which made me very sad. He may have a been a boy ghost. He showed me the street where he used to live as if it was a long time in the past, but there was something unworldly about him and not quite in this world. I just trusted him and believed he was one of us orphan boys of the home.

He was a very self-assuring boy and about my size and age and with blue eyes, and with a lot of confidence, and so I felt safe with him and looked forward to him appearing to me from wherever he came from, so that we could journey around together in Chester. I liked him a lot but he knew strange things about ghosts and told me that ghosts are attracted to spilt blood. I can not imagine any 10-year-old living boy knowing such things. He also dressed differently than us Barnardo boys and not quite modern, but rather old style. I did not think he was a ghost but a living boy. I do now remember asking him out of curiosity where he was from, because he seemed different than us, and I had not saw him in the dining room or inside the home and never went to school with him, and he simply said that he was from the other side, and so I thought he must be one us and from the back of the home as being the other side, but as he dressed differently than us, I thought he was allowed to do so. I also asked him does he mean around the side outside of the home in some houses, but he smiled at me, and said no more about his origins. I remember once a lot of Barnardo boys running towards the back grounds to play, and he was running happily with them, but when I looked again he was no longer with them, which puzzled me, but I thought no more about it.

Who ever he was, he liked my company, but one day he never appeared again in the wooded lane when I waited for him. I mentioned school to him once because I wondered what school he went do, but he seemed to think it was something of the past and told me that he does not go to school anymore but he did many years ago, and does not want to know about it because it was sad and that it would upset me. He was ofcourse only a 10-year-old boy like myself, and if living he would still be going to school. He seemed a very happy boy and full of boyish wonder and romance and sense of adventure and that is why I felt close to him. Why he chose me, only he will know, but if he was a ghost then he is still a boy to this day in another world with his boyish sense of fun and adventure without a care in the world, except to enjoy himself under the power of the Supreme Being.

I should make it understood that at no time did I think he was a ghost, but I was puzzled when on watching him happily running out of the house with the other orphans towards the grassy back of the home where there were swings, and me only turning my head for a moment away from him, and then looking back at the orphans to discover he was not with them. He was not a pampered boy with refined delicate facial features used to soft female cosy living and combing his hair and loving himself in the mirror as facially-attractive boys often do because they wonder why adults like them so much, and I admired myself in the mirror at that age as I combed my hair just like the other boys, but he had a rather rough hardy face, and was a very hardy, capable and practical boy. The best non-fussy sort to have as a friend!

I sometimes went to the Saturday cinema by myself and remembered seeing Tommy Steel in a film of some sort, and I remember hearing the song on the radio, "Freight train, freight train going so fast.", by a young lady singer. The home had a radio and I often heard the song when it was on.

What I remember most about our breakfast time before we went to school, is for a short-while they began in the winter months to give us cornflakes with hot milk on, which cause me to vomit. It was alright with icy cold milk but the hot milk was revolting. I complained, and the cook decided to give us cold milk on the cornflakes. We also were given bacon and bread for our breakfast too. Young boys have not so long ago been babies, and babies eventually vomit the warm milk sucked from their mother's mammary glands and then need proper food.

Chester's home had plenty of babies or very young children that we older 10-year-old boys did not see much of, except when we went to look at the babies in fascination. We were not allowed in their nursery, which appeared to have toys and games to play with.

The lady staffs were not especially advanced souls, because I remember passing an allotment and seeing strawberries growing in profusion. I asked the allotment-holder if they grow in this cold country, to which he replied, "Ofcourse they do, they're growing now!". I told one of the staff about strawberries grown in Chester, who told me it was too cold. I then told her about them gowing on the allotment, which prompted her to admonish me and not to talk to the men again, and that if they grow strawberries, then the can't be very normal people.

I had never witnessed any boy or girl being hit by the staff at Chester Barnardo's home, but for my own part of experiencing some cruelty, there suddenly appeared a very young red-haired, and extremely beautiful girl member of staff of about 18 or 19 years of age, who began to kiss all of us boys on the face as we lied in bed in our dormitory to say good night to us each individually. When she came to me, she asked me if I wanted to be kissed, to which I replied no. She asked me why, and I told her that she was not my mother. Later on in the week, she suddenly came into the dormitory, got me out of bed just as I was drifting off to sleep, and shoved me into a linen room, which was on the landing, turned the light out and locked the door, which meant I was in total darkness. I did not let it bother me or scare me, but I was worried about the air in the room and if I would die from lack of air. I simply lied down on the floor because I was tired in any case, and trusted God and his power over my destiny because I was an Anglican Christian.

She later returned about 1 hour later and said she was so sorry that she had forgotten that she had locked me in the linen room. At last I was able to get to a proper bed in my dormitory and sleep properly to get up for school next morning. The next day after I came home from school, a white-coated member of staff wanted to know if I had been locked in the linen room in the dark and if I had been frightened or upset, and that the woman had no right to do it, and that I would not need to worry about seeing her again. I told them I had, but that I had not been frightened. The young red-haired girl who had locked me in the linen room, was no more to seen in the home, and so she must have been sacked or left the job.

All of the boys in my dormitory where quite thrilled and excited in being kissed by her, and looked forward to it every night, but I suppose I was fussy as a very young boy on who kissed me. She was with out doubt exceptionately beautiful and thrilling, and her glossy red hair sparkled like flashing stars to my boyhood mind, and I would kiss her anytime today and be thrilled provided she lived a pure life, which would be highly unlikely in these times. Young 10-year-old boys have a sharper sense of visual awareness of a face and are extremely thrilled by beauty more so than men and see it clearly in a face. Even when I just looked at her, I could feel my heart pounding and I felt weak all over, and I needed to breath more deeper and so I was afraid of her beauty, and what effect it would have on me, but the other boys must not have been as badly effected as me.

Her face was so thrillingly beautiful that I don't know how I would have reacted if she had kissed me, and so I was afraid. I expect my heart would have pounded even more faster and I would have felt more weaker in the legs, or felt as if I was floating, or perhaps even have fainted from the extreme excited thrill. Such encounters ofcourse are very rare in homes and probably very rare experiences for most people in everyday life, even for adults, and it has not as strongly happened to me since those days. I doubt if two lovers of today would ever experience what I experienced on seeing her, and I doubt even if I could experience that feeling anymore in this world, but I still remember it vividly. Perhaps I could experience it, but such women are very rare, and today nearly all women have no effect on me in the least, especially if they are overweight, smoke and drink, and have vulgar talk and swear. If they are appealing, I usually start becoming entranced by their face providing they are not looking towards me, otherwise I turn away, especially if they are with another man.

Ofcourse such things are illusion and torment the soul more than delight the soul. To me today, beauty is nothing more than bewitchment and causes more pain than happiness if you can only look at it, and even if your are fortunate enough to embrace it many times over and over again, it never satisfies because you want more and more. It just increases the neurotransmitter chemical dopamine in the brain, and it is the dopamine that causes the pleasure in the brain. It is really a tormenting experience and is probably best left alone if you do not know what you are doing or understand what is happening to the brain. It is just an addiction and nothing more.

I think her racial origins would probably have been Denmark or Irish because of her red hair and very clear skin, and I have to admit that I don't see such beautiful red-haired women anymore. Liverpool and Ireland were full of them in times past, but not anymore in Liverpool. Red-haired people do tend to have very fine delicate smooth skin in their youth and fine facial features. Ofcourse she had a cruel nature in locking me in an absolutely dark linen room that did not even have windows or much air. Perhaps her kissing the boys was also an act of cruelty by way of hurting them by exciting thrilling hurt feelings in the heart region and so causing distressing longing feelings for more excitement and excess of the neuro-transmitter chemical dopamine in the brain. I doubt though if she knew that in those days. She may have just been an affectionate young girl.

Even now at my age after all those years, the boy in me still sees thrilling beauty in rare faces, and with beauty you don't want to leave it because it stirs something wonderful and ecstatic in your soul, and causes pain and longing if you leave it, much like cutting yourself, but if you are just passing somebody on the road or in a shop then you have no choice but to leave it alone. You want to be with it all of the time and feel distress if you can not be with it. It's a very powerful illusion of nature.

In my case, if it is coupled with extremely high intelligence it is even more wonderful and ecstatic for me and takes away my breath because of the brain working more busy in its electrical circuits requiring extra oxygen. After a few week if you are constantly living with it, it appears to lose its effects, and the person's face just gradually begins to look ordinary, until you see another new beautiful face for it to start all over again. It's all interesting scientific knowledge for me, and I expect most people have the same feelings as me but are very secretive over it.

It may surprise some Barnardo boys, who are reading this, that a 10-year-old boy is actually capable of falling in love with a girl, because I remember when I was 10 years of age, when a 10-year-old girl from school used to catch up with me going home and appeared to like me and held my hand as she journeyed home too, and talking about if I wanted to be her boyfriend. I said yes, but thought I was too young. I started to feel a funny butterfly feeling in my heart region as if butterflies were fluttering about in my heart or like a delightful or beautiful hurt in my heart as I held her hand, and yet her face meant nothing to me.

However, as I would not go home with her because I had to get back home fast, she did not want to know me after that when I ran over to her to hold her hand again after coming out of school. I suppose this is what is meant by falling in love with love, because I was not thrilled by her face in the least. I think perhaps what was happening is that the great distress and heart-break of being an orphan and in Barnardo homes caused this effect in early development of love tendencies. If I had gone home with her, I suppose she would have started kissing me all over my face, and I would not have liked that at such a young age from anybody, and to be contaminated by her saliva. It would have meant nothing to me because her face did not thrill me, and I would not have accepted her to me in delight. If a woman has a thrillingly beautiful face and you like her, you do not seem to mind even if her saliva gets onto your mouth and face, because your resistance has broken down with deep love and you regard her as part of your own body and soul and would be heart-broken if you lost her. Well, you will be heart-broken if you are a fool without understanding of what is happening to the brain!

Ofcourse if you live with beauty it soon ceases to cause a thrill because the dopamine levels become less in the brain because of familiarity, and it eventually means nothing, and ceases to cause an exciting thrilling feeling. It's only the surprise and shock of it that excites a thrill and happiness initially because of the sudden rush of dopamine to the brain because of new knowledge. Beauty also fades with the years, and there is an old saying, that if you marry for beauty it will neither last or please thee one year. Ofcourse our perception of thrilling beauty in the face, though delightful in the beginning, can so easily turn into tormenting pain when we are unable to embrace or kiss it, or be close to it, or worse still if it rejects us. This is the pain of rejected love, which sometimes causes suicide amongst the young. It is so common in young love affairs and would happen to me, being a boy inside, if I was not so penetrating into reality and multi-dimensional thinking causing me to see past, present and future of everything. The supernatural worlds as in astral projection of the spirit, or getting out of the body, are the best places to indulge in such pleasures, but they are not the proper goal of the soul, which is ultimate freedom from slavery to sensuous pleasure.

Any way, I wonder if such things are worth the bother, when they all too often cause nothing but heart-break in those who are not too intelligent to understand what is actually happening. The best logic and most wisest course of action is simply to enjoy beauty like a hobby, but not be heart-broken by it if it leaves you. If it leaves you, then for me it's just like having some scientific equipment breaking down. I just look for another replacement for it and still enjoy myself. Beauty should be enjoyed and should never be allowed to cause heartbreak because that would be unhealthy and un-natural, and even if we can not embrace it with kisses, which is usually the case for most people and me as well, we can in our imagination do what we like with it.

Perhaps I should after all thank the beautiful red-haired girl for stirring such feelings of beauty in me. Incidentally, Chester's Donald was most keen to be kissed by her every night until she left the home, because when I said to her that I did not want to be kissed and that she was not my mother, she annoyingly said that she was not going to kiss any of the boys, and Donald made the most noisiest complaint in bed because he could not be kissed by her. It was her beauty and strong loving affection that he missed, because I do not think he would have been so keen to be kissed by a motherly matron figure, and I would not either. Beauty is a great delight to be enjoyed, but we should not let it destroy us or have it cause distressing longings to behold it again and again, because by then we have missed the point of it all. That point is, is that beauty is everywhere and we should not become attached to it and allow it to wound us or hurt us, and forget that beauty is also elsewhere in the millions of humans of our own Aryan race alone, and that there are millions of beautiful faces waiting to be discovered everywhere. As I am now more advanced in my mind since being a 10-year-old, the secret purpose of beauty is to stir up our soul in ready for the heavenly worlds, where beauty is everywhere and far more greater than here on earth.

Soon I began thinking of getting back home to my mother in Liverpool, and my first attempt got me on the way to Chester City, when a part-time girl worker of the Barnardo's home came out of a shop and saw me on the road walking towards Chester City, and began chasing after me. I ran down an entry but the end was blocked by a builder's yard and she caught me. She took me back to the home and I started bitterly crying in the elder boys dining room with her for having failed, and she started crying with me. She was also very young of perhaps 18 years of age, but was more pretty than beautiful and less shocking to the senses, but I liked her because she was not the sort of person to lock me in a dark linen room. I liked her face but it did not shock me or thrill me or cause my heart to start pounding. I simply liked the pleasant happy feeling I got with her company, and she had a nice happy kind face that did not sting me inside. Why a face should cause a sudden stinging feeling is any ones guess. It is possible that the genetic composition of the brain via visual contact recognises something related to itself in genes and as the best possible choice for producing the best offspring. This is more likely because no human is going to be excited by a monstrous entity from space.

I soon found out that at the back of the home there was a motorway that passed through many towns in a direct line, and that would get me to Birkhenhead if I continued walking it. I took the chance and ran away on what turned out to be an extremely hot day. It was so hot that I had to remove my shirt and vest to cool off, though obviously kept my short-leg trousers on, and it was not long before I was very thirsty for a drink of water and felt like drinking from a green pond near the busy road. I eventually saw a bus with Birkenhead on it and asked the driver if he would let me on as I had no money. He just smiled at me and allowed me on.

When I got to Birkenhead I did the same on the ferry boat and was soon in Liverpool. The next time I used buses and got the fare by asking strangers for money to get home.

My mother told me to go back after a few days, and so I got a bus from Birkenhead going to Chester and walked back into the home to the matron or mother, I think we called her that. I told her that my mother had sent me back, and she then responded by saying that she is not sure if I can just walk in and come back. I then hopefully said, "Do you mean that I don't have to stay here, and that I can go back home?" She then simply said, "Well as you here, you may as well stay." I had been quite happy to leave without bus fare and make my way back home again, by asking people to lend me the bus fare.

The lady in charge of the home decided that she would allow me home on Friday nights after tea providing I returned back by Sunday for tea-time to get ready for school on Monday. She gave me the bus and ferry boat fares for going home and getting back. I felt much better after that and more confident and made friends more easier and looked forward to going home every Friday night after tea-time, after I came home from school, but when I was moved to bromborough Barnardo's home that free-to-go home delight all stopped, and so I ran off home from Bromborough, which prompted the governor to send me to Kingston Upon Thames in Surrey, thinking I would never be able to get home from there because of the great distance for a least a boy's mind on foot, if not an adult's mind travelling in a car.

I often played in the park near the home and the River Dee too, which to get at, I remember walking near ruins that may have been Roman. The River Dee had small black eels swimming about near the edge of the sandy river, and sometimes I would see a dead lamb floating on the river. I suppose playing near the River Dee was my happiest memories. There was also a red-haired boy who must have been about 9 years of age, and he went to school with me too, and one day he decided to try and get back home to Manchester to see his mother. He asked me if I would go with him on the journey, but I had to refuse as it was not Liverpool, and I was not sure how to get to Manchester without money, and it was some distance to walk. He then ran off during school dinner break without me but was caught somewhere in Chester. He would not speak to me after that because I had not journeyed with him, but in about a week's time his mother took him home, and that was the last I ever saw of him. I felt sorry for the red-haired boy because I knew how he felt, but it would be silly of me to journey to Manchester with him when I did not live there. He was a typical  boy for Irish red-heads in having nice skin with freckles, blue eyes and fine attractive facial features. I liked him as a friend but he was not very sociable and rather aloof, and he was a little younger than me to be a friend with.

It is very hard to remember everything of my life at Chester. What hurts me most is making friends and finding out that they were no longer in the home. In Liverpool ofcourse I had a friend of my own age and he had very blond-yellow hair and blue eyes, and we both called on each other almost every day for years to go about places since I was an 8-year-old boy, when I was not in Barnardos homes then, but when he reached about 20 years of age he met up with a girl and no longer called on me, and as I had to move address and him too, I lost contact with him for all these years. Close affectionate friends are soon lost when the love of a girl gets between them, and I knew my long affectionate friendship with him was at an end when I saw his girlfriend. Though as I am something of a mystical person and no fool, I do not let such things upset me too much with sad feelings.

In all probability the love between them has long disolved away and almost certainly it has, and today he could well be on his own and abandoned by even his children, with only memories of when we both used to go everywhere as boys having fun and excitement. I hope he is doing well all the same. I am a still a boy inside and have never actually grown up inside of me, and I do not want to because it so much more fun being a boy than a man, and so it is easy for me to still enjoy myself with the same blissful feelings of a boy. Bondage to a wife or woman and all of the troubles and nagging that go with it would have destroyed the young happy boy's adventurous spirit in me.

Initially with any love relationship we are just chasing after increasing dopamine levels in the brain caused by the light reflections bouncing off the face and body and entering the retina of the eyes. Drug addicts of today are doing the same because caffeine, cocaine and diamorphine cause rapid increased levels of the neuro-transmitting chemical dopamine in the brain, which in turn causes the dangerously intense happy feeling that they seek for and eventually destroy themselves.

Romantic love between two people simply causes a great increase of dopamine in the brain, and that is why we feel so happy and elated for a while. We are simply domamine addicts. It is the dopamine experience that we are in love with and not the beautiful woman, but the coloured light reflections off the woman's smoothed-skin face and sparkling glossy hair, and perfect body shape, causes an increase of dopamine. Ofcourse the dopamine level suddenly drops with familiarity of the loved one, and then we come down with a bang, and no longer get excitement when seeing the loved one and wake up to depressing reality with a wife who will eventually start nagging and causing the man to wish he was dead or pray hat he was dead.

Anything new, such as new exciting knowledge, usually causes a sudden increase of dopamine in the brain, which in turn further increases our desire and joy to know more of the new knowledge. Romance is simply new knowledge. It is just nature's way of making our brain learn new knowledge. In my case though, I am only attracted and thrilled with people of extremely high intelligence, which for me causes increased level of dopamine in my brain. I love science and learning which causes an increase of dopamine in my brain, but it's really the excitement of increased dopamine levels when seeing scientific equipment that I really love. If science did not cause an increase of dopamine in my brain I would have no interest in science and find it boring.

The house that we boys and girls lived in was rather large and even had a large nursery for babies. Most of the girls were younger than the boys, though there was one big girl who had come from Wrexham and sometimes slapped boys on the face. The home had swings for playing on in the back grounds and bit of a wood, and I remember doing an experiment with a weed growing in the wood. What I did was to pull the weed out of the soil and replant it to discover if it would still grow. It did grow to my delight and this must have been my first scientific experiment. At that time I was also wondering how music came off a record when it played on the turn-table with the stylus in its grooves. There were no scientific books in Chester's Barnardo's home, and probably little or no books at all, except childish story books. My plant experiment was done in secrecy because there was no doubt that the women staff in the home would have admonished me and told me not to do it.

My estimation of the staff was not too high. On Sundays we were taken out for a walk towards the main road, where there was a group of shops on the other side of the road, and the woman escorting us children greeted a friend and made some remarks to her about us all being from Liverpool. Her remarks sounded not very praising of Liverpool. Actually only a few of us were from Liverpool.

On Sundays, being an Anglican Christian boy, I had to journey by myself to a Sunday school near Chester City and take part in the activities. The other boys in my dormitory must have been Roman Catholic or non-Anglican, or without any religion because they did not attend the Sunday school. Once the Sunday school gave a party for the Christian children on a Sunday and I told the staff that I had to be there at a certain time, but stupidly they sent me out too late and I arrived at the Sunday school too late with all the food eaten up, and me feeling rather sad.

Kingston Barnardo's home had women too in 1960, but they were more matron or motherly-types over our houses. There were no fascinatingly, thrillingly, beautiful young 18-year-old, red-haired girls looking after us there. I was thirteen years of age by then, and if there had been such girls over us I would not have run away so keenly, and would have wanted a kiss off them by that age every night and long for more, and I expect my house mate Donald would certainly have too, and all of the other 150 boys in the home. Some of the older boys in Kingston's Barnardo's went out secretly at night meeting girls and sometimes had trouble in getting back in at 12 midnight as they tried to find a way of getting back into the home. I had to let one 15-year-old boy in through the window. It's unlikely though that any real lasting friendship would happen between a Barnardo's boy and an outside girl because the boys had nothing.

Barnardos obviously knew what they were doing, and must not have wanted us boys to be very happy in our regimental life. However, I still have the ecstatic intelligent boy in me that delights in beauty, and I am fixed in that state now for good and eternally, but my mind now being far more intelligent, can now penetrate and see through the most thrillingly beautiful person in the whole world as just composed of a transient heap of dust and water and corruptible matter. Intense genuine beauty of the face is always associated with purity and innocence for me, but how many women are pure and innocent today, except in holy orders, perhaps? Woman are less pure today than years ago.

When I reached around 11 years of age I was told that I was too old for the home and would have to go to another Barnardo's home for older boys, and so I was driven in a car to another Barnardo's home in Bromborough by an unknown lady, but this is another life that I may not not go into because they are not happy memories, and in fact there is not one happy memory to tell about, except when I ran off and easily got back to Liverpool but soon unhappily sent back to the home.

If I do write of them, they will only be short accounts next time. In one Barnardo's home the governor was a sadistic swine, who thought he had the right to nearly every day hit my orphan boy companions over the head with force if the boy did not have his handkerchief in his pocket while in the dining room, or for some other stuped reason. I hated him greatly and one day I was looking at him with hate in my heart, as he was sitting with his spoilt and much-loved 8-year-old son and his perhaps not so-loved wife near the window. He must have noticed me looking at him and shouted for all the boys to be silent, and then annoyingly and shoutingly asked me who I was looking at. My heart started to beat faster in surprise, but I told him that I was looking out of the window, which prompted him to say that there was nothing out there, and don't talk rubbish. I told him that I was looking at the birds, which prompted him to say, there are hardly any birds out there and that I am liar. I was lying to him because he deserved nothing better, but I intensely hated him for hitting my fellow orphan boys, and wondered if I could attack him one day and give him back what he did to us orphan boys, when I was older and free to travel.

I could easily have done it, but somehow I didn't, which was much to my regret. He soon happily got rid of me as fast as he could, and sent me away as far as possible from Liverpool to Kingston's Dalziel of Wooler House in late October of 1959, and happily grinning, said at the railway station that I would never get home to Liverpool from there because it was miles away, and that there were around 300 boys there in his days, and that it was very strict. I did get home to the cheering of all the orphan boys, and so he was wrong there. He said he had been a boy there himself years ago and that it was a horrible place. He thought he could frighten me by saying that I would have good reason not to like it when I got there. Even in his words he had cruelty to hurt and frighten, if he was not using his hand to hit a heart-broken orphan boy.

It turned out to be not as bad as he suggested because of the orphan boys I liked there, which was all that I had to like, because I had not much else to like or love in the world, but I was still homesick for Liverpool. As you would expect, I know the cruel governor's sir name, but I will keep it to myself except to say that it begins with F. He may ofcourse no longer be living.

The Bromborough Barnardo's governor lived in his own quarters within the large Barnardo's mansion towards the left of the main-door entrance to the home, and the right turn was the way towards where the boys lived and played, though playing was mostly at the back of the house, which had a sort of wood, and a little further down there was a sand river, that I think continued on towards Birkenhead. His own large living quarters appeared to my mind to be luxuious compared to how we boys lived. We boys had a sitting room, which had old armchairs that gave off a pungent  varnish-like odour due to the cockroaches living inside of them. The home was full of these these reddish-brown beetles, which differed a little from the London cockroaches in that they were black and not as faster-moving as the London specie. It was not unusual to find them dead in my shoes during the morning in the dormitory and sometimes dead on the wax-polished floor. It didn't bother me because I simply threw them out and put my shoes on, and I tried not to think about them when having my food, which incidentally was not as luxurious as what the governor and his wife and son had everyday. They had an elegant table and refined settings near the window. His 8-year-old son was a quiet light-brown-haired boy, who did not appear to get involved with us orphans while I was at the home, and mostly stayed with his two parents in their living quarters. I should point out that it tended to be the full orphans who were mostly hit on the head by him, or those boys who had no telephone contact with their single parent.

The home had all white boys of typical Celtic/Saxony/Danish/Norwegian origins, except for one black boy, who had also been at Chester's Barnardo's too.

There was another Barnardo's home in Much Wenlock village, which also had a governor that sometimes clouted the younger boys over the head if they had done something to upset him, and I remember one little boy having caused some water on the floor of the toilets and wash basins and this governor entering and clouting the boy on the head. The poor little orphan boy screamed and was in tears. I had only just arrived a few days ago and did not know what to do about the young fellow and I was upset myself in a strange environment, but I felt very angry and with hatred towards this governor, as well as very hurt in my heart to see the poor orphan fellow crying.

I had been brought from Kingston's Barnardo's home by the Governor Vernon Paul in his car and when I arrived in the area it was covered by old deep snow on the hills nearby and in the village and was chilly, but the sun was shining, but on leaving the London area there had been no snow until we reached the Shropshire area. The friend of Mr Paul commented that that you could tell that we were in the north because of the snow. I felt a little at home in it because I was used to it and it was my element from childhood and that I was amongst the Welsh who are my ancestors. My ancestors are sir named Pritchard. I could smell the snow all around me and knew I was in the north and not far from Liverpool and only a mere 60 miles away. In about a week the snow started to melt in the sunshine, and soon it was spring and becoming warmer.

I was also not very happy myself, but at least I knew by examing my hidden map that my journey to Liverpool would be easy because I only had to get a bus to Shrewsbury, then Witchchurch, then Chester and finally Birkenhead to our ancient River Mersey looking towards Liverpool. I previously knew Chester very well as a 10-year-old, and knew that once I arrived there by bus I was nearly home. I had to ask in each town some kind person if they could lend me the bus fare money to the next town, and that is how I done it. I avoided using the train because I could easily be captured as soon as I was reported missing. This turned out to be the last Barnardo's home that I was ever to be in. In those days Much Wenlock was surrounded by countryside and farm land, and the ancient Roman enemies of the Celtic tribes once lived around that area, and boys dug up Roman floor tiles in other areas nearby.

The Much Wenlock Barnardo's also had cockroaches that got into shoes in the dormitory. It was not a massive house, and did not hold a lot of boys. The boys there were not as bright as the Kingston boys, and I had absolutely no intellectual excitement from any of them and I hardly remember their faces because I was so bored with them. There could not have been more than a few dozen fellow orphans with me. I vividly remember though one older boy who they were trying to fit into a job and somewhere to live. He had intelligence but seemed rather sad and tended to smile at me a lot, and seemed to be a deep thinker. I expect he was sad because he was not sure of his future. Eventually I never saw him again or sometimes just on visits from wherever he was living. He may have been shy because he did not speak much, but just studied my 13-year-old self while I was in the older boys sitting room not feeling too happy in such a boring place. He seemed to feel sorry for me because I had been brought back to the home after running off and getting to Liverpool. He was taller than me and seemed refined and gentle. The younger boys had another dining room that was very noisy. The governor was middle-aged and had a stomach ulcer, which in those days the scientists did not know that it was caused by a bacterium that is able to live in acid in the lining of the stomach. Today it can easily be cured with suitable antibiotics.

I remember when we Much Wenlock Barnardo boys journeyed to school that we passed a house where the residents sat right near the window for breakfast every morning, and so we all looked at them in amusements as we journeyed to school every morning. They soon reported us to the governor, but he dismissed it and said that they should not be sitting near the window for everybody to look at them. In school our science teacher one asked us schoolboys why is gold so valuable. None of the boys could come up with an answer, and so I answered that is was valuable because it did not rust, and the lady teacher agreed that was the correct answer. We also did a test for starch by adding and alcohol solution of iodine to starch, which causes the starch to change colour. None of the boys understood what they were doing with the boiling test tubes, but I instinctively  understood right away what it was all about.

I think that is all I can remember about Boughton Hall. There are still orphan boys today in homes and sadly some of them are not very trained for this cruel world, in which it is now very common to see young people on the streets begging and looking in bins for cast-away take-away meals, and some becoming drug addicts and drinking alcohol in the large cities of Britain. Only a few days ago I was in a shop and heard a young man of about 19 years of age telling a man that he had no furniture in his flat and was looking for some. I spoke to him and asked him if he had no furniture, and he said yes in a very low voice and gazed towards the floor in shyness. The young fellow had obviously never been trained in social skills and how to relate in a jolly and jokingly manner with other people. Sword fencing and other sports that give close contact with other people would have trained him to relate with other people and fight in life for what he wanted or needed in this case. Something had obviously upset him in his life keeping him distant and shy.

I will say goodbye now, and hope the Barnardo's boys will forgive my excessive stress on beauty and the beautiful girl in Chester, but as it happened there, I thought I would include it in my boyhood days in the home as well as my thoughts on it. I should give a warning though, that the thrill on seeing beauty is just one step under the threshold of pain and if indulged too much will indeed cause pain and suffering. It is like having an itchy back and asking somebody to scratch it. At first it feels nice, but if taken to excess it causes pain as it would if your back was heavily scratched to bleeding point.

Many a man has destroyed his life because of a beautiful woman, who he could not forget about, and some women take a delight in hurting and destroying men. Beauty is also like handling dangerous poisons such as hydrocyanic acid or potassium cyanide, which incidently I made both when I was younger, but had to take precautions when making them. But in the end of it all, beauty is really mathematical left and right exactness of the face. Strictly speaking, it only exists in the mind and nothing more, and day-to-day familiarity with it causes it to lose its effects in thrilling us, and we end up just seeing an ordinary average face instead of the face that once thrilled us. I suppose we are delighting in mathematical exactness.

You can understand why I am not too happy to write about such bad Barnardo homes in detail, or rather bad governors and staff and what they did in detail. 

My email address for any past Barnardo orphan boy remembering me or not remembering me is: wolfgang12345@swissinfo.org
Danny Dunlop. Dated 7/8/2006