The winner of The Alan Titchmarsh Show’s ‘People’s Author’ competition recalls his adventures growing up in the close-knit neighbourhood of post-war Brixton, where reports of his mischief could be quick to reach his mother's ears. Nevertheless, he scoured bombsites and markets, selling everything from bricks to horse dung, amid spivs, barrow boys and new arrivals from the West Indies, and found himself in more scrapes than most.