Do you know that around the present-day fenced perimeter of the Westlands Centre for Sports Excellence is a 10 feet-wide tarred walkway? It wasn’t always tarred in the past. In fact, prior to 1963, the Westlands Primary School fence was right up till the edge of the drain that ran along Victoria Green Road and Khaw Sim Bee Road.
Then at the end of 1962, the Public Works Department called a tender to construct a walkway. In the process, the school’s perimeter fence was moved inwards.
The construction of the walkway began in January 1963. At that time, I was in Standard Four and I would be walking home every day after school. All the way from Westlands School to Seang Tek Road. Every day, I could see workers constructing the walkway, dumping gravel and then finally pouring a layer of asphalt before a mini-roller was used to compress and flatten it. A nice, dark, flattened surface around the school.
And there I was, daily, digging the heels of my shoes into the still-soft asphalt when I felt that no-one was watching. A long line of holes in the asphalt, several feet apart. The next day, the holes would have been repaired and I took delight in digging in my shoes’ heels again. This went on for days and miraculously, nobody caught on that it was little me, little 10-year-old innocent me, that was the culprit.
Then Chinese New Year arrived on the 25th of January. The school closed for several days. When I returned after the holiday break, I found that the asphalt had hardened. I could no longer make holes in the walkway. Oh well, end of my little pleasure. And that is my little secret of 55 years, now revealed. What a naughty boy.
@ Quah Seng Sun 2018
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