As a 10 year old, football mad, boy living in Upper Norwood, South London I was returning from church with my mother and sister on Sunday 27th March 1966. We got off our 196 bus at Beulah Hill and proceeded to cross the road in order to walk down Spurgeon Road, where we lived.
As we did so a black and white dog began to follow us across the road and down Spurgeon Road. It soon began barking at us and running in front of us as we walked. The dog’s barking got quite frenzied so much so that my mother became anxious and began to shoo it away. Unperturbed, the dog continued to follow us down the hill for some 300 yards right up to our house where despite continued shooing it managed to enter our garden, much to my mother’s annoyance.
Eventually, we managed to get the dog out of the front garden and shut the gate. The dog however persisted in it’s quest and continued barking for some time. In those the days calling the police for such a trivial matter would have been out of the question so we just had to wait to see what would happen. Eventually the dog tired and began to wander off, still barking! Our Sunday continued as usual, Sunday lunch, homework, listening to the Top 20 on the radio and watching Sunday Night at the London Palladium before getting ready for bed and school the next day.
Imagine my surprise as a young boy to be woken by my mother once asleep to be told that the World Cup, the Jules Rimet trophy had been found at the top of our road by a dog!! As a family we often talk about our brush with fame and how close we may have come to finding the stolen trophy.
Tony Apicella
Memory added on August 22, 2016
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