I was a book worm
At the bottom end of Findon Road, just up the road from where my Granddad lived, in Whitehawk Road, there was a large area of waste ground, which I was lead to believe was a lorry park, on which they later built the library. The library was a combined book/toy library back then, and we being a poor family I borrowed toys as well as books. Though, being a bookworm, I was more into the books.
The welfare building
There was also a lorry park behind the welfare building on Findon Road. My youngest sister, the last of the four of us, was born in 1969, and I remember Mum taking her into the welfare building every so often to be weighed by the midwives. I clearly remember walking from the entrance up what, to a nine year old, seemed a long corridor. I can also remember the antiseptic smell of the building. As far as I know, the welfare building is still there?
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Helping the milkman
About this time, I was allowed to help the local Unigate milkman, who I knew as ‘Jack’, with his rounds during school holidays. His round went from the bottom end of Whitehawk, out to Roedean, and included the Golf Course at the top of East Brighton Park. We used to stop for breakfast at the Broadway Cafe, which is now a newsagents opposite the junction of Manor Way and Whitehawk Road. I had a drink and two thick slices of buttered toast, before continuing with the round. We stopped again at a customers house at the bottom of the hill in Roedean which looked up towards the Girls School, where we had more toast and a drink. At the end of the round ‘Jack’ would drop me home. I know that this would be frowned upon now.
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Well, Tony, I’m sure it didn’t do you any harm and probably did you a lot of good. I always worked during my school holidays and it taught me a certain amount of self-reliance and discipline. Sad about the demise of the milk round, but I suppose it was inevitable. I remember my mum buying all sorts of food from the milkman, as well as bread and cakes from the mobile bakery van. But then she didn’t have a car. It’s a different life now, but I still get sentimental for what’s gone.
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