50 Gloucester Road was also the site of the Unicorn Bookshop owned by Bill Butler, a beat poet,occultist and publisher. It was described in the sixties by the local Conservative Party as "a place where hippies and perverts gather". From time to time it would be raided and copies of Jean Genet would be taken away. I must have missed all that.

Can anyone remember the milk bottling factory which was in Gloucester Road (Place)? They used to let me have long lengths of silver foil from which the bottle tops had been cut, we used it at Christmas as decorations. Is the museum still there? As children, we weren't allowed in unless accompanied by an adult, my friends and I tried everything to get in, we tried looking really quiet, grown up and sensible (difficult when you're 9) but the man at the door always caught us.
I went to Pelham Street School and then on to Central School but I don't think the latter is there now, (I had two friends: Anita Moonlight and Diane Fashom). I can't even remember quite where it was, does anyone have stories of the school? There always seemed to be a lot of tar on the beach, my mother used to rub butter on our skin and then the tar washed off easily, not quite as easy on our clothes though. Between 1947 and 1951, I seem to remember something large washed up on the beach, a ship or a whale, can anyone else remember this or what it was? As we didn't have a garden, just a small yard, we always used to cross the road to 'The Level' a large piece of open ground. Here people would light their bonfires on Guy Fawkws night - I know the memory can play tricks but I seem to remember many bonfires all burning at the same time? Across the road from our house was a shop and inside was a lady with a peculiar machine with nylon thread to a needle, she would stretch stockings across a small cup and then darn the ladders, I would watch her my nose pressed against the glass and then dash home, stretch one of my mum's lysle stockings over a cup and with a needle, pretend to mend the ladders, what fun. I now live in Bletchley in Buckinghamshire, just up the road from Bletchley Park, the home of the Codebreakers but I still miss the sea even after 55 years.