In our block of flats there was a miserable man who was always moaning about everything that I did. He lived on the ground floor, and moaned about everyone else in the flats, not just me. My dad bought me a Spanish guitar and when he moaned about that, I blew. We had a big row, and when the neighbours heard us, they came down, but they started on at the man instead of me.
The Soap Box Cart adventure
The trouble with youngsters growing up now a days is that they never get the chance to build a soap box cart, all you needed was a piece of scaffold board/ 4 pram wheels with axles/ 2 pieces of wood to screw the axles to/ and a box with a side cut out to sit in /and a strong piece of rope which you tied to the front axle and you steered it with your feet. Most kids had a box cart. You started at the top of a hill, and if you were clever enough to have made a brake, then you let it off. Then you go as fast as you can downhill. When I was in Hollingbury we all met at the top of Birch Grove Crescent and went downhill together. Down the crescent and left at the bottom by the red phone box and down Denton Drive. There was a main road at the bottom and only the brave would try and go further.
Carden School Youth Club
Living in Birch Grove Crescent it was only a short walk to the Carden school youth club where I met my friends Denis Constable, Andy Williams, and Michael Constable. We went inside and had a soft drink and chatted with the girls’ then I spoke to Mr and Mrs Harbour who ran the club. I always asked her if there was anything that she needed doing as I always had time for the Harbours, whenever I had any worries or needed reassuring about something they were always there with the answers, and she was there when I had just turned seventeen to comfort me when I lost my mum to breast cancer. Then the four of us all underage, but big for our ages walked down to the Snipe the local pub for a well-deserved drink and a game of darts.
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Hi Ben, I lived in the next block in 60s ,I remember you an your brother David.
My parents moved to a one bedroom top floor flat in Birchgrove Crescent when I was 9 months old, that was in the October of 1962, I remember there was a lady that lived on the ground floor, Mrs Graph, & her daughter Angela, we moved along to the next block of flats when I was 3, in 1965, we moved to 76 Birchgrove Crescent. I went to Carden infants & junior school, my friends were Kim Lamper , her brothers Desmond, Peter, & Russell, Tracy &
Kerry Yeates, they lived in Denton drive, Vicki Lewery, Beverly Rider, Julie Maslin, Julie Elkin, & many other friends, I had a happy childhood in hollingbury, I went to Margaret Hardy school, I left that school in 1978, I never looked back, I lived at home until 1980, that’s when I left home to start my life with my then fiance, my parents were Pat & Brian Morbey, my name is Hazel, I remember some pretty cold winters in Hollingbury, my parents continued to live in the same 2 bed flat for 53 years, when sadly they they both died, my dad first, then my mum 2 weeks later, they enjoyed many years there.
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