Does anyone have any memories of Bordesley Green. I used to live in Whitehall Road and I have some very happy childhood memories during the late 50's early sixties. Does anybody remember Curlies the sweet shop, Bert Guys and Craigs bicycle shop.
I was brought home from Loveday Street Hospital to 19 Colonial Road in November 1947. One of the worst winters on record. I had a long association with that house because my sister (10 years older than me) took it over with her husband in about 1960 and had her twin girls there. They were looked after occasionally by the next door neighbour, Gladys Bignell, as I had been after my Mom died in 1958, and before Dad re-married and he and I went to live in Ward End.
I used to play with the son of the owner of Bert Guys, and with our other neighbours son John Lewis. I could ride a bike at an early age so we visited many railway bridges and stations for train spotting. Colonial Road went down into a dip, which was great for getting down it at speed on a book balanced on a roller skate.
The local shops I remember most are the Cake Shop 2 doors from Guys, where my favs were pineapple cream tart, yellow ice buns, and tiny little hovis loaves. Further up was Mr Handley at the Chemist, where inside it was all boarded up so you couldn’t see the goods. Along again was the pork butchers, where we got boiled ham and something called polony. It was like a sausage with a thick red skin and you sliced it like you would a chorizo. Then The Sweet Shop run by Winnie and her sister that sold Walls Ice Cream.
Just before Churchill Road there was a crossing, and a little up from the bottom of Blake Lane was the Butchers. My sister went out a bit with a young guy called Walter who worked there ... being teased by the popular chant Walter, Walter ... lead me to the alter! And opposite the Butchers was the Doctors. Dr Benbows son came to my school (Drummond Road) for a while, until he went to Grammer School I think.
Back down and round the corner opposite Winnies was the Shoe Repairers. Then the timber yard and then a few houses just before the Fish and Chip Shop. A girl at my school called Susan Georgina Borne lived in one of those houses. And I remember her name because of the building company with the initials SGB. Next to the chippie was the fruit and veg shop, and then on the corner of Fifth Avenue? was a general grocery shop.
The shop I loved the most was on the far corner of Botha Road. A husband and wife, whose features were quite extraordinary, made their own ice cream (gelato I think from cornflour and milk), and their own toffee and treacle toffee to die for! After doing Saturday shopping for a Mrs Christian who was 100 and lived just up from us, I would hurry down there and buy everything I could with my 3 pence wages! No wonder I had my first tooth out when I was 5 at the Dentist above the Bank, after crossing Churchill Road, and next to the entrance to the allotments which I walked through in my way home from school! Happy Days ...