I lived on Turnberry Road, the end near Booths Farm Road and Calshot School. I remember the greengrocers in the row of shops opposite Calshot school. An old man owned it and he looked after his very elderly mother but I can't remember his name, was it Turpin? if you remember let me know. Then the chemist shop, I think it was owned by Mr Giddings and he had an assistant Heather Jones, then the sweet shop owned by Evans? then passed to the Thompsons? they had a little girl Tracy and when they left the shop passed to the Lees. The next shop in the row was Perks? a grocers where you could buy loose tea by the pound, butter cut from the slab which would be wrapped in greaseproof paper, and rows of metal boxes along the front of the counter all with different biscuits in. There was the wool shop which has a yellow film blind pulled down over the window all summer, the ironmongers the butchers and the chip shop, owened by Marco's at the time I left.
I also remember the midwife who lived halfway down Turnberry Road, she drove a black morris minor I seem to remember. I was sent down the road to fetch her a few times when my siblings were on the way. Upon arrival at our house she would give me and my brother a few coins to go buy sweets while she got on with the business at hand! how different things are today! I remember the bomb site and air raid shelter (where the swimming pool now sits) we used to play there after school.
Anyone remember Mrs Davies the headmistress of Calshot infants school in the late 1950's early 60's? I remember Arthur Browning, we used to walk down the gully and stand watching him fixing his motorbikes at the bottom of his garden. The Turnberry road sweeper used to wear a top hat and tails and was a real oddity, as he pushed his brush up the gutters, top hat firmly in place, a real excentric and we called him Smokey Joe. Me and my brothers used to wait for him coming up the road with his metal bin on wheels, he told us the most fantastic tales about his life which as kids we totally believed, another highlight of our week.