Its Saturday morning here in the UK.
At one time that meant one thing. Going up town with mates.
In my case it was Preston Town Centre.
I have no real feel anymore for when this started but I must have been able to catch a bus in a group of young lads. Maybe age 10 or 11? That would have made it 1970 or 1971.
First job was to catch a bus at the top of the road. A bus straight into town about a mile away. Later on we walked it in but not at the start.
I'd love to think that it was a double decker we caught where we hopped on at the rear and got a paper ticket from a conductor wearing a chunky metal machine on a strap.
Alas, I have a feeling it was a single decker with doors at the front and in the middle, where we got a ticket from the driver but I could be wrong.
Preston got a swanky new space age Bus Station around that time and I imagine single deckers were part of the overhaul.
The bus station was a bazaar of lost souls, posing teens and fussing mums. It was a right job getting through it.
Once out in the daylight again as a group we wandered to where it mattered most, the record shop. In our case it was Bradys opposite a grand and imposing Museum.
Brady's had everything we needed, racks of minty new albums, trays of the latest singles, shelves of music cassettes and best of all, listening booths with huge clunky headphones!
It was a real Saturday rite of passage to hear a new rock band for the first time in the booth at Bradys. I remember Rush from Canada blowing me away in that small room full of mates desperate to hear too.
I just can't recall though if the booths had decks or did the sales gals and guys have a master deck, which our chosen album went on? Were we not trusted with mint vinyl and scratchy needles? Probably not!
I wonder if we ever listened to music cassettes in those booths instead of records?
After getting our fill of heavy rock and maybe buying some Emitex it was time for some refreshments. The order of the day was a ham finger roll and a vimto float, which we called a vimto and ice cream. The place to go was Bruciani's near the train station and Tommy Balls shoe shop.
Bruciani's was an Italian coffee house of the old school. Polished wood veneers, formica, round metal trays, steaming hot milk, whirling milk shakes, clinking cups, fresh rolls and boy, was the queue of youngsters eager to get to the goods.
"Vimto and ice cream and a ham bun please!"
I can hear it now and the prospect of that duo of goodness still fills me with happiness.
Just like me, I'm pleased to say that Bruciani's is still around and occasionally the two us meet up again.
Yep, I enjoyed going up town on Saturday mornings.
Did you readers?
I have a feeling most town orientated bus companies still used double-decker buses. More outlying routes may have been single-deckers. I honestly can't remember when I saw my first single-decker!
ReplyDeleteCould be Peter. I am going to try to find some footage of Preston Bus Station online to get a feel for what it was like and which buses they used.
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ReplyDeleteDidn't have to go uptown, more downtown in my case, as the main shopping centre was just down the road from me in the '70s. In fact, it still is today. Around the mid-to-late '70s, on Saturdays, me and a group of mates would descend on a swanky store called Bairds, which had a top floor restaurant (cafeteria) with waitress-service. We'd get tea, coffee, or Coke (as in cola), a ham roll (each, of course), then my pals would talk amongst themselves while I browsed through whatever comics I'd bought that day, occasionally joining in the conversation. Bairds (which was by then called Arnott's, having started life as Henderson's of Sauchiehall Street in the '60s) closed in May of 1988, and the town centre, although nowadays a lot bigger, is nowhere near as magical as in the days of my youth. All three incarnations of the store were different in name only, as they were all part of The House Of Fraser. Ah, if only I could have my youth back.
ReplyDeleteIts often a sad sweet experience remembering our youth Kid. I liked reading this comment a lot as it captures the time and place perfectly. Your line about occasionally joining in the conversations brought it to life for me. I find it hard going back home. Preston's a ghost town for me now and I would wander round like a lost boy.
DeleteGhost town is an apt description for many shopping centres these days, as they're often haunted by ghosts of the long-gone, glorious past.
DeleteAs I recall, in a record shop, you handed your record to the assistant who put it on a turntable, and told you which booth to go into. Not all booths had headphones, most (I think) had speakers set into the wooden side walls of the booth.
ReplyDeletemy memory's set on headphone-vision Andy! I don't remember the speakers!
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