Memory Of Marilyn Celico Singing.

A Memory of Brentwood.

Marilyn Celico was for a time writing about stuff back in America about 15 years ago on a Brentwood website(before Facebook) and just chattering about the States.I remember her blonde hair and accent and her Dad at the Cafe called the Donut Bar down the small street beside Odeon cinema that was!.
First the swimming pool off Ongar Road was sold off and we had to wait 20 years for the leisure centre which didnt\doesnt have same atmosphere.
The White where I learned to skip jive as an under age wannabe had a jazz night on Sundays and I met an Irish girl who thought me older but I was only 15! We took in lodgers as my father died of war injuries in 1961. He ran a successful wall and floor tiling business but because so many tiles were left on walls my adoptive Mum thought she should pay everyone back on a paltry War widow pension.
When I moved from dreary dodgy Dagenham in April 1958 aged 10 to Woodman Road I met Richard Grey,he lived in the Chase just off our road.We scooted on our small bikes up Kings Road and I saw the High Street for first time.
About a year later I volunteered to help look after a small piggery owned by Henry Axon who had a Butchers on that High Street.The piggery was off the High Street.He was quite mean in that I carried lots of bucketed water and feed bags about for over a year but he never once bought as much as a mars bar!When I joined the Brentwood Gazette as a trainee reporter in 1964 I rang him but he didnt remember me despite us having conversations about school and future work.
Ironically I wrote about his life when he died as one of my first jobs as a reporter was calling at Arnold Bennetts undertakers.I was given a large number of Gazette copies to distribute to the Police and Ambulance Stations and Lindrum Studios in Ongar Road.I used to pick up the wooden blocks to leave with our printers for the happy couples photos.People who worked there included Stuart Scott,the Editor,Brian Motley,now over 90,he was Chief Reporter.
Stuart Wallace Derek Hales,Sports Reprter now lives in Canada,Sean Robinson and thespian Peter Hoyle.