1960s Shopping in Uxbridge Road, Hatch End

Uxbridge c1965
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On the left of this view is the pub sign for the "Railway Hotel" - a popular drinking venue for older members of St Anselm's Youth Club and the Hatch End Young Conservatives!  Next door is a garage forecourt sign - this was the Cornwall Garage where I bought a lovely blue Triumph Spitfire two-seater in 1970. I returned there in the 1980s when they had a Fiat franchise and bought a couple of new cars from them.

On the opposite side was a branch of Barclays Bank, managed by Mr Alf Woolley, and further down towards the corner of Grimsdyke Road a branch of the National Provincial Bank where I had a savings account.

On the extreme right of the picture (really just out of view) is Hatch End Post Office. I worked there as a Christmas "casual" in 1965 while I was a sixth former at Pinner Grammar School.  I had a lovely time on the parcels counter - the permanent staff would weigh parcels and write the postage price and take the money then throw (yes THROW) them to me at the end of the counter where I had a huge ledger of stamps. It was my job to stick on the stamps to the value pencilled on the wrapping. Of course this quickly bored me so I livened things up by arranging unusual combinations of brightly coloured stamps - at this time there were some particularly lurid green sevenpenny stamps and I used so many huge blocks of these on the heavier parcels that I singlehandedly ran Hatch End Post Office out of 7d's! There must be a lot of very happy stamp collectors around the world with unusual blocks of green stamps in their albums!  A fortnight's work was paid at the princely rate of two shillings and fourpence farthing an hour! And I had a deduction for a National Insurance stamp to be stuck on my NI card!

Oh happy days!