Bingo

A Memory of Streatham.

I grew up on Fern Lodge estate in Streathams Leigham Court Road. Every Thursday my mum and a few of her mates from the estate, Auntie Josie and Auntie Ivy, would put on thir lipstick and put a scarf on their heads and go and get the 137 bus to Streatham Hill and go to Bingo. My mum did this for about 27 years and only ever won twice. My mum and Auntie Josie used to work in the fish and chip shop down by the side of Streatham Hill railway station and I used to go to work with her sometimes. I used to help old Bill cut the chips through an old machine and watch them fall into an old bath tub. J Sainsbury's was on the corner and sometimes we would get the shopping on our way home. It had marble counters and you stood in line to be served.
If my mum had the money we would go to Saturday morning pictures, it was always so noisy. Or sometimes we could go swimming and we had hot chocolate out of the machine at the baths. In the summer we went to Tooting Bec lido. My friend Andrew France and I spent hours there with our picnic. We would spend our bus money on sweets and walk home, up the common and through the rookery. We would nick the daffodils in the spring for our mums.
When I became a teenager I used to go to Saturday morning at the Lacarno, I thought I was very 'la de da'. My sister Carol used to go in the evenings, I loved watching her go out with her back-combed hair and thick black eyeliner and the shortest skirt, that my dad said looked like a pelmet. My sister used to go to the Sound Wave, which was above the ice rink, later it became the Bali Hai.  

---

---