My Childhood In Tooting

A Memory of Tooting.

Born in Wimbledon 1950, I lived in Trevelyan Road in Tooting until I was 10 when we moved to South Lambeth.  My nan lived behind the Granada in Tooting and she cleaned there.  She lived in Bickley Street.  I went to Sellincourt Road School, buying sweets etc from Mrs Alexander's shop which was next door to Bernard Say's shop on the way to and from school.  Mrs Alexander's husband also repaired shoes at the side. I well remember going through the market where I once got separated from my mum and remember crying.  I also remember the live eels which were sold there, staring at them slithering about in large tin trays waiting to be sold as my mum was busy chatting to someone she knew.  The Sunlight Laundry shop was on the corner of Charlemont Road where my mum would sometimes send her sheets and then pick them up done up in brown paper and string.  The Mitre pub was on the other side.  Dad had a rented garage at the top of Franciscan Road where he kept his motorbike and sidecar.  He worked at the Rose and Crown at Tooting Bec part time to get money to buy the motorbike for us to go for days out.  We would go to Leith Hill, Box Hill, Devil's Punchbowl and the south coast.  We spent some time on Sunday mornings travelling on the underground with Dad, going up and down the Monument and collecting cockles, winkles and prawns for our teas from the stalls on our way back home for Sunday lunch which mum had been cooking.  We used to sometimes go out for walks in the afternoons up the high street towards the Astoria, passing an Italian coffee/restaurant who sold some lovely icecream.  We would visit the Co-op perhaps twice a year and get winter and summer clothes (two dresses for me and some liberty bodices) and Mum would pay this off at the door weekly.  Dad worked at a shop called Hale and Partners (I think) which was at the top of Fransican Road.  I went once to the Lido at Tooting Bec (wearing of course my shirring elastic swim suit) but didn't like it as there were flies in the water.  Names that spring to mind: the river Wandle, Pecrys, I remember mum getting socks and things there,  Woolworths. The smell of the underground and the big lights swinging with the warm air flowing out of the tunnel when a train was due.  The big black bulbous rubber things swaying down from the roof of the underground train carriages which you could hold onto and I am sure all the seats had arm rests.  We used to get the trolley bus to Fulham where I had an aunt living there.  The metal chewing gum machines attached to the walls where for a threepence piece you could get a packet of YZ chewing gum.  The Cadburys chocolate machine on the underground station platforms, a bar for sixpence.  We would go around Hamleys in Regent Street near Christmas for a treat.  I am not sure if we ever bought anything there, probably not.  Rag and bone men would come around on a horse and cart as would the milkman, although I think that progressed to an electric one.  My husband and I visited Tooting a few years ago on a day return on the train to London.  We spent the time walking around the places which I had not been to for around 45 years.  Everything seemed so much smaller.  The roads did not seem anywhere near as long as I remember.  But there were still landmarks to take me back in time to my childhood.  The Granada Tooting being one of them.  I do remember queueing outside with mum and dad and my brother, cold and miserable, waiting for a performance of something or other.  I do remember going to see 'Von Ryan's Express' there with a visiting step brother who was in naval uniform and felt very proud sitting with him.  I lived in South Lambeth from 10 years old, going to Stockwell Manor School, leaving at 16 as a shorthand typist and going to work at the Regent Street Polytechnic, leaving there and moving to Leeds in West Yorkshire when I was 18 and have lived there ever since, but as mentioned I have been back just the once to Tooting and found the years just falling away back to my childhood days.  P.S. my maiden name was Gibson