Blue Bird Café

A Memory of Lee-on-the-Solent.

I grew up in Lee, from 1948. My parents owned the bakers in the High street. We first lived in the flat above, with the bakery behind. We then moved to a flat on Marine Parade, not as posh as they are now! We owned the BlueBird café, which was a single story hut on the corner on Marine Parade, we also had the Penguin restaurant, the Sandpiper in Pier street, and various ice cream and candy floss shops on the sea front. The hours I was required to make candy floss! Probably illegal child labour nowadays. And chips! I made so many chips for the restaurant. My father even got my Aunt and various other family members to make ice lollies in a garage at the back. Health and safety no way. Even though I think I was required to help out in the shops from a young age there was a distinct benefit, getting home from school I could go into one of the restaurants and ask for food to be cooked, and later to another one for something else to eat. In my innocence I thought the parents didn’t know, but somehow I could only seem to get one cake a day. Sunday’s were special, with both parents working in the business it was the only day we had proper roast dinner at home. I’ve pictures of my father with an ‘icecream bicycle’ which he used for mobile sales, I also have memories of beach huts selling ices and tea in boxes. At some time, late fifties I think, we sold the land on which the Bluebird sat, moved the café into the main building, and the land was used to build more flats and shops. As a child I was disappointed, we’d used the land for cowboys and Indians, November 5th bonfires, and just wonderful freedom. I was a keen swimmer, the pass for the swimming pool was 7s6d (37.5p) for the summer. In my memory I went every day it was open, but of course it must have rained sometimes. If it did I don’t remember. It was open from Whitsun to the October half term, were we hardier then? Lee Tower was open, it used to have a lift up to the viewing platform, there was also a ballroom, I used to watch all these glamorous people arriving for evening function, there was a cinema, and I was given 1s (5p) which was 6d for sweets and 6d for the cinema on Saturday afternoons, there were queues for popular films. As the cinema went down in popularity it was turned into a 10 pin bowling alley. It was a very popular resort for the summer with day trippers, there were long queues for the buses at the end of the day. The beach was different then, the old wrecked pier was still there, and the shingle was lower, the tide went out way way further, so that there was flat greyish sand at low tide. The liners sailed from Southampton around the Isle of Wight due to shallow water and I got to know each one by the shapes and number of funnels, showing off to visitors my knowledge. At the end of busy summer days I used to trawl along the promenade to collect empty bottles left by visitors, not for recycling, but because there was money back if returned! The trials for the hovercraft were held throughout my childhood and early teens. Even at the time I think I felt privileged to grow up in a small seaside town with the countryside so close.

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