Cornerways/Wine Tasting At The Queen's Head/Pinner Fair

A Memory of Pinner.

We used to go as a family to the Tea Room which, if memory serves, was called 'Cornerways' for Sunday lunch, as a special treat in the fifties. My father took me to a wine tasting held in the cellar at the Queen's Head in the sixties. A combination of youth and too much 'tasting' - my first hangover! Memories of the annual fair; the roundabout in front of, I think, Woolworths (pre health and safety) and people used to fly off, dust themselves down and get back on. The bearded lady/belly dancer outside the cinema - very racy - and one year had a photo taken at the fair with my sister and her friend with a monkey in trousers and waistcoat, which bit the friend. As a child I used to go to the bluebell wood - off Bridge Street to pick flowers for my mother and can remember the International Store with separate counters for cheese/dried fruit/biscuits etc...all unwrapped and weighed out by hand. I think it was replaced by Budgens in later years. School at Cannon Lane primary and then Pinner County Grammar - considered very modern at the time as it was a mixed school - I was the envy of many of my friends.

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