Fir Tree Road

A Memory of Epsom.

This is the parade of shops as l remember it from my childhood. I remember at the top of the parade, a butcher's shop, Leila the hairdresser (run by my friend's mum Joyce), which was next to the optician, a grocery store, the post office, and at the very bottom used to be the Fir Tree tea rooms. Beyond that was the garage, and then the Drift Bridge Hotel where l spent many a Saturday night nursing a rum and pineapple in my teens. Every weekday morning, l would wait at Drift for the 164 bus to arrive and take me to school in Epsom. It was usually late, and often full. I would sit on the top deck with my friends in our Rosebery uniforms until we reached Epsom High Street where we would leap off the moving bus into the middle of the road, before it swung round the corner and up to the station.