Memories Of A Delivery Boy

A Memory of Hounslow.

Memories of a Delivery Boy 50/60s

We moved onto the Beavers Lane Estate in 1951 as it was being built. Our first home was in the Chester Road flats with kids in every flat we soon had a large group of friends, Richard Dave Rosie Carole and Ian and Dave King’s (Entertainer) nephew opposite. The heart of the estate was the Parade of shops and the phone box opposite where you called the doctor , ambulance, rich relatives or the TV repairman or met friends before going out. Alan was nine years older than me and soon got a job as a paper boy in Hinds paper shop ( black jacks, fruit salad and Jubblies ) and as he got up early he also marked up all the papers on Saturdays he worked with the mobile baker.. The other shops were Mr Carters’ the Grocer , Mr Squelch the butcher the Green Grocers where we brought paraffin, the hair dressers/ barbers and the Haberdashers (as a boy I never went in there). We both started school at Beavers and attended the Coronation party there. As soon as I could I worked at Carters as a delivery boy on Thursday and Friday evenings and Saturday mornings. I had a massive old black bike with a huge carrier welded on the front in which I would carry a empty egg crate to put in two boxes of shopping to cut down on my trips. I remember delivering to the new flats in Green Lane (8 floors) and having to carry 12 tins of chappie plus the weekly shop up to the top floor when the lift did not work. It was the lady who ran the Stables in Green Lane. I also used to pay in the loose change in Barclays by Hounslow West Station. I played in the pits behind the shops or in mass football matches on the field next to the Church of the Good Shepard . Went with my net to catch sticklebacks in the River Crane and walk down the alley by Park Davies. Walked to Hounslow Heath for chips and scraps and fireworks. Put a penny in the toy shop door by the Odeon to watch the train go round and got my first kitten from the pet shop with the parrot. Had friends in the Barracks and saved up for my first car on my seventeenth birthday with the tips from the delivery round. Later I worked in Kranz in the High Street went to the Attic and played in a ten pin league at the Bowl. Happy days.