Growing Up In Brighton Road

A Memory of Surbiton.

I remember my happy childhood in Brighton Road so well. We lived at 114, heading toward the Portsmouth road. My grandfather had built the house. It lay back from the road.
Mr and Mrs Harper ran the paper shop that had a telephone cubicle in it.
There was a shop next to the Black Lion that sold lemonade for a penny a glass. My friend Susan Dunford lived further down the road, we would wander and play and it always seemed very hot in the summer. We went to the pictures on Saturday mornings, Sunday School in the afternoon, afternoon tea at Packhams, the lovely proper post office. I went to Hazlewood School, I had to go over Surbiton station to get there, one day I was told off ... little ladies do not whistle in their school uniforms. I moved from Surbiton when I was eight, but I think that because my father was born there, it really is the only place that holds my roots.