Nostalgia Part 1 ‘The 60’s
Hello! everybody…..
My blog is mostly about Brighton in the ‘sixties’
I was born in Whitehawk in: 1952 and ‘came of age’ in the ‘sixties’.
Brighton was a very different place then and it was a great place to grow up in and an exiting decade!
Hey!…does anybody remember the ‘Black-Rock’ tidal-wave of ‘August 1962’?
On a weekday that year the ‘Black rock’ beach east of the swimming pool was packed with ‘mums and kids’ when a freak wave steamed in and slammed into the sea wall.
Luckily everybody ran off the beach up to the under cliff walk but….many ‘clothes /lilos’ etc were washed out to sea!!!
(please post your comments about this if you have some input.)
Being a teenager in the sixties was very different to today’s youngsters growing up.
There was always something to do …at little cost and like many boys I had a paper round and earned the massive sum of ’15 bob’ a week!!!.
Saturday mornings us kids went to the ‘Top Rank’ disco (about 1 shilling and 9d. entry!
Marie (?) was resident there and we had dance competitions..I once came second and won a ‘P.J. Proby ’45’ If I had kept it, it may be worth ‘thousands’,today.
Also another highlight of the week was ‘Monday’ evenings at the Ice Rink (Disco night). This was an ideal place to meet a girl and many ‘romances’? were formed at this place! Sometimes after school we went to one of the many ‘coffee-bars’ in Western Rd. or Duke St. etc.
In the mid sixties no one dared to enter a pub until they were ’18 years old’.
(MUSIC: etc.)
My eldest sister (Val) queued up all day in ‘1963’ to get tickets to see the Beatles at the Hippodrome..(I think they cost ’12 shillings’ each!)
I remember standing on my seat all through the concert but….the screaming was so deafening i could not hear the ‘performance’!!!
Afterwards a huge crowd stood in the road near the ‘backstage door’ to get a glimpse of ‘The Fab Four’ but we reckon they were ‘smuggled-out’ in the back of an ambulance!!!
My other sister (SUE) who is five years older than me saw the ‘WHO’s’ first visit to Brighton and other top groups of the time in the ‘Florida Rooms’. (now part of the Sealife Centre!)
Any way…thats all for now…more memories soon,
Terry West xxx