Right….here’s a good one for you: Question? Who remembers the first ‘Mc Donald’s’ in Brighton?
Answer: Me!..In April 1974…at the top of North St. opposite the Clock Tower (it closed after six months!!!)
Apparently no one went there; they were too busy scoffing their ‘soggy’ wimpy-burgers and guzzling warm ‘coca-cola’!…Ah! those were the days.
But…fret ye not, the original ‘Uncle Sams’ is still in ‘Montpelier’ and is still going strong after ‘forty-years’!
The said chain of burger bars opened a second outlet in York Place in the early ‘seventies’.
I was working opposite at the ‘Watney-Mann’ computer bureau in: Waterloo Place….where we worked a three-shift system..frequenting the ‘local hostelries’ (Walmer Castle…etc etc!) and many ‘forays’ to: Uncle Sams/Kentucky/Great Wall of China/Dayvilles..’32 flavours!!!)
In between we managed to fit in a bit of ‘computer-operating’ to please our lords and masters enough to pick up our ‘monthly paycheque’.
Our ghastly building (Waterloo House) was eventually ‘linked’ to the ‘mirrored’ building owned by ‘Advance Linen’ in: 1975 when the very old lady (some: 95 years!) who lived in between the buildings popped her clogs!!!
She refused many ‘bribes’ to relinquish her abode but…nature took it’s course.
A rather bizarre ending to this story is a few days after word got around that she had died…one quiet Sunday afternoon two ‘burly’ men were spotted by our security-guard removing her frail body rolled up in an old carpet and bundled into the back of an old estate-car!!!
Was she buried???..What was her name??? No one knew!
The somewhat ironical twist to this story is that my parents,when they married in: 1938…lived next door to this lady!!!
Oh!…and she wore a ‘muffler’ over her mouth every time she ventured out. (she was very ‘green’!)
Anyway…grisly stories aside…a much frequented pub in the ‘seventies’ was ‘The Ship’ in Lewes Rd.
…especially on: Wednesday evenings and Sunday lunchtimes!
The ‘regular’ (99% male) were made to suffer the ‘exotic delights’ of : ‘Angie’ from Croydon
‘Lou’ from London and the ‘ravishing’ Christine from Surrey!
Their ‘cavorting left little to the imagination but the ‘clientele’ spent and drunk heavily thus keeping the pub ‘afloat’!…despite being temporarily ‘closed-down’ many times!
Ah!…those were the days.