I started to take Sunday evenings off during the winter to go to the pictures. The pub was given a complimentary ticket that could be used once a week for displaying the cinema adverts for Southport. Dad said I could have the ticket as my own as no one else would use it. At first I went on my own, then a barmaid Pauline and her friend Jenny who said they were already going each week said I could get a lift with them. Pauline worked in the office of Holland’s Toffees, she worked in the accounts office and operated a comptometer, which really was a big mechanical calculator machine. She was able to get loads of toffees like Chewits and Penny arrows for me and the twins. Jenny worked with her in the office of the sweet factory. When it came to stock taking time in the pub she brought her comptometer and helped dad do the counting and working out on it.
There were three cinemas in Southport, the ABC, the Odeon and the Palace all on lord street. The palace was the old Victorian style with plush surroundings and decorations. It had ornate moulding in the ceiling and around edge of the balcony. It even had theatre boxes as if it had been a music hall theatre. The Odeon was similar to the Palace but more modern and the ABC was a 1930’s art deco building with sleek lines in the interior decor. I remember watching films like Rosemary’s Baby with Mia Farrow and 2001 a Space Odyssey. I saw Bullit with Steve McQueen and Easy Rider for the first time too. Midnight Cowboy was one of my favourite films. There were many classics that year that I remember, Bob, Carol Ted and Alice was really funny. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid, Carry on Camping, Anne of the thousand days and Battle of Britain are just a few.
After going to the Odeon cinema we would go across the road to the Wimpy bar for a burger and coffee. It was a coffee bar but with waiter service and real espresso coffee. I liked the noises the coffee machine made from the gurgling as the dark black coffee dripped into the small cups, the bubbling and shrieking of the milk as the steam made it into froth to go on the top of the coffee. During the summer of 1968 the twins and I went to stay with auntie Marie in her flat in Stockton Heath near Warrington. Mum and dad went off on a holiday on their own to Anglesey. We stayed with auntie Marie who was granddad Fishers daughter, so she was really my mum’s aunt. The flat was right in the centre of the village over the bank where auntie Marie was the caretaker. I was fifteen and the twins were eleven so we could really look after ourselves. Marie’s daughter lived not far away and we spent a lot of time with their children. We played out along the Shropshire union canal and went on walk along the Manchester ship canal. Grand dad Fisher took me to watch Warrington Play rugby on one of the Saturdays. There was a little park alongside the ship canal and I found some other teenagers that hung around there during the evenings. They were my age and I got on really well with a young lady named Jane. We became inseparable after the first evening, it really was a shame when we had to go home after two weeks. I suppose she was my first holiday romance.
We did not know it at first but mum had got pregnant during that holiday with my youngest brother Simon Roger who was born April 9th 1969. Simon was born a couple of weeks early. Mum had gone to have her hair done and came home with bad pains. She was rushed into Ormskirk Hospital and Simon Roger was born by ceaserian. The joke was that Simon was named after Roger Moore who played Simon Templar in the tv series The Saint because my dad was supposed to look like him. Soon after Simon was born Mum was ill and she had to have a hysterectomy, she went into Ormskirk for the operation and went to Rufford Hospital for recuperation. We went to visit her and I thought she was so ill that she might die. I later found out that she had had overian cancer. Luckily she recovered well and was home in a few weeks. She is still going strong today at eighty two years old.
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