Post by Les on Dec 2, 2017 2:25:30 GMT
Maidstone I remember it well:
Hello everyone. With Barry Hynes and myself we organised the school reunion you're talking about at St Francies Junior School in Week Street and it was a brilliant evening.
We made the ladies wear name tags with their maiden names so that "the sands of time" would allow one another to identify those faces from time gone by!
Talking about Matteo those of you may remember that my mother was Italian, though you wouldn't have known it when I was at school.
There was also the Hughes family, Italian to the core. Sadly Marie and her brother "Divvy" (David) as he was more popularly known have passed away,
I believe the two other brothers Charlie and Billy are still around in the north of England.
I have lived in Maidstone all of my life; first memories are of my mum renting two rooms at a house in Boxley Road which was convenient for going to St Francis at Week Street, personally a good time for me,
I had no complaints and got on ok with the teachers, especially Mr McPartland, a real gent of the old style. Like Peter (Capon) I wasn't brainy enough to pass the 11+ so I went to the Nissan Huts in Vinters Park,
again looking back a brilliant time of my school life. Remember Mr O'Donnell and his slipper for us "nauties"?
Sadly he passed away a couple of years ago, again to me he was the one that kept me on the straight and narrow! We moved from Boxley Road, around the corner to Wheeler Street
(the house has since been demolished) and then onto Shepway Estate where my schooldays finished. Mum had several jobs, with the first one being at Chiesemans, in their kitchen.
I used to love going down into their basement store at Christmas time, it was sheer fantasy-land with Father Christmas at the end of a magical ride,
I don't know how they did it in the days prior to all the electronic/computer generated backdrops of today.
She then moved jobs to The Star ... what a brilliant place, anybody remember Monday nights in the 60s where the lights were dimmed and there were just candles alight on the tables?
Yes and then having to remove the candle wax from your clothes
Brown paper anda hot iron.
Can you imagine Health & Safety nowadays!!!!! Brilliant, brilliant times. I used to knock about with a group of lads and I printed up business cards - calling ourselves The Maidstone Set - anyone remember
Jim James, Malc James, Alan Matthews, John Birch, Alan Leeson and myself?
I can recall The Beehive, wonderful store, go in one entrance in Union Street and exit from the other onto Week Street, it had everything a gwaking young lad in the 60s wanted,
how about Hubble & Freeman the sports shop in Gabriel's Hill? The best sports shop in the universe and Goldings junk shop at the top of Week Street (selling army surplus),
next to the Barracks where the new road and White Rabbit currently reside. Timothy Whites at the bottom of Week Street, the Kent Messenger at the top of Week Street? Pia's milk bar also at the top of Week Street,
Gilberts cycle shop next door and the fresh fish shop next to them? And what about "Misplaced Article" week (to co-incide with Maidstone Carnival/Cricket Week),
when shops would deliberately put an article in the windows that they obviously didn't sell and so you had a form to go around the shops, look in their windows, try and spot the mis-placed article,
enter it on your entry form and try to win a prize, all good, innocent fun! Could go on but you've probably fallen asleep by now, so I'll end! Let me know if anyone remembers me, great site Peter, congratulations!
Sure we remember you Jim. It was a sad dissapointment to see your hair though.