It was always Beatties for Subbuteo stuff... and aeroplane models! Used to love making them, but always seemed to use too much glue!
No mention before of Saturday mornign pictures Charlie - but I remember back when I live din Hayes going - I cannot have been more than 8 or 9 and my brother 12 but we would walk / cycle over a mile to the pictures - my kids hate it now when we call it "The Pictures" (not that we do it to annoy them ) Sink the Bismark and Up Periscope were two I remember
Saturday morning pictures...the Mask of Zorro and one kid paying his tanner and going round to the emergency door to let the rest of us in...
i saw Planet of the Apes at the Saturday morning pictures...it's the one i remember the best coz i couldn't hear a blinkin' word...all the kids were screaming so much! lol
We used to go to Saturday Morning Pictures and every week there would be a serial either Buck Rodgers, Superman or Batman all in black and white. Always at the end the hero would be in dire peril, a car would go over a mountain edge with the hero unconcious inside, then on the following Saturday you would see the Scene from the other angle and the hero would miraculously come round as the car is about to fall, dive out the door and grab a convenient shrub that had not been there the previous week to save his life. As you said H there was always a lot of noise and every now and then they would turn on the lights and announce that if we were not quieter they would stop the show & empty the Cinema (they never did) They also showed a lot of Childrens Film Foundation Films. After the film we would walk up to Hanson's in Borehamwood and have a 2d cone (Hanson's homemade Ice Cream was the best in the World).
ah, see i missed out on the home made ice cream...coz i'm a Wembley girl and we didn't have anything near that posh! in Wembley High Road! lol
This has got a long way, I suppose it's because we are all of an age. My take on this is probably a little different as I lived in Brighton for a long time. We had Saturday morning cinema, but it cost as much to get to the cinema as it did to get in so my friends and I played a lot of football in the local park, we were chased a lot by the parkies as we used the goals put up for the local Saturday and Sunday leagues. We did find that playing on Brighton College's pitches was a lot more peaceful as they were deserted most of the time, and getting into Whitehawk FC's little ground had a good pitch. There was climbing trees too, which raised the parkies' ire even more. Some of my friends and I would go up to the golf course on a Saturday and be caddies - if we were lucky we could get two rounds in. Getting hit by a ball was always a good earner, but that hurt. Being a caddy one week financed getting to Watford the next, although having separated parents helped as my dad lived in Little Chalfont and was quite happy to meet me at the football, or even take me if I managed to get up on a Friday. There was always subbuteo (I'm sure my collection of bits are the house somewhere, still), monopoly and a friends mum taught us how to play cribbage (odd game that one). Its odd living away from Watford as my memories of the town, although similar in some ways, are very diffent from the majority. I remember Trewins and parking up on the waste ground behind it, outside a very large gate which I learned later was used in some of the Confessions films! There was a department store where TJ Hughes is now and Peter Spivey's sports shop further along the High Street, his staff must have been annoyed by the constant "Have you got the new Watford kit yet?" before walking down Market Street to the game, wondering if the fish and chips were that good the shop warranted a multitude outside. When the market was a proper market and not what it became and still is today. There was no Harlequin Centre or McDonalds, car parking for my dad was easy and every game was an adventure. Could we beat Southend this time, or how many would Workington lose by. I had the cotton reel tanks, the card board on my bicycle wheels, most of the other stuff too, marbles, conkers, playing bulldog. It's funny how childhood and growing up as an early teen is such a shared experience; even with the majority of you in Hetfordshire and me in Sussex.
We used to go to Saturdary pictures at The Odeon in 'emel. There always was a massive queue that went round the front and down an alley at the side and then across the bottom. There used to be a huge scarey WPC on duty that everyone called "The Mighty Quinn" and as soon as she was out of sight we would all start singing the obvious song. I seem to remember a line of girls getting on the stage and dancing to a Monkees song, but it's all a bit vague now. Of course I used to spend my bus-fare on extra sweets and had to walk up the hill to home! There used to a big field of football pitches near home and I used to love having a kick about and then watching a couple of local company teams battling out in the mud, as we got older we used to get asked to run the line - great fun. Eventually these pictures go ripped up for a "leisure world" - which is now boared up as the company has gone tit's up.
I am pretty sure that the Odeon, or was it the Gaumont in Watford, used to have an organ that came up from under the stage fronting the screen, and between pictures there used to be a sing song of popular tunes. I have no idea what the songs might have been now, probably something like "How much is that doggy in the window"
My Saturdays were spent at the flicks at Clapham Junction - seems as though we had the same films as you though!!
Could have been Leo, or even 'Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellenbogen by the Sea' Now that is strange ak.
Cotton reel tanks, yeah... Building camps in the woods and roaming all day round the estate, the rec and the fields. Lighting fires. Climbing trees. Qualifying for gang membership by going solo through the culverts that ran under the mainline between South Oxhey and Carpenders Park. Ye gods- we could have killed ourselves in so many ways- but we didn't.
I've never been one for the pictures much, even now. My childhood memories are of going to the Essoldo (sp?) In Market St, I think, to see a double bill of St Trinnian's with my grandfather and getting as much fun from him being a big kid with me as I did from the film. My worst memory was being taken to the Sound of Music by both sets of grandparents. They all thought it would be a treat for me. I hated it. It is the only time I've wanted the Nazis to win.
I am not a great film buff either, but Watford has quite a history of cinemas. There was the Plaza in St.Albans Road. Know as a bit of a fleapit, which went bust and later revived as the New Coliseum. There was the Empire in Merton Road which opened in 1913 and kept showing silent films long after the advent of talkies. In King Street there was the Regal/Essoldo which started out as the Central Hall Picture House in 1913. Then there was The Bohemian Cinema which only lasted for a month. The Super Cinema(Carlton) was in Clarendon Road and started out as a roller skating rink, but had an orchestra that it shared with the Palace Theatre. It had yellow black and gold decor tip up seats that were a modern invention. The newest one to open was the Plaza later the Odeon, and it was there that in 1929 that the first full length film with Al Jolson was shown. I would make it clear before someone comments, this was all before my time.
Remember when you could get away with a real tackle ball then man...yellow card now. No more welcome to Watford challenges.....
Funny my Mum is in a nursing home as she has Alzheimer's, when visiting her the other week they were having a sing song in the afternoon singing all the old Al Jolson & Max Bygraves songs. There was an old boy sat in a comfy chair in the corner who didn't say a thing and was away with the fairies that is until they sang 'Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellenbogen by the Sea', it got to the chorus and he just sat bolt upright and in good voice sang 'In Gilly Gilly etc' when the song had finished he resumed the position and not a peep was heard from him after. Another song we used to sing was 'Mares' eat oats & does' eat oats and little lambs eat Ivy' My mates brother did, he climbed up a Electricity Pilon, in the brick fields between Borehamwood & Elstree, with his air rifle we think he must of touched a cable with the rifle because he was found dead at the bottom of the pilon having been electrocuted. I remember getting an air rifle when I was 14, I used to shoot at birds until one day I hit won, the noise it made and the flapping etc as it fell made me feel sick and I never shot at a bird again.
A kid'll eat ivy too, wouldn't you - eh Charlie? Ak will be getting more comfortable now we are straying towards his language with Katzenellengoben - OFH you are dangerously close to bringing up the noses on the ladies of the Court of King Caractacus
