Smorgasbord Blog Magazine – Memories, Music and Movies – 1968 – Southsea Seafront – The Funfair – Mary Hopkins and Funny Girl by Sally Cronin

I cannot remember a time when music and movies where not a part of my life.

1968 – Southsea Seafront – The Funfair – Mary Hopkins and Funny Girl

It is 1968 and I am fifteen going on twenty-five. Desperate to move on from being a child to a young woman and time seemed to move so slowly.

The previous year at age fourteen and three months (the earliest that you could work legally), I had begun my stint as a weekend and school holiday council employee in one of their cafes along Southsea seafront.

I worked in a small souvenir kiosk next to South Parade Pier and a short distance from the main cafe that I was employed by. I was under the watchful eye of Betty who I have to say was one of the best managers I have ever worked for. She trained me exceptionally well and by the time a year had passed had every confidence that she could leave me in charge of her little fiefdom for her lunch breaks and day off.

In this, my second year, I was moved into a front of house position responsible for the new whipped ice-cream machine. Talk about fox in the hen house! My job was to fill the central container with a specially prepared formula which was delivered in large plastic containers, switch the machine on first thing in the morning to cool the mixture. There were two sizes of cone and you had the option of sprinkles or a Cadbury’s Flake for what was called a ’99’….

I would spend my weekends and the whole of the summer months serving this delicious treat to the thousands of holiday makers who would pour down from the north of England as the factories shut for August. I have to admit that a fair amount of quality control was required for this job and since I was in charge… Well what can I say?

Working there provided me with extra money and my parents had a rule which I think was sound. If we worked we contributed 25% to the housekeeping, bought our own clothes and then the rest was ours to spend as we wished. I did save around half but this still left me with more than the average pocket money.

What little spare time I had was spent in less sensible pursuits. At Clarence Parade which was just five minutes walk from our house there was a moderately sized fun fair. There were a couple of rides in particular that caught the attention of girls of my age. One was the Wall of Death where leather clad young men on bikes risked life and limb to charge around the inside of a large saucepan scaring the living daylights of us peering over the edge. The other was the Waltzer.. Not so much the ride but the tall, dark-haired attendant who wore a cold ring in one ear and a definite smirk as he viewed his teenage entourage.

My best friend and I would tell our parents that we were going into Southsea to the shops and the slip into the fun fair instead. We might spend an hour in the penny arcade but would eventually and nonchalently saunter over to the Waltzer where we would lean against the wooden railings waiting for our opportunity.

The key thing was to wait until there was only about four of the cars occupied and for those to be filled with adults or families. Then the two of us would slip into one of the cars and wait to be whirled around at great speed. We knew that the dashing lothario would always head straight to the cars with teenage girls esconced and offer his special and extra attention. He would stand on the rolling platform, oiled quiff artfully arranged over one eye, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth and proceed to spin the chair until you were giddy..

Those were the days…

Which brings me to the music that I listened to during those heart quickening months of the summer in 1968. There were a lot of songs to choose from that year including Mary Hopkins with the appropriate Those Were The Days, Tom Jones with Delilah, The Beatles with Hey Jude, Manfred Mann and The Mighty Quinn and of course The Rolling Stones with Jumping Jack Flash.

Here is Those Were The Days by Mary Hopkins which looking back 53 years seems appropriate… shared by Ahmad F Elyan 

Films too were a huge part of my life and I loved going to the cinema. I used to immerse myself in the stories and I was enraptured with Funny Girl with Barbra Streisand and of course the gorgeous Omar Sharif as Nick Arnstein.

Here is Barbra Streisand singing a song that was my theme song from that day forward. Don’t Rain on my Parade

 

Thanks for popping and by and hope that this brought back memories for those of you as old as I am!!