I first had a
place of my own in Leicester in 1963. It was a bedsitting room in Stoneygate,
in Albert Road. I was doing my year in industry at Bostik in Leicester. I had
started off in August in lodgings. This had been arranged for me by a local lad
who was a fellow student via his local church. The lodgings were fine in a way.
I was not expected to spend too much time in my room but rather to sit with my
landlady in her lounge. Her daughter lived nearby and was a frequent evening
visitor. They would both sit knitting, happy in each others company while I
felt quite desperately bored and out of place.
This was OK
during the late summer/early autumn when I would go out on my new motor scooter
( new to me that is ). I had L plates and needed to take my driving test in the
autumn. I drove around and around the streets by the test centre until I knew
them backwards. For some reason I was particularly apprehensive about the
emergency stop. The idea was the examiner would step into the road at some
unknown point. I practiced from far higher speeds than likely in the test. I
was probably a nuisance to the locals.
In the event
the whole stop was slightly farcical. The examiner tried to hide behind a
parked car but could easily be seen as I turned a corner. The stop was achieved
very easily as I barely had time to pick up speed.
I had been
going out with Annette for three years, two of which she was in Leicester. Looking
back it was difficult. Not so bad in summer when we would meet up and walk
through Swithland Wood or elsewhere in Charnwood Forest. But winter was fairly
dire. I wasn’t allowed into her lodgings or hall of residence. She could visit
me at Loughborough although I shared a study and had not too much privacy; and
visits were hedged around with restrictions. This was 1963 remember. We spent a
lot of time in coffee bars. A regular haunt was the Knighton Kinema. On a
Wednesday when I visited ( it was half day for me ) we went when it opened
about 5.30 and ate our picnic tea when the lights went down. I watched a lot of
films of that era as we went irrespective of the showing. Unsurprisingly, as
there was never more than a handful of patrons, it closed.
I determined
that I would get a place of my own where we could go. A park on a wet winters
day was not conducive to courtship. The City Tourist office produced a
duplicated sheet on a Saturday morning of potential properties. Annette was
lodging in Evington so we looked there first. The options didn’t look good.
Communal kitchens ( in one case on the landing! ) and dismal places. We
broadened the search and found my room. It was on the top floor of an old 3
storey house. The room was at the front looking down on a quiet road with
intriguing decorative brickwork among my neighbours. I was high enough to look
at the roof features.
On my first
Sunday Annette cooked lunch for us with limited scope using the two gas rings.
I think we had hard boiled eggs and baked beans then individual apple pies with
custard. The baked bean saucepan hadn’t been thoroughly cleaned and the custard
was tinged pink. Then we settled to listen to the radio, Annette in the only
easy chair so I was lying on the bed.
It was
absolutely wonderful to be warm and dry and not to have to go out. The Beatles
had released their first LP in the spring and “please, please me” had been
successful enough that a documentary about them featured on the radio. There
wasn’t really too much to say and the Hamburg experience was a major part. They
had played in the seedy Reeperbahn area and often in strip clubs. John Lennon cackled
“ I played with my back to the girls so I wasn’t distracted”
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