I Lived At 45 Warrington Ave

A Memory of Slough.

I was born in Taplow in 1957, my parents shared a house (a semi) with my grandparents. They lived downstairs and us obviously upstairs.
I attended St Anthony’s Catholic School on the Farnham Rd and at that time they had only started building the church next to the school. While I was there I became a member of the 9th Slough Cub’s. I also went on to play for the cub's football team - but we never won anything. I acquired a few badges that were sown onto my Cub uniform over my time there but I never joined the scouts after.
My next school was St Joseph’s on Shaggy Calf Lane. Unfortunately I didn’t live far enough away for a bus pass so it was a bit of a hike on foot, but you got used to it. While I was at St Joseph’s the school was chosen to appear in a Jenny Agutter movie. It was filmed during the school holidays, but because it was supposed to be a girl's school, it was obviously off limits to all the lads - although we did all get a chance to meet Jenny. At the time, the school was given a new school bus by the film company, however, what nobody realised was that it was a mild sex movie - needless to say the Headmaster wasn’t too happy. I found a copy of the film recently - it's called ”I start Counting” - 1969. The school uniform and badges are clearly seen, as worn by Jenny, in a couple of scenes.
At some point I managed to get a job after school selling the Evening News from a box outside the railway station. They were based there - they had printing machines and would print the latest I had a box on Slough High Street near Sooters Dept Store. I had to shout as loud as I could once all the football results were in - a lot of people did the Pools back then so I often sold out. But it didn’t end there for me as they gave me another 125 news papers and dropped me off on the cross roads on the Farnham Rd - between the Ambassador Bingo Hall and The George pub opposite the entrance to the Britwell housing estate. In principle it was a good catchment area, but I didn’t have a box, only a big bag with the papers in. It was a bleak place to stand in the winter.
One night a lorry pulled up and asked me how many papers I had - I had 75 left and he wanted to by them all. I asked him where he came from and he said “Mars”, and as I was a bit cheeky I said - ”Oh yes..and I’m the Man in the moon, put my two index fingers above my head and made some Beep Beep noises. He laughed at me as he drove off. The following week he was back with the biggest bag of mixed chocolate you could imagine - ”Oh that Mars”, I thought you were pretending to be a space man!!! A driver from the factory became my best customer - they often gave me a big bag of cash for their papers - always too much, and after the Evening News van came back to pick me up after closing time, and we got back to the print shop and cashed up, I always made a stack of tips. I kept that up until my parents decided to move to Norfolk, while i was in my fifth year at school. My life in Slough was good and I have a lot of happy memories of my early years. I hope you enjoy my story..

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