City Insights

The mention of the 'notorious' Teddy Boys reminded me of the time when I was the assistant Manager of a large South London cinema. Sunday was the worst day of the week and more often than not we had to call the Police to turf out the offenders. However there were moments of humour when a policeman remarked to one Ted, "Do your feet go to the end of those winkle pickers?", which resulted in the immediate reply "Does your 'ed go ter the top of your 'elmet?"

I have lived in the USA for 45 years, 35 of them in New Jersey (or, as they say here "noo joisey"), but my first 45 years were spent in England, mainly in Brighton. Mention of the "large cinema in South London," reminded me of the Arcadia, or what we called "The Scratch," in Lewes Road, on the west side, just past the bottom of Elm Grove. Here we could enter for tuppence, on Saturday afternoons to see such actors as Laurel and Hardy, and William Boyd (Hop-along Somebody). The seats had no arm-rests, which allowed the manager to come along with a torch (called a flashlight in the USA), and tell us kids to move along (three or four small bottoms on two seats), to allow more kids to come in and be seated. We often sat through the interval between films to see the program round again. The name Scratch referred to the possibility of being flea-bitten, though that never happened to me. I believe the cinema building is now gone, though I don't know what took its place. What a wonderful place Brighton was/is.