Just Sandgrown
I am one of those who was born in Blackpool because of the war. My mother, with lots of others, were evacuated from Manchester to have their babies so I was born in the dining room of the Kimberley Hotel, Promenade, South Shore. You can’t get much more sandgrown than that!
Later on I lived in Blackpool when I worked for Blackpool-based Telefusion. I was a salesman with them when they opened thier new showroom on Talbot Road. The shop was officially opened by Violet Carson (Ena Sharples of Coronation Street fame) and Talbot Road was blocked from the bus station right down to North Pier. We also had a record department and I convinced the manageress to stock the Beatles first record as I knew them from playing in groups round Liverpool and suspected that they would be big; we must have been the first record shop in Blackpool to have pre-stocks of “Love Me Do”.
I have lived in the South since the late 50’s but Blackpool seems to come in and out of my life; I was the chef at Jimmy Citheroe’s Fernhill Hotel and, whilst it was Over-Wyre, I was in Blackpool very frequently.
It was a strange experience, many years later, when I stayed with my family at the Kimberley Hotel and explained to them over dinner that this was the very room in which I was born!
I don’t know what it is but the sight of the Tower always seems like a homecoming!
