HILARY Spon (nee White) contacted the Echo after seeing Paul Shee’s postcard of a crowded seafront and Punch and Judy stand at West Beach, Boscombe, printed on January 29.
Hilary recently found a photograph of the Punch and Judy man Bert Staddon with his wife at a fancy dress event with her parents Ernie and Iris White taken in the 1940s or 50s.
She remembered seeing his Punch and Judy stand on the beach at Boscombe.
He was also an entertainer at a Christmas party she went to, run by the Grand Order of the Moose.
Ernie and Iris White ran a fishmongers and fish and chip shop at 64 Boscombe Grove, Boscombe. The shop is no longer there now.
Hilary and her sister Susan went to St Clement’s School in Boscombe.
She started in the nursery class in 1949 and when she went on to the primary school she learned to write on slates, not with paper and pencils.
Her childhood was simple but happy.
She has memories of going to King’s Park playground, buying stale buns in Christchurch Road on the way to Saturday morning ‘pictures’ with Mary Saunders, running to stand in the steam as trains went under the footbridge between Curzon Road and Ashley Road, buying the cheapest seats at the Hippodrome, and walking across the golf links to visit her gran, grandad, aunt, uncle and cousin.
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