My Canvey memories 1948 to 1970

At this point I would like to thank my friends of nearly 60 years Harry and Val Court for jogging my memory on a lot of things that I had forgotten.
I have now come to the end of my memories of Canvey in the Fifties as a single man, my last ten years on the Island was spent working hard and establishing a home for my wife and kids so my errant roving days were over and at the age of 26 I became a responsible adult.
I thank all of those that had the patience and fortitude to read all of them, and I hope you had as much of a good time reading them and remembering some of the things that I have mentioned because I have had a wonderful time writing them.
Some people reading them might deduce that the youngsters of the fifties were a bunch of hooligans but nothing could be further from the truth, we may have upset some of the older residents with our outlandish behavior and dress sense and our flamboyant attitude but in all of us there was no malice, vindictiveness or vandalism.
Our only aim was to have a good time and enjoy ourselves, there were very few fights with any of the mainland and London boys that came to Canvey for a holiday because we all had the same goal, duck hunting, getting your leg over a good pissup and a good feed.
I myself cannot recall any of the Canvey girls being nasty or anti-social they were all nice and they looked forward to the summer months as much as us boys for the many new lads that would come down to Canvey on holiday.
If anywhere in these memories you find an inaccuracy I would be glad if you let me know, as one’s memory is not infallible
P.S. I might add a few articles of my time at Regent and about driving trucks in the 50s we will see how it goes
Some people say that you cannot live on memories but you can have a bloody good time recalling them.
Eddie

When I came back to England for a holiday in 1996 mainly because my mother had died and I had to sort out a few problems with the rest of the family, we had a small reunion with some of the boys we grew up with. We had it at the Windjammer Pub at the bottom of May Avenue, there was Reggie, My wife and I, Nobby Gubb and his wife, Harry Court and his wife, Lennie Hooker and another married couple from Canvey (Trevor and Ces) who are friends of Harry.
I called in to visit Reggie and we drove over to Basildon to see Lennie and had our photo taken and in the evening we all went to the Windjammer.
Now Lennie, who did not look all that well when he arrived by cab, was a real piss artist but had only one beer and
Complained about stomach pains, he looked crook all night and before the end he said he did not feel well and was going home.
We called him a cab gave him the fare and told him that if he felt ill in the morning to go to the doctors, on the way home he told the cab driver to take him straight to the hospital where he was admitted and died that night.
Now the sad thing was the next morning after the reunion we left on a 21 day tour of Europe and did not know of Lennie’s death and of course missed his funeral. I was gutted to say the least.