Month: August 2017
The Bottom Cross.
Bottom Cross
Written for Historic Hamilton
By Kit Duddy.
It’s amazing how some places feature high in your life, your memories keep returning be they bad or be they nice.
The Bottom Cross in Hamilton always had my mind, if you were ever looking for someone it’s one place you must have mined.
Let’s check out the area from my mind to see what still lingers, just how easy that would be when I don’t need to lift a finger.
Back in my school days would be my first journey there, trying to get those Latin verbs out from
In my hair. St. John’s I found was murder, I had to have an out that’s
when I found what Burtons was all about.
No not the corner windows it was just up the stair, the snooker hall or billiards to marvel at the flair. The guys up there were brilliant better than me or you, some of them so magic they had their
own cue.
Across the road was Equi’s a tally cafe there the patter was fantastic,
an the cokes were priced fair. Four Picture houses round the streets and you always were able to get a seat.
Sometimes the balcony was the thing you sat up there and we could fling nuts at all the courting couples just as the guys moved in for a cuddle?
Later on and looking for style I’d shop in Harrison’s for a while, my first made to measure suit and a pair of winkle picker boots.
The latter was an awful pair my face and nose ended up sair, jumped on a moving SMT bus
my shoes they weren’t very fussed. The pointed toe on the platform bent but my body to the floor was sent, my face and nose was quite a mess while the toe into the laces was pressed.
My first job was a butcher boy in Millers shop there was a real joy, away from Doc Gilmour’s golden rules meant that I could play the fool. Every single
Friday night a game of snooker or a bit of a fight, then the Troc to have a dance get a lumber if you
had a chance
The Bottom Cross where every thing started, lovers met or they just parted. Guys hung out or the Cops moved them on we were all youngsters but now our youth is gone.
My memories linger at
Burton’s door and I would love to be there with friends once more.
Dan & John Daly in the 1950s
Where in the World are you reading from?
I wanted to share yesterday’s Stats for Historic Hamilton taken from our WordPress site. Surprisingly we had a lot of visitors from The Ukraine. We had the following visitors in the countries listed below:
UK 99 Views.
Ukraine 45 Views.
France 19 Views.
USA 16 Views.
Austrailia 11 Views.
Spain 9 Views.
Canada 4 Views.
Thank you to everyone who is reading from around the world. Can I ask you all to do something for us? Can you go to your window right now and take a picture to show us what your view is like? Please remember to tell us where in the world you are when you send your picture.
Hi Di Hi,,,
OUR WEBSITE IS NOW LIVE!
OUR WEBSITE IS NOW LIVE.
Today we have at last got round to opening up our website for Historic Hamilton.
We have had it sitting unpublished for over a year and the reason for this is due to the time that it takes to build the site. I have been doing this by myself and I am by no way a web designer and this is my first ever try at doing such a thing.
I would like to let you all know that it is by no way near finished and that the content on the site is no way near as good as our Facebook page, but I will endeavour to get this up to speed over the coming months and so on.
We have decided to make the site go live so that we can reach out to a larger audience around the world and hopefully this will attract more visitors to our Facebook Page too.
Last year we opened up the page for 1 day to get some constructive feedback which we did receive and we took on board everything that you told us. When we opened it up, we received 648 visitors in 1 day.
If you would like to have a look at our new website then you can view it by clicking the link below.
Stepek Poem.
JAN STEPEK,
The poem below was written for Historic Hamilton
by Kit Duddy.
Jan Stepek ,
Jan Stepek the man wi Tv’s you could buy them for cash have them on Tic, when your mates maw had colour it fair made ye sick.
They started oot wee, mibies a 6 inch screen, the folk on the tele could have been pixies and green. They aw had funny voices like bools in their mooths, great big smiles and white white tooths.
Jan Stepek, Jan Stepek wi a shoap up the street every wan knew him,
an the stock he could keep. He had Grundig an Bush an radio rental when you couldn’t get Caroline it sent you mental.
The shops and memories are all long gone but with Historic Hamilton Garry will make yours go on. So here’s to more memories please write down them all, and send them to Garry and we can all have a ball.