by Denise Norman

“Being a post-war baby boomer I was lucky my parents moved from Essex to Clapham when I was seven.

By 19 I had moved in with my boyfriend in Shepperton and was married two years later in the mid 1960s. I recall in those days you were pretty much “on the shelf” if you were not married by 25.

It all went pear-shaped a few years later, by which time I was a fast moving executive in sports marketing working in Berkeley Square, and, loving the river, I found a flat to die for (through Bentall’s estate agent office) in the Hermitage on the corner of Portsmouth Road and Surbiton Road, Kingston. It cost £17,400, of which I was able to secure a mortgage for £13,400, and I arranged various borrowings and family loans for the remainder. With the repayments taking all my salary, I did a Saturday job so that I could actually eat.

I would drive every weekday morning to Mayfair – mostly before the rush hour started and return home after it had finished but I loved my job and my home.

I met a policeman in a pub in Brixton while out with my mother celebrating her birthday. It was his birthday too – August 12, start of the grouse shooting season (as they said in those days). We married and had a daughter and life in Kingston was brilliant. Our local was the Fox and Hound and occasionally the City Arms, both in Portsmouth Road. I remember Sunday lunchtimes in the Fox. Sometimes the wives got cross when the husband did not come home in time for lunch. On one occasion, a wife turned up and threw a suitcase across the room shouting that if her husband liked it so much he should move in.

I also remember an evening in the City Arms during the Falklands conflict when we were all waving the bar towels over our heads singing to Rod Stewart’s We are Sailing. In those days I pushed the pram up the towpath to get the cheap veg in the market and the nappies from Boots, which was in the lovely market place building vacated by Next and now Jack Wills.

Expecting my second child we decided the flat was too small and moved to Ewell for 26 years.

Six years ago I moved back – just off the Portsmouth Road by Ravens Ait and it is just so magical being back with the river 100 yards away.

I stroll down Queen’s Promenade most days and have my déjà vu moment as I pass The Hermitage and I would swear they are the same chandeliers I see as I pass by 33 years later.”

l What are your memories of Kingston? Email jkennard@london.newsquest.co.uk or call 020 8744 4255.