What good are contracts?

[gillsfan1066]

SSSOOOOTTTYYY YOUR A JEANI ASS, haha, I have spend sleepless nights trying to figure this out ,YES it was a block north of the CHOO CHOO TRAIN TRACKS, my Grandmother used to take me to when I was like 4 or 5 to stand over the railway tracks when a steam train came roaring up or down the line , smoke billowing everywhere ,I would stand in wonder and fear and watch the great dragon getting closer and closer until the whistle blew to warn the pedestrians and cars crossing at the crossing gates then we would be covered in steam and smoke, then came the joy of finding my Grandmother still there to take me to the store.
Now the next problem I have is why were we there, we lived down near Gillingham Pier, so why were we all the way up at what was it called Livingstone Circus ?? We got our bread from Coopers on Pier Road, out meat from some butcher along Pier Road on I think the corner of Milner Rd, and Charlies the grocers was just along on the next corner towards Autoyachts the Fiat Dealers , so what was at Livingstone Circus we needed to walk all that way for ??

[bunburygills]

Did we have Fiat's in those days? Japanese cars were only just starting. Volkswagen and the odd Citroen were about the only foreign cars I can remember. I went to Africa for 2 years in 1965 and saw all these weird and wonderful cars I'd never seen before. Mind you, being in the Air Force, my first three cars in England were all left hand drive Opel's which servicemen had brought back from Germany. I remember just passing my test and buying an old Opel Kapitan and straight away driving it down from Lincoln, straight through the middle of London to Chatham. The thought now would scare me to pieces. Also, one of the things that struck me when I came over about 5 years ago was the tiny streets around Lower Gillingham.

[sotongill]

Now the next problem I have is why were we there, we lived down near Gillingham Pier, so why were we all the way up at what was it called Livingstone Circus ?? We got our bread from Coopers on Pier Road, out meat from some butcher along Pier Road on I think the corner of Milner Rd, and Charlies the grocers was just along on the next corner towards Autoyachts the Fiat Dealers , so what was at Livingstone Circus we needed to walk all that way for ??

If memory serves me correctly 1066 , you're four years older than me , so i'm guessing that you are talking '58 or '59 . The shop was run by Plough and Taylor at the time , who sold it to the Blundells in the early seventies . Yeo bought it in the late seventies . My father used to work there on a Sunday morning in the late sixties and early seventies . I can only assume that the trip was to watch the trains from the footbridge , as I can't think of anything special at Livingstone Circus in the sixties - far less so now .

[sotongill]

Did we have Fiat's in those days? Japanese cars were only just starting. Volkswagen and the odd Citroen were about the only foreign cars I can remember. I went to Africa for 2 years in 1965 and saw all these weird and wonderful cars I'd never seen before. Mind you, being in the Air Force, my first three cars in England were all left hand drive Opel's which servicemen had brought back from Germany. I remember just passing my test and buying an old Opel Kapitan and straight away driving it down from Lincoln, straight through the middle of London to Chatham. The thought now would scare me to pieces. Also, one of the things that struck me when I came over about 5 years ago was the tiny streets around Lower Gillingham.

No idea when a car dealership first operated there Bunbury , or indeed what make of car - all I can remember with any certainty about Pier Road in the sixties was the Gas Works next to it , although i'm sure that I made the journey from Arden Street school to the pool at the Strand on many occasions . A season ticket for the pool in 1969 was 50p in todays money , and you got priority admission at 4.00 pm when it opened . Happy days

[gillsfan1066]

No it was Auto Yachts or Autoyachts and a Fiat Dealership, it's now a Ford Dealership and was next to the Marina on the west side and gasometer on the east.
I had bought my wife at the time a lovely bright yellow Fiat 124 Sports Coupe and I decided to service it outside in the street. Putting the last plug in the little metal terminal cap came off bounced around the engine and disappeared down it's own plug hole.
I went to the Fiat dealership to ask for advice and they said for two million quid they would tow it in and take the heads off and remove the culprit. I ended up a few weeks later buying a long bendy thing with a claw on one end and a pushy thing to open it on the other, I think it cost like 50 pence and I got the cap on the second attempt
OK thats not entirely true ,I had to buy her a used Chrysler 180 in the mean time , which meant that for several weeks I learned no matter what I liked in my life, Necrophilia was not going to ever be part of it, well after those few weeks anyway.

[bunburygills]

Just a coincidence but Fiat now own Chrysler along with Dodge, Jeep and RAM. You never know what you're buying these days.