My student job - Torquay - 1970s!

                            

                       “ Well, that is Torquay, Ma’am” 😂

I was watching a programme that featured Torquay, earlier today. And for some reason my mind drifted back to the early 1970s, when I was a student in the 6th form at my grammar school. I worked for two summer seasons in a little gift shop on Vaughan Parade, which is in the photo above. That’s a modern photo above, but back in the 1970s the only difference was that it wasn’t pedestrianised. In the summer, it was heaving with holidaymakers and even more heaving with foreign students…so many of them!

I found an old black and white photo ( above) from around that time and the shop where I worked would’ve been just out of the photo. I’ve never been able to find an actual photo of the shop.

Its name? Well now, there’s a thing! It was either,

‘ Sarie Marais’ or Sarais Marie.

I did some investigating and I found out that, ‘ Sarie Marais’ is a traditional name for a traditional South African folk song. And so maybe it was a reference to that. I’m not sure. What I do recall was that the owner was definitely called Mike Green and he was a hippy kind of character, very easy to get along with…and I loved going to work there!

Below is a photo from the 1960s..a bit before the shop where I worked was there, but nevertheless, you can see the delightful situation!

This little shop sold all kinds of things geared towards students: jewellery ( rings, bangles, bracelets), joss sticks, key rings, badges, stickers and not forgetting posters!

I became so expert at rolling posters and squeezing them into thin poly bags! 

And when I finished my second summer there, before going off to train to be a teacher, I was allowed to choose a poster as a ‘thank you’! 

I took my chosen poster to my new abode and hung it proudly on my wall, along with my Biba poster!

This was it:

 Easy Rider! Starring, amongst others, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson.

Did you have a student job? 

I had various other jobs during my student days, including one in a bread/ cake factory ( I hated that job!) and another working for The Post Office, delivering the Christmas post! ( I loved that!) 

But that’s for another day! 😁

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