This article was first published in the West Sussex Gazette on 7th July 1994.

We learnt of cattle herding through the town and his first home to be connected to the local grid in an earlier article on Worthing reader Peter Longhurst's descriptive school day memories. Now this latest contribution tells what life was like for the working class on the estate where Peter lived in the later 1930s.

At the end of Kingsley Close, Peter's parental council house backed onto the north side of Ham Bridge Halt (now East Worthing), where wonders of nature were in abundance. From the garden, young Peter could see glowworms shining in the dark of night on the grass bank of the bridge. 'There were all sorts of wildlife there: grass snakes, slow worms, lizards and frogs and so on.'

Not long after Peter moved there, the bridge was rebuilt into a wider one, this time including pavements for the safety of pedestrians, and in doing so some of the adjoining gardens were taken, including Peter's. 'Mum took the workmen enamelled jugs of tea.' They used a steam pile-driver which fascinated impressionable young Peter. Yet another link with steam!

Children walked under the bridge. 'No-one took any notice and we'd walk alongside the railway embankment to the brooks at East Worthing. We would spend many an evening vaulting the innumerable streams that criss-crossed through there then. At that time there was an unmanned level crossing where the Western Road Bridge crosses the railway now. North of the railway the land was thick with trees and brambles. We went blackberrying there. And at night when the moon was out we picked mushrooms there too. These fields were owned by a farmer who lived at Upton Farm House in West Street, Sompting.'

Because of the large numbers of youngsters playing in the vicinity and the sight of seemingly endless lines of washing hanging out to dry, one particular train guard would call out 'anyone for Chinatown' when the train stopped at the Halt, in those good old days before noisy and unintelligible modern-day public address systems were introduced.

At the age of 11, Peter went to Sussex Road Senior Boys' School where the headmaster was Mr D.A.Best. 'When you got punished by him it really was four of the best!'

Many families were poor at that time and rose early to buy stale food. 'We used to queue at the back entrance to Mitchell's Bakery in North Street when we needed bread. We kept a clean sack and filled it with stale bread for one shilling (5 pence in today's money). If we weren't there by 6 a.m. they could be sold out. After buying the bread it wasn't far to collect the newspapers for my paper round from the newsagents opposite the Rivoli Cinema. Each morning I delivered more than 100.

They couldn't afford to have coal delivered. 'Every Saturday morning we went down to the gas works in Park Road with my pram-wheeled box truck to buy six pennyworth of coke (2½ pence in today's money) which was weighed out on heavy duty scales and then tipped into the truck. It lasted us all week for heating and cooking on the living room fire.

It sounds more like the television scenes of Russia seen in recent years.